That Girl From Nowhere

by Dorothy Koomson

  He sits on his favourite seat, the one behind the driver’s seat that faces backwards.

  I take the white test from its place in my bag, push it across the floor towards Seth. He stares at it for a long time in silence. He’s disappointed, it’s clear on his face, but he doesn’t say or do anything except nod while staring at the result. I knew I wasn’t pregnant. That was why it hadn’t been a worry for me. Not a total worry, anyway. I had felt a fleeting nanosecond of disappointment ripple through me, followed by a small wave of relief that things could end properly between Seth and me now – we had nothing to tie us together. Then a huge gut-wrenching sob had escaped me when I realised Seth and I had nothing to tie us together. I wasn’t going to have his baby and we were over.

  ‘When are you going back home?’ I ask.

  ‘I’m not. Not right away, anyway.’

  ‘What about work?’

  He scratches his fingernails through his beard, the sound is dry and unpleasant. ‘I resigned.’

  ‘Resigned? Have you lost your mind? What are you going to do for money?’

  ‘I’m still working for them until my notice period expires, then I’ll be employed by them on a consultancy basis. I’ll tidy up their big projects, help with pitches, etc. Any meetings can be done on video conference calls. I even sold the motorbike. I couldn’t bring it so I sold it. I’ve sublet the flat to Jorge and his girlfriend.’

  Slowly I ease myself up on to the seat diagonally opposite Seth. I rest my head against the window and stare into space. There is so much going on, but I keep thinking about Tyler. Every time I try to enjoy the memory of the way he smiled at me moments before we kissed, the expression of betrayal on his face before he left last night washes it away, and leaves huge chunks of guilt moored on the shores of my mind. He was so hurt, last night and today, and that was because of me. He didn’t deserve that. No one did, to be honest.

  ‘Have you been to see him?’ Seth asks.

  I nod without looking at him. I know what Seth does, though: he twists his lips together and nods. Right now, he’ll be overtly struggling with himself – his innate, caring response as my friend will be in pitched battle with his instinctive, jealous response as my husband. ‘Want to talk about it?’ His friend role has won.

  ‘Not with you, no.’ He is not my friend. No matter what we might pretend, after a decade of sex and love and exclusivity, and then marriage, he can’t go back to being ‘just’ my friend no matter how hard we’d both like him to be.

  ‘Can I stay?’ he asks, probably relieved that he doesn’t have to listen to me chat about someone else.

  ‘With me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The flat is full, where would you sleep?’

  ‘In your bed.’

  ‘My bed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You think that’s wise?’

  ‘No. Do you still love me, Smitty?’

  Of course I did. There was a hole in my life that was Seth-shaped. But he couldn’t step back into it. I knew I’d have to get used to living with that hole in my life because there was too much hurt for us to mend. ‘How is that a fair question?’

  ‘It’s not. But I don’t feel like being fair, not about this. And why should I be? If you can’t tell me if you still love me, don’t you at least miss me?’

  I sigh, avoid looking at him. ‘That’s not the point. And how is it supposed to work with Nancy around?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’ll just have to, I guess.’ He shrugs. ‘You know I can’t sleep without you. It’s been hell these past few months. Last night was the first night I’ve slept properly since you left.’

  ‘Seth—’

  ‘Don’t you miss me, Smitty?’ he interrupts.

  I know what he’s thinking: Smitty and he have only been on one date, it’s nothing serious, they haven’t had sex and, from the look on her face, he clearly isn’t keen to keep things going, which means I’ve still got a chance. All I have to do is stick around and she might be reminded of what we had, what we could have again.

  If I was him, I would be thinking the same, part of me is thinking the same. But I have to put a stop to this for both our sakes.

  ‘Yes, you can stay,’ I say. ‘I suppose if you’re around it’ll make it easier to sort out the divorce.’

  48

  Smitty

  Mum has been avoiding me these past five days since Seth arrived. She leaves early with Nancy to go shopping somewhere, and they return in time for Mum to put Sienna to bed. By the time she’s got Sienna down, I’ve left to go to my workshop. I do most of my work at night now that I’ve got more to avoid about being at home. Since Mum has spent the last few weeks almost stalking me, like she used to do when I was in my teens, listening at doors to try to overhear my phone calls and would most likely hack my email if she could, it’s been a bit odd to have so much space from her.

  I’m sure Mum figures that if she leaves it long enough I won’t say anything to her and I’ll eventually be grateful that she forced me to get back with him. She’s out of her mind, of course, if she thinks that’s going to happen but I don’t care. I’ve spent five of the best days with Lily and Sienna. We’ve been swimming in Worthing and they both encouraged and reassured each other about going down the huge water slide. We went to Lewes to visit the castle but the parking was so atrocious we came back and went to Drusillas animal park instead and managed to rush round before it was chucking out time. We’ve been to a play park that is crammed with dinosaur sculptures.

  Every day that I go to collect Lily with Sienna in Lottie, Abi looks concerned then relieved that I’ve kept to my word and shown up. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind doing this?’ she asks, and the answer is the same: ‘No, I don’t.’ I love spending time with the girls. They’re completely devoted to each other and every day act as if they have been friends since they were born.

  Today the forecast was for rainy showers, and I saw how exhausted they were. Super fun overload was tugging at their good natures and shortening their tempers. I decided on a sedate, calm day. We walked into the centre of Brighton and browsed all the bead shops we could find, we even went into a few stationers and newsagents, anywhere that sold beads and charms. Then we headed back to my shop. Last night before I left I had cleared a space in the centre of the shop, laid out two huge tartan-patterned blankets for us to sit and work on. We had a picnic, show tunes on the CD player and all the time in the word to string beads together.

  When I was first training to become a jeweller I remember thinking that beadwork wasn’t as skilful as the metalwork stuff. It seemed elementary and unsophisticated until I was assigned the task of making an affordable set of wedding jewellery including tiara, necklace, earrings and garter. My eyes were opened when I began to see the beads, how they fitted together, what they made when placed next to the correct colour or the correct texture. Each beaded piece had to be planned, laid out, arranged, thought about again, rearranged. By the time I had finished the assignment I had changed my mind about beadwork. Like most things, it was only as beautiful, intricate and perfect as you allowed it to be.

  Sometimes, in the evenings, when I need to tune out for a while, I will string beads for a necklace, or a belt, or to have a really long piece of string with beads.

  Lily and Sienna sit cross-legged on the picnic blankets, the tubs of beads in front of them. I have given them each a large velvet bead mat to lay out their designs, or rather to drop random beads on to when they scoop fistfuls out of the pots.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ Abi asked me yesterday.

  ‘I want to,’ I said. ‘I want to be a part of your family,’ I should have added. ‘Mum has her family now that Nancy is here, I want to be a part of mine. It’s also the right thing to do.’

  ‘Auntie Smitty?’ Lily has started to call me that too, mainly because Sienna calls me that and anything Sienna does is perfect. It works the other way, too: Sienna’s favourite colour was pink until she discovered Lily’s was gr
een and now she sits stringing green bead after green bead after green bead on her necklace.

  ‘Yes, Lily?’

  ‘Why did you decide to make jewels?’

  ‘I don’t actually remember,’ I tell her. ‘When I was a little girl I used to love to play with my mum’s jewellery. I would sit on the floor of her bedroom and put it all on. My dad would think it was hilarious then would tell me to put it back because my mum would get upset in case I broke it or lost something. Maybe that was why, because I wanted to make stuff I could play with.’

  Lily and Sienna have both paused in stringing their necklaces to listen to me. ‘I had to go to university first, though. My mum and dad would not have let me go straight off to make jewellery, I had to do something academic and I had to show my commitment to jewellery making by paying for it myself.’

  ‘What’s commitment?’ Sienna asks.

  ‘It means being all serious,’ Lily says.

  ‘But making jewels is fun.’

  ‘I know. I think Auntie Smitty was doing it wrong.’

  ‘What do you girls want to be when you grow up?’ I ask.

  ‘A hairdresser, princess and doctor,’ Lily says.

  ‘Me, too!’ exclaims Sienna. ‘Pinky-promise?’ She drops her string, Lily drops hers, and the pair of them leap on each other to hug and pinky-promise best friends forever that they’ll be hairdressers, princesses and doctors. From my place on the picnic mat I watch them hug and kick over their pots of beads, the communal pots of beads and the tray of findings, nylon strings and catches. They all ricochet off in different directions. I’m going to be finding these scattered things for years to come.

  I have my small black radio that sits on top of the shelves on quite loudly and I almost miss the knock on my shop door. It’s insistent but not Seth’s emergency knock. I lower the radio volume, listen again. Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat. I know the knock, but it couldn’t be. I check the time: 22.45 p.m. Not at this time.

  Cautiously so the person doesn’t see me if it’s not someone I would want to see, I peek out of the doorway that leads to the back of the shop and my workshop area. I can just make out the outline of the person who is knocking and it is the right height and shape. ‘I can see you, Clemency Smittson, you open this door right now!’ For some reason, the timbre of her voice isn’t at all muffled by the glass and distance. I swear, the military could use my mum’s voice as a weapon.

  Once in, she stands in the darkened shop area looking around. Assessing it, wondering if I own it or not. I don’t think I ever got around to telling her that I had a shop as well as the workshop.

  ‘How did you get here?’ I ask to distract her from the shop. She has spots of rain glinting on the shoulders and back of her black cardigan – no coat I notice – and on her black Bermuda shorts.

  She holds up her helmet. ‘I cycled, of course.’

  ‘Wearing that? Jeez, Mum, it’s raining and it’s dark and you have no reflective clothing on. You’re a living, breathing unsafe cycling awareness video waiting to happen.’

  ‘Do you have lights in this place?’ she asks.

  ‘Let’s go through to my workshop,’ I say.

  ‘You’ve been seeing those people behind my back,’ she accuses the second we move from the darkness of the shop into the bright light of my workshop. I stand with my back to her, staring at my bench. I’d been about to anneal a piece of silver to make into a ring. I’d set it up: the silver rectangle was in the tweezers-like clamp, I’d turned on the gas from the canister to the blow torch, lowered my daylight lamp so I could see when the metal colour started to glow pink as it reached the right temperature. I’d picked up my lighter to light the flame when I’d heard her knock.

  Carefully, I bend down and turn off the gas to the blowtorch, using the valve at the canister, then rise to my full height and raise the daylight lamp so my bench is bathed in artificial sunlight (necessary when you’re doing close work, a hindrance when you’re in the process of annealing).

  ‘Have you nothing to say for yourself?’ Mum asks.

  ‘Abi’s grandmother is in hospital, she needs to work so I’ve been taking Lily out.’

  ‘I only found out because young Sienna was talking on and on about Lily and how they were cousins because you’re their aunt. It’s bad enough you’ve been lying to me but to drag young Sienna into it … I’m surprised at you Clemency. Surprised and ashamed.’

  ‘I didn’t drag Sienna into anything. Nancy doesn’t want to look after her and I do. Lily and Sienna adore each other so I thought there’d be no harm.’

  ‘Well, there is harm, Clemency. When you lie to me there is harm.’

  ‘I didn’t lie to you, I just didn’t tell you.’

  ‘It’s the same thing and it’s still unacceptable.’

  That’s a bit rich coming from you, I think and the fury behind that thought illuminates my nerve endings like a direct lightning strike.

  ‘Why did you call Seth, Mum? Since we’re talking about keeping stuff from each other, I want to know why you called Seth.’

  ‘We’re not talking about that.’

  I face her at last. I haven’t looked at my mother in a while, I realise. Since Nancy has been here, I presume, she has had her hair styled – cut into a bob with honey-blonde streaks added, which complement the brown and grey bits really well. They’ve obviously been going for facials and the sea air has probably done her constitution a world of good because she seems to glow with health. Nancy has been good for my mother – after her bereavement, a good dose of Nancy is obviously what she needs.

  ‘We are talking about that. If you want to talk about the other thing we have to talk about this first. Why did you ring Seth? You were all for me calling the police on him the other week and suddenly you’re all buddy-buddy with him, giving him my address. Why?’

  ‘You had a long history together,’ she states. ‘I didn’t want to see that go to waste.’ As she speaks, Mum is clipping and unclipping the fastening of her cycle helmet. It punctuates her words with loud clicks.

  ‘Nothing to do with you seeing me flirt with Tyler and deciding you preferred Seth, I’m sure.’

  Mum is wilting under my scrutiny, my dogged determination to get her to admit it. She doesn’t like to be in that position of weakness so she visibly stands up to me. ‘I simply think it will be easier for you if you are with Seth,’ Mum says. An end to the matter as far as she’s concerned.

  ‘Easier in what way?’ I ask. I want her to admit it, to spell it out so she can hear how awful it sounds for me, the one who is on the receiving end of this type of thought process, even from her – my mother.

  ‘People will accept you.’

  ‘Do you mean the people who look like you will think I’m all right and safe to be around because I’ve got Seth with me?’

  Mum’s face tightens, the muscles seem to sew themselves together in quiet disapproval, even though that is exactly what she’s saying. ‘That is not what I meant.’

  ‘That’s what you said, though.’

  ‘You’re being wilfully difficult.’

  ‘That’s what you were saying, though, Mum. And what about black people, will they accept me because I’m with Seth instead of Tyler? Aren’t they people whose opinions should count if I’m taking comments on who I should be sleeping with? Shouldn’t I worry about what they think, too? And what about nice Mrs Khan from the Middle East, who lives upstairs? Or what about lovely Mr Suki who runs that Japanese restaurant in the Lanes? Should I worry about who they think I should be taking to my bed?’

  ‘Don’t be crude,’ she says.

  ‘Mum, don’t you see how ridiculous it is for me to care what other people think about who I’m with?’

  Another tightening of her facial muscles. ‘I’m other people, am I? That’s how you see me now you’ve been secretly seeing those people.’

  That’s not going to work at the moment. She won’t distract me by marking out my wrongdoings like lines in the sand. ‘I’m really
sorry to tell you this, Mum, but you’re racist.’

  I think for a minute she’s going to throw her cycle helmet at me. Bop me right in the face with it in response to what I have said. Instead, her upper lip curls back, exposing the pink of her gums and the grey-white of her ex-smoker’s teeth as she snarls: ‘How dare you! How dare you! How can I be racist?’

  ‘Really easily. It’s not like you do it on purpose, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.’

  ‘You dare!’ Her snarl continues until it has taken over her face.

  ‘I dare because you spent the whole of my childhood apologising for me. Who does that? Who can’t see how they are damaging their child by making their very existence something to be sorry for? Dad never did that.’

  ‘Your father was not perfect, Clemency. In your head he was this perfect being but he was not.’

  ‘I know he wasn’t. And he made mistakes, and he upset me, but he loved me no matter what. He didn’t say sorry to other people all the time because I wasn’t blood and he couldn’t pretend I was. You did.’

  ‘I am not racist. You take that back.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Take it back, Clemency.’

  ‘No, I won’t, actually. Not until you take it back.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘All of it, Mum. You take it all back and I’ll take back what I said. You acknowledge what you were like when I was growing up and I’ll take it back.’

  I don’t know where this has come from. Maybe I’ve reached my limit. Maybe it’s got to that point where the pressure is so much, so heavy, pressing down so relentlessly on my head, my shoulders, every part of my being, that I cannot be who I was any more. The old me, the one who had to be so appreciative and scared and unable to speak for fear of being branded ungrateful and told I should be happy that I even got the chance at life, has cracked. And the other me, the one who was submerged under the waves of gratitude and desperation to make everyone happy, is spurting out through the cracks.