My cousin Nancy has a really successful website. Everyone seems to love it. It’s called Guide To Femininity and it’s all about how to be feminine in the face of a world where, apparently, we women have forgotten how. She actually makes a living from it now because for the last six months or so, since there’s been a change in content and focus, her blog has received some critically acclaimed attention and people have been falling over themselves to advertise on it and sponsor it and have her give advice in their publications. There’s even been talk of a book deal, which will take her profile to the next level, although that’s not materialised yet because she’s still at the stage of considering her options.
Nancy is not my ‘real’ cousin. We’re not connected by flesh and blood. She’s my mother’s brother’s daughter. And she’s brunette. And white. And nothing at all like me. We grew up together, saw each other almost every day because we went to the same school and stuff, but we’re not ‘real’ cousins. She tells that to anyone she meets. I never say things like that because, to me, it’s not relevant, but to Nancy it’s probably the most important thing there is about our connection. We are not ‘real’ cousins.
With Nancy, April 1986, Otley
‘Why aren’t I your “real” cousin?’ I asked her. I was genuinely confused. What wasn’t real about me? My dad said the stuff on telly wasn’t real, that monsters that live under your bed weren’t real, that a lot of the storybooks I liked didn’t have ‘real’ stories but I was real, I thought. I could touch myself, I could see myself in the mirror, I ate real food and I drank real drinks, and I slept in a real bed and wore real clothes. Why wasn’t I real to Nancy?
‘You’re just not. That’s what Dad says. You’re not my real cousin. He said Auntie Heather could pretend all she likes but you’re not a real member of the family. It’s just the way it is.’
‘I am real, I am,’ I said.
‘No, you’re not. You really, really are not.’
Sienna is holding up my hand so she can use me as the axis for her pirouettes. Last time I saw her she was trying to perfect this move. She is effortlessly expert now: with a slight bounce she is up on to the rubber toe of her pink DMs, the flat of her other foot rests on her inner knee, her arm is up, clinging on to my hand, and spin, spin, spin. She’s a red-blue-blonde blur as she spins herself three times without pause. ‘Mum says we’re going to stay with you for a long time,’ she informs me as she spins. ‘I might even go to school here.’ Spin. ‘That’s right, isn’t it, Mum?’
‘Nancy,’ my cousin hisses to correct her. Nancy’s daughter is meant to call her ‘Nancy’ instead of ‘Mum’ because any woman who has a child needs to reclaim her femininity by retaining her given name at all times. This means even having your offspring call you by your name to prevent you from being seen as ‘just’ a mother. If I had a child, which I don’t so maybe what I think isn’t relevant, I would want them to call me ‘Mum’ no matter what it did to my femininity because they’re the only person/people in the whole world who could call me that. I’d savour that as the rare and precious gem it was … but maybe that’s just childless me. ‘And no, that’s not what I said,’ Nancy says to her daughter.
She revolves to face me, switches on the beseeching eyes and winning smile, forgetting it is me she is talking to, not Mum. ‘I said that we’d come to see her Auntie Clem and if she had space we’d ask if we could stay for a little while because we can’t really afford a holiday this year.’
Sienna stops her spinning, cocks her head to one side, gives her mother a Paddington Hard Stare that would put to shame not only Mr Wallace the sweaty-palmed estate agent but also the bear after which the look is named. ‘You did say that,’ Sienna tells her. ‘You really did.’ She turns to me, the PHS gone. ‘Do you have space?’
‘Erm, I’m not sure,’ I say. An outright no to this child is never possible.
‘Where’s Grandma Heather?’ Sienna asks. She has no issues with blood connections and being real – everyone is related to her if they talk to her long enough. ‘We rang the doorbell and Grandma Heather didn’t answer. Mum said we had to leave so early this morning and get Grandma Heather to let us in while you were at work so we’d be sitting drinking tea waiting for you to come back from work.’
‘I’m sure I didn’t say it like that.’
Her daughter gives her the side-eye. ‘Yes, you did, Mum.’
‘Nancy. Call me Nancy.’ Sienna never does call her Nancy because, I suspect, she thinks it’s stupid.
‘You said it’d be harder for Auntie Smitty to get us out if we had our feet under the table by the time she saw us.’
‘I think you misunderstood.’ Nancy grins at me, pushes her sunglasses on to the top of her head, checks her phone and then reholsters it in the back pocket of her shorts like it’s a gun. I think Nancy would cease to exist if she was ever parted from her phone, and all the stuff – the internet, social media, her website/blog – that is wrapped up inside the phone like a swaddled baby in a manger. ‘She’s so funny. You must remember how funny she is.’
I keep my attention on Sienna. ‘My mum is probably out on her bike.’
‘Grandma Heather has a bike. True, true?’ Sienna asks.
‘More of a trike. But yes, true, true. She goes out most days on it. She’s got a little basket on the front for her packed lunch and she goes off exploring.’
‘You are not serious!’ Nancy exclaims. ‘I just can’t imagine your mum doing that.’
My gaze returns to my cousin for a moment, before it moves on to the sea behind her. I can’t let them stay. Much as I’d love to spend time with Sienna, I can’t even let them into my flat. If they cross the threshold they will not leave again. Nancy will do what she always does and convince Mum that they deserve to be living there, and that Nancy is entitled to my bedroom while I am relegated to the box room with the single bed and worst views in the flat. If I let them into my flat I will have let Nancy get away with what she’s done. Again. Not just this last time but all the times over all the years.
‘Auntie Smitty,’ Sienna says, tugging on my jacket.
‘Yes?’
She uses her hand to indicate she wants me to come closer to her. Obligingly, I bend to her height. ‘I need the toilet,’ she whispers into my ear. ‘Right. Now.’
I straighten up. Nancy gives me a small shrug of helplessness.
Well, that’s that then.
With Nancy, July 2009, Karina’s Jewels, Leeds
The shop was empty and I was running a cloth over the glass cases for something to do in the lull. Business had been slow lately and I’d been waiting for Karina to give me the go ahead to make some new pieces. She was still considering my proposals because she wasn’t convinced they made good business sense. They did. I was only planning on doing more of what had been selling but she was still vacillating.
It was a blessed relief to have the bell ting as someone entered the shop. The relief lasted less than ten seconds. Nancy, wearing hot pants, vest top and jewelled flip-flops, walked in and grinned at me. Nowadays, if I saw her away from family occasions it was because she had to deliver some bad news.
‘Hi,’ she said shyly.
‘Hi,’ I replied.
‘I have some news,’ she said. She bit her lower lip nervously, lowered her eyes and took a several deep breaths. ‘I’m just going to tell you, if that’s OK?’
I nodded and braced myself, waited to hear what it was.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she said. She patted her stomach. ‘Three months but I’m not really showing yet. Probably because of how super-fit my body is.’
‘That’s amazing news!’ I squealed. I went forwards, hugged her. I hadn’t hugged Nancy in years, I would rather hug a giant sewer rat normally (I have a rat phobia), but this was different. This was the sort of news you were always happy about if they were happy. ‘Congratulations!’
‘Thanks, Clem,’ she said. She stood back. ‘I wanted to tell you myself because I wasn’t sure how upset y
ou’d be.’
‘Upset? Why would I be upset?’
She lowered her eyes, stared at the ground for a few seconds. It was the perfect amount of time for her to know she’d destabilised and worried me, and the right amount of time for me to plant my feet firmly on the ground so I wouldn’t fall over at whatever revelation was coming next.
‘The father … You have to understand that he wanted to tell you himself, but I said I’d do it.’ I wanted to see your face, to experience your pain, Clem added silently. I braced myself to hear Seth’s name. To discover that he had succumbed. ‘It’s Dylan.’
‘Dylan? Dylan,’ I repeated. ‘My Dylan?’
She nodded.
I took a step back. My Dylan had got her pregnant. He would never take that next step with me, he would never cross that friendship barrier and do more than kiss me to wind up Seth, but he’d knocked her up. My feelings for him had evaporated long before I fell for Seth, but this was still a blow. ‘But … when …’ My voice failed me. It couldn’t be true. I kept all such people away from Nancy because she always made a play for them, always tried to get one over on me. Seth was the absolute love of my life. Now. But I had to admit a small patch of my heart, an area so small it was barely there at all, lived forever as that eighteen-year-old girl who fell in proper love for the first time ever with Dylan.
‘Remember Seth’s party a few years back?’ Nancy had the reaction she wanted with that revelation, she could discard that faked humbleness and revel in twisting the knife. My pain was like oxygen to her sometimes. I never knew why. ‘I know I gate-crashed, but we got talking. I went over to Sheffield to see him and one thing led to another.’
Seth’s party was back in 2003. ‘Six years ago? You’ve been sleeping with him for six years?’ And he never mentioned it? Not possible.
She nodded. ‘Well, it fizzled out for a bit. I ran into him a few months ago and we discovered that we still had feelings for each other so, you know, one thing led to another again. We didn’t want to hurt you so thought we’d keep it a secret.’
She had slept with Dylan only a handful of times at the most. I knew how Nancy twisted things; she wasn’t outright lying because she knew I could check with Dylan and he would tell me the truth if questioned. What she was saying was this: she’d gone to see him and they’d fucked once. To have travelled all that way she must have really liked him but of course, Dylan being Dylan, he wasn’t interested so she gathered up her dignity, as tattered as it was, and walked away. Six years later she crosses paths with him again, they hook up again. This time she’s sure it’ll work out differently, that over time his heart would have grown fonder for her, because her heart has certainly grown fonder for him, and being older, she thinks that maybe he’ll be ready to settle down with her. But it doesn’t work out like that. So the next couple of times they hook up, she plans to find a way to tie him to her. She probably thought a pregnancy scare would be enough to bond them, to maybe get him to consider how life wouldn’t be so terrible if they were forever linked. But obviously that didn’t work out and the scare became a reality. And he obviously hadn’t reacted positively, because if he had, or if they’d been truly dating, she would have told me with him standing beside her. This, this was just a brief, not-even-long-enough-to-become-sordid fling. And he had done that. Knowing who she was, he had done that.
‘That’s even more brilliant news,’ I said. I wrenched a smile across my face, staple-gunned it into place and yanked my arms up, moved my body forwards to give her another hug. ‘My cousin and one of my best friends having a baby together. That’s the best of both worlds for me. Thank you so much, Nancy. I can’t wait to tell Seth, he’ll be over the moon, too.’
‘You don’t mind?’ she asked, confused and uncertain. She was wondering why I wasn’t breaking down, where my pain and upset and hurt had vanished to.
‘Why would I mind? I was a bit shocked at first but this is amazing news. Shall we go out and celebrate later?’ I asked her. ‘Obviously, soft drinks for you, but I’ll drink enough for the both of us.’ I could ask her for a drink because never in a million years would she go for one if she thought I was happy about this.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you about it.’
Once she left, I kept myself together for another half an hour to make sure she had truly gone. Then I flipped on the ‘back in five minutes’ sign, locked the doors and went into the back, fell to my knees and sobbed my heart out. My sobs were an outpouring of the pain of Dylan wanting her when he had never truly wanted me. After all those years of making me think he could possibly fall for me, after flirting mercilessly with me at Seth’s party, he had slept with her straight afterwards. Her of all people. It was such a deep betrayal by someone I still thought of as my friend.
I spent far too long in the back crying. I had to do it there, alone, because no one else would understand, especially not Seth. He’d think I was still in love with Dylan when I wasn’t, when I had stopped feeling like that about Dylan ages before Seth and I got together. At the end of it, what I was crying about wasn’t even the fact that Dylan had slept with Nancy. It was the fact that after all these years, Nancy had managed to find another way to prove that I wasn’t real.
My cousin Nancy wanders from room to room in my flat, taking in the décor, noting which rooms you can see the sea from, which rooms have carpets and which have floorboards. She’s like a homebuyer, mentally rearranging the furniture, seeing how she’ll make it hers once she takes over the place. That’s a given now, of course. Sienna is in the long, wide corridor, hopping on to alternate parquet blocks with alternate feet, exclaiming ‘Tah-dah!’ each time she lands successfully on one foot.
‘I like your house, Auntie Smitty,’ she tells me every fourth block.
‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’ Nancy states. She has returned to stand outside the main bedroom, my bedroom, mobile in hand ready to snap a photo. That’ll be up on her blog, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook soon – tagged as where she’s staying for the summer with a view to staying permanently. She’ll probably then do a selfie by the window to get the sea view in shot, so everyone who follows her and has friended her can see what she’s looking at while she types up her latest missive from the world of femininity.
The thumb on her right hand, topped with a perfectly manicured dusky pink nail, hovers over the camera-shaped button on her mobile. She moves the phone carefully, trying to capture the right light.
‘Clemency! Are you home?’ Mum calls from the front door.
‘Yes, Mum,’ I say back. Nancy doesn’t take her photo. Instead, she turns towards my mother’s voice, her face is radiant with joy because Mum’s here. And Mum is someone who’ll speak to her at last. In all the time Nancy has been here, outside and inside the flat, it’s been unsettling for her that I still haven’t spoken to her. Because, well, why the hell should I?
‘We’re here too!’ Sienna sings. She runs back down the corridor, turns the corner to where the coats are hung and where my mother is entering the flat.
‘Sienna? Oh my Lord! What are you doing here?’
‘We came for a holiday! Mum said if we like it we’re going to stay and I can go to school here.’
‘I didn’t say that!’ Nancy says. She goes to the source of the voices, lifts her arms to receive and give a welcoming hug to my mother before she disappears around the corner.
‘What a wonderful surprise!’ Mum says.
‘You made it sound so amazing in your letters and postcards we had to come see for ourselves,’ Nancy tells Mum. Her words are muffled, I presume from when she hugs my mother. ‘It certainly is wonderful.’ These words are punctuated by kisses.
‘Clemency!’ Mum calls. ‘Isn’t this a marvellous surprise?’
‘It’s certainly a surprise,’ I state quietly.
‘Well, of course you must stay. Mustn’t they, Clemency? It’ll be so lovely having the two of you around for a while.’ Mum is offering room in my home to my monster. I don�
��t know why that’s such a surprise to me after all these years, but it is. ‘Clemency! It’ll be lovely having them around for a while, won’t it?’
‘I’m going for a shower,’ I say loudly. And without waiting for a reply, I go into the bathroom, shut and lock the door.
With me, April 2015, Otley
Hi Clem. How’s it all going?
We haven’t had a catch-up in so long.
What’s new with you?
Listen, if you’re trying for a baby, let me know.
I’ve spoken to lots of fertility experts for the blog,
so I can give you lots of tips.
Talk soon. N x
P.S. Don’t forget the folic acid!!!!
Her hair in my bed, the latest posts on her blog, this text sent out of the blue. It still wasn’t the right time to deal with this, I was too exhausted, too tapped out by what was coming with Dad, but I had to make plans. I had to talk to Seth, but first of all, I had to have a Plan B because I couldn’t sleepwalk into Nancy ruining another part of my life.
They’re like three generations of a family. When I finally emerge from the bathroom, I stand unnoticed at the doorway watching this family tableau. The daughter reclines on the sofa with a glass of wine in a red goblet, the mother sits in the armchair, her glasses perched on her nose as she goes through her latest Sudoku puzzle, the granddaughter lies on the floor eating a bowl of sweetcorn, tuna and pasta with her fingers while glued to CBeebies. I’m the outsider in this place, there is no space for me here.
This was what it’d been like at the Zebilas, my other family’s house, except they had four generations and there’d been a lot more crying. I looked like them, I had the same blood, but I was an outsider, someone who had to be welcomed in and even then, didn’t quite fit.
That Girl From Nowhere Page 22