These are the things that Seth has been telling me. His fear is that I could go to prison, possibly for the rest of my life. We talk about it constantly, whispering about it behind closed doors, sometimes arguing because he doesn’t want me to do this, so much so he offered to do it instead. I can’t let him do that. She asked me, and I have seen just a small fraction of her suffering and I know she doesn’t want to be here any more.
I have to do it. I’ve said I will. And I will. There are three days left.
53
Abi
To: Jonas Zebila
From: Abi Zebila
Subject: Call me
Monday, 10 August 2015
There’s a sound I love most in the world, more than any other, and it’s the sound of my daughter laughing. It comes out of her in easy waves and spreads throughout the house. That’s always the best part of my day, when I let myself into the house and hear her giggling, loudly and freely.
J, I have something important to tell you and I don’t want to do it by email, but I tried your phone and you’ve changed your number. Call me. It’s important.
Abi
xxxxxxx
54
Smitty
I love seeing Abi.
It’s not simply because she is a younger version of me, and after years of not seeing someone who looks like me and often thinks like me, it’s amazing to have that. I like her. She is open and friendly, incredibly welcoming. I have not had many close female friends over the years because from an early age Nancy managed to instil in me a fear of getting too close to anyone, and women in particular, in case she disapproved and told them things that put them off me.
I’m overjoyed when I open the door to my shop after hearing a knock and Abi is standing there. Her face is solemn and her eyes are a scarlet red. Something has happened. She doesn’t have to tell me what, I know. Of course I know. There’s only one thing that would make her turn up here out of the blue with that look on her face.
I’m cold. Suddenly, unexpectedly, I am cold. I can’t feel my fingers, nor my toes, nor any of my limbs. It’s not usual to be aware of them, but I’m now conscious that I can’t feel them because I am so cold.
‘Come in,’ I say to her. I have to make a real effort to move my cold, numb body aside to let her in. I pull the shop door shut behind her, the little brass bell tings. I need to focus on making my hands do what I want them to do when I lock the door again.
That’s what it was like for my grandmother: she had to focus, use incredible strength to do the tiniest things because her body did not always obey the usual commands. Her body did not listen when it was meant to carry out the simplest of tasks. That is why she wanted to go. Her body and soon her mind would not be under her control and she wanted it to be over before that happened totally. She wanted one last chance to assert control. This is only a small moment for me, but it is a reminder of what every-day tasks were like for her. Of why she thought it would be too hard to find out how bad it would really get.
Abi stands near the entrance to my shop. She clutches her black leather satchel to her chest like a child’s comfort blanket while her fingers pick at the stitching.
‘Do you want to come through to my workshop?’ I ask. I am trying to delay the inevitable. When she tells me it’ll be true and I do not want it to be true.
‘I had to tell you myself. I couldn’t call or text,’ she says after a head shake at my offer of more comfortable surroundings. ‘It’s Gran.’
I face her properly, ready to accept the news I already know head on.
‘She …’ Abi closes her eyes and steels herself. This has never happened to her before – at least not in a way where she was old enough to understand. The pain, it comes and goes, undercut with moments of denial and disbelief. The disbelief, it blossoms suddenly and winds itself around your heart like a protective shield that allows you to relax and forget for a few precious minutes before it cracks apart and falls away and leaves you with the pain and reality. ‘She … She …’
‘She died?’ I say.
My sister nods then crumples. Without thinking I gather her in my arms. ‘Oh, Abi,’ I say into her hair. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’
My grandmother didn’t think this bit through. Why would she when it was her life, her death, that she wanted to control? That was her focus, that was her goal. She wanted her life back under her control when that control, that ultimate feeling of being in charge, had been slowly eroded by the various illnesses that had taken over her body. What she wanted was paramount – this bit, the part afterwards for the people left behind, hadn’t really featured.
She was ready to go, but were the people who loved her, the ones who wanted to get to know her, ready to say goodbye?
55
Abi
To: Jonas Zebila
From: Abi Zebila
Subject: Your brother!!!!!
Friday, 14 August 2015
Jonas,
Ivor is pissing me off. After weeks of pretending she doesn’t exist, he’s back on his obsession about Clemency but it’s so much worse than before and now he does it front of Mummy and Daddy. Thankfully, he doesn’t do it in front of Lily-Rose. If he did, I think I’d take his head off.
‘It’s her, she killed Gran. It’s got to be. Gran was all right till she showed up.’ He says that about a million times a day. All right, not a million but you get what I mean. He just won’t let it go. Mummy is having none of it. She keeps telling him to stop being so wicked and to stop saying things that aren’t true and couldn’t possibly be true. Will he listen? No.
Daddy’s not talking much. He mostly listens to Ivor as though he can’t really hear what he’s saying. For all his not liking cuddles, whenever Lily goes to him, climbs on his lap and puts her arms around him and her head on his chest because he looks so sad, he doesn’t go all rigid and uncomfortable like usual. Now he just lets her sit there and I think it’s comforting to him.
I wish Ivor would stop. Yesterday, he’d been going on and on once Lily was in bed, about how Clemency had a lot to be angry about and ‘this is the way she starts to get revenge on the people who were there at the time. I’m telling you, Abi, she did it. Or she made Gran do it.’
‘Oh, right, yeah,’ I said. ‘Since when has anyone ever made Gran do anything, ever?’
‘She was ill. Illness does all sorts to people. It messes with their minds, changes who they are. She was old and she was ill and this so-called sister of yours got to her.’
‘Right, when we’ve always been around? How did she get into our house if we’ve been around all the time?’
He thought about that one, then he said, ‘It’s really easy to steal someone’s key, get a new one cut and then put it back before they’ve even noticed. How many times has she been in the corridor, huh? All alone, all the keys to the house right there hanging up in the key cupboard. Does anyone ever lock it and put the key to it somewhere safe? Nope.’
I felt really bad cos he had a point. But still. ‘She didn’t do that. She’s not that sort of person. I’ve got to know her really well. She wouldn’t do that.’
‘You only know what she wants you to know. I’m telling you, she did this. And she’s not going to get away with it – I’m going to make sure of that by going to the police.’
What do you think? From everything I’ve told you about Clemency, our sister, do you think she could have done something to Gran, or worked on her to get Gran to do it herself? Gran was too ill, though. Most times Mummy or I had to feed her because her hand shook too much to hold the spoon or fork. She couldn’t have done it herself. At least that’s what the police are saying now. The way she died, with her Parkinson’s, she must have had help. Was it Clem? What do you think? Let me know. Talk to you soon.
Abi
xxx
P.S. Are you going to come back for the funeral or are you going to stay away?
56
Smitty
It’s been six days
and there’s been no news about the funeral.
Apparently, Abi says, they have to do an autopsy because, even after the seriousness of her last hospital stay, our grandmother shouldn’t have gone so soon. They may start to treat her death as suspicious. I wasn’t expecting her to die so soon, either.
I’ve been cut off by the rest of my birth family. It was always going to happen if they ever found out what I had agreed to do, but it’s happened anyway. ‘Thank you for the call,’ my other mother said on the phone when I asked if I could visit, ‘but that is not necessary.’
‘I just want to see you,’ I said. ‘I know there’s not much I can do but it’d be nice to see you.’ To hug you. To be with you like families are at times like this. I’d wanted nothing more than to have Seth hold me after Dad died. I’d wanted to do the same with Mum but she didn’t want to be touched and she didn’t sit still long enough for me to get near. It never occurred to Mum, of course, that I needed her to take his place as the parent who hugged.
‘No, that’s not necessary.’
‘I know it’s not necessary, but it’d be nice to see you all. See you.’
‘You do not want to be around here,’ my other mother said, quietly, gently, but with finality. ‘This house is full of sadness. You do not want to be here. When we meet, Clemency, it should be about happiness, enjoying each other’s company. Not sitting around crying and talking in hushed voices. We need to be happy together.’
‘No, we don’t,’ I wanted to say. ‘We just need to be real with each other. And that means sharing the good and bad bits.’ ‘OK,’ I replied instead.
Mum sent a card and flowers, I think she put my name on it but I didn’t ask so I don’t know for sure. It’s like when my grandmother was in hospital, but worse. I don’t even have the right to think about her and miss her or anything because although I’ll never speak to her again, I didn’t know her long enough to feel her absence from my life.
‘How are you?’ Seth asks. He enters the room and shuts the door behind him to give us a bit of privacy from my eaves dropping mother.
He has been working in the kitchen while Mum reads in her room. Nancy is off into Brighton with Sienna to see a friend, and I sit on the sofa alternating between staring at the television and staring at my phone. I should be working, but since it happened I haven’t been able to. Everything seems too much right now for me. Melissa, who I’m turning a locket into a watch for has been in touch twice asking if I fancied a drink or if I had received my adoption papers. I haven’t called her back and I haven’t applied for my papers – it didn’t seem important any more with everything that’s going on and I couldn’t face going anywhere.
‘I don’t know,’ I admit to my husband. ‘I don’t know how I feel.’
He smiles sadly. ‘I can’t pretend to understand what you’re going through, but I am here if you need me.’
‘Don’t you find it weird being around me when we’re not together?’ I ask him.
Seth sits back on his haunches and observes me coolly, as though I’ve slapped him across the face and is wondering the best way to respond. ‘No, not really. I was around you for years when we weren’t together.’
‘But this is different, surely?’
My husband, my ex, examines me carefully for long, contemplative seconds. ‘Are you trying to start a fight?’ he asks. ‘I’d understand if you were. And I will happily oblige because there are loads of things I’d love to row with you about, but I just need to be sure where this is headed before I come out all guns blazing.’
Mollified, chastised, I look down. After pulling himself up, he sits beside me on the sofa. Without waiting for an invitation, he reaches out and tugs me towards him until I’m sitting on his lap. He wraps his arm around my waist then reaches up to wind one of my curls around his forefinger. ‘This must be so hard for you.’
I shrug, which of course means yes. Hard doesn’t seem the right word, a big enough word, really. It needs a word that has all the letters in the alphabet – every single one – so that it can show how all-encompassing this feeling can be.
‘I’m sorry for trying to pick a fight with you,’ I say to him. ‘It wasn’t very fair of me when you’ve been nothing but supportive.’
‘Apology accepted,’ Seth replies. We glide easily into a moment. A snippet of time where it’s easy to forget all that water that still has to flow under our particular bridge. Where we could be together and remember the good times. How easy would that be? No divorce, no separate lives, talking, having sex, laughing, back to who we were. Maybe Tyler was just an aberration, a momentary thing I needed to get out of my system; maybe Nancy was the friend Seth thought he needed when I wasn’t around to be there for him. Maybe I’m deluding myself.
‘I know you don’t want to hear this,’ he begins, the words as ominous as his tone.
‘Don’t say it then. If I don’t want to hear it, please don’t say it.’
‘I love you.’ He releases my curl. ‘It’s incredibly difficult being around you when we’re not together, not least because I know you’re sort of dating someone else and I hate the idea of that, but I love you.’
‘I … I’m not dating Tyler,’ I say. ‘We had a date, which you showed up on, and then I bumped into him the other day and I ended up leaving to come and talk to you about the stuff with my grandmother. I haven’t seen or heard from him since.’
‘Clemency!’ my mother says sharply. As always, when she interrupts us, we react like teenagers caught about to undress each other in my parents’ house. I leap off Seth’s lap, stand guiltily staring at the now open door, and he is up and halfway across the room, lurking in the bay window in record time. ‘We never touched each other, honest,’ are the expressions we always wear for my mother.
Her eyes glint with disapproval as she glares at me and then at Seth. Or maybe it’s not disapproval, maybe it’s anxiety. Worry and concern brought about by the presence of the uniformed police officer who stands behind her. His uniform is dark, and he appears so large he seems to block out any light from the corridor.
I used to watch The Bill, I used to watch NYPD Blue, I still watch re-runs of Law & Order. In all that time I don’t think it’s ever crossed my mind that a police officer would one day show up at my house to arrest me. Because that must be what he’s here for. There are some things you just know and that is what I know: he’s here to arrest me in connection with my grandmother’s death.
When the policeman has entered the room, a second officer appears. He is not uniformed, he is wearing a navy blue suit with a matching blue tie and a beige rainmac. He clearly thinks he’s Columbo. A cop show Dad regularly watched. ‘Clemency Smittson?’ he asks.
I nod.
‘We would like you to come down to the station and answer some questions in relation to the murder of Soloné Zebila.’
My no-longer-watched phone, which was knocked into the folds of the sofa cushion when Seth pulled me on to his lap, lights up suddenly. The ringtone – ‘Come As You Are’ – trills through the room. Abi’s ringtone. She must know. She must be trying to warn me.
Too late, I think. Just too late.
57
Smitty
I didn’t do it. I was going to, but I did not. There are two very good reasons why it wasn’t me: first it happened two days earlier than planned; second, I didn’t do it.
I should say this. Explain so they stop this process of bringing me in for questioning, which feels a very small, pigeon-type step away from being arrested.
‘No!’ says Mum loudly. In two steps she is by my side, and her hand clamps on the arm of the uniformed police officer. ‘She didn’t do it,’ she says. ‘It was me. It was me. I did it. Not her.’ The plain-clothes officer stares at the lady with the honey-blonde streaks in her greying hair, who is about to start wrestling with a man twice her height and probably five times her strength. ‘It was me. I did it.’
The uniformed officer plucks my mother off himself like she is an annoyin
g but insignificant insect, and places her a little distance away.
When I was a child I had nightmares that someone was going to come and take me away. I wasn’t ‘real’, I didn’t belong here, maybe I would be taken somewhere else. Sometimes it was the police, sometimes it was a big faceless monster that lived in the bright, blinding spaces that made up my pain. Sometimes it was my ‘real’ parents; people I didn’t know who wanted to steal me away from the only life I’d ever known and force me to live in a strange place, away from the people I loved. In these dreams, when this would be happening, my mother would be shouting and screaming that they couldn’t take me, that I was hers and they should take her instead.
This is my nightmare: I’m being taken away and my mother is screaming.
‘Mum, please don’t.’ That stops the uniformed officer: he looks at me, looks at Mum and then looks at me again. The other officer obviously knows the score since he doesn’t react at all. ‘Mum, just don’t.’
‘But it was me,’ she says. ‘I did it. Arrest me, it was me who did it.’
This is my mother’s nightmare, too. The thing she has feared more than anything is happening: someone is taking me away from her. It isn’t my original parents as she probably always thought it would be, but the police.
‘Nobody is under arrest,’ the plain-clothes officer states. ‘It’s merely questioning.’
‘Please.’ She turns to him, hands linked together, begging, pleading. ‘Please, please. I did it. I know exactly how it was done and when. It was me, please. Take me.’
‘We have your daughter’s fingerprints on the murder weapon and other parts of the room where they shouldn’t have been. There are no others that haven’t been accounted for.’
That Girl From Nowhere Page 33