The Truth and Lies of Ella Black

by Emily Barr

  That is irritating. I want to find my birth mother and I’m not interested in this woman who has … I click on one of the results to see what she has done.

  ‘I’m going to close up in a minute.’ Alex is standing beside me. ‘But you’re welcome to borrow my MacBook tomorrow, like I said.’

  ‘Sure. Thanks. I’ll just be a second.’

  ‘Ten minutes?’

  ‘Great.’

  The news story has loaded and I look at it out of curiosity. This woman is called Amanda Hinchcliffe, and she has just been released from prison. That sounds familiar: I’ve heard her name before. I discover that she has been in prison for being an accessory to murder: she found young women in the street and took them back to her boyfriend’s flat, where he tortured and killed them, long ago.

  She has been in prison since 2000. There are no photos of her now, but there are several of her when she was arrested.

  I look at them all, just in case.

  I look at them.

  I look at her.

  I look at her stomach.

  She was pregnant.

  She

  was

  pregnant.

  She was arrested in October 1999, and she was pregnant.

  My ears are ringing.

  My vision is closing in. I thought I was Bella already, but more Bella is coming in.

  I stare at the screen.

  I am looking for the words.

  Finally I see them.

  Her baby, they say.

  Her baby was taken into care.

  Into care.

  The baby was born.

  It was taken into care.

  It doesn’t say if it was a boy or a girl baby. It just says that it was taken away from her.

  I heard her name on the car radio. It comes back to me in a flash. Driving away from school. The news. Amanda Hinchcliffe released. My mother jabbing the button, stopping the words.

  It’s not easy to adopt a baby. I have no idea how many babies were born in November 1999 and taken away for adoption, but I know that not many of them would have been taken from mothers with the last name Hinchcliffe, at that exact time.

  There is an old photo of her boyfriend, the murderer. His name is William Carr. I hadn’t thought about my birth father at all, and I don’t want to. I push the man away. I see his picture out of the corner of my eye and I don’t want to focus on it. I can’t look at it. I know why not: it’s because even out of the corner of my eye I can see one thing about it, and it is a thing I do not want to see. I want to hide. I want none of this to have ever happened. I can’t handle it.

  I’LL TAKE OVER.

  We can’t do anything. It already happened.

  WE CAN ALWAYS DO SOMETHING. I KNEW IT. I KNEW WE CAME FROM BADNESS.

  I suppose I knew it too.

  NOW WE CAN BE BAD. NOTHING MATTERS NOW.

  The world has faded away. I am not in it. I can’t tell what I can’t see, because I’m sitting in the dark anyway. I struggle for a while and then I succumb.

  THIS IS WHAT I KNEW ALL ALONG.

  IT IS WHAT I AM.

  IT IS WHAT I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN.

  I KNEW IT.

  I

  KNEW

  IT.

  I am Bella. I am my Hinchcliffe self. I read the news report, every word of it, and I look at the man who murdered five women eighteen years ago, and who would have killed more if he hadn’t been caught.

  The man in that photograph is young. It’s a mug shot. He looks at the camera, and he looks sideways.

  The man has my cheekbones. He has my mouth. He has my original fair hair and I think he has my eyes.

  I am their daughter.

  I am a demon.

  It’s nearly dark and I am on the beach, sitting on the sand staring out to sea. I don’t know what has happened. I don’t know how I got here. I pick up a little stone and throw it into the water. This is the time when the sun has gone but its light is lingering.

  I want to walk into the water and keep going. That would be the best thing. It would be so easy. I could just walk. The water is brown and nasty and it would come into my mouth and nose and stop me breathing.

  She should have had an abortion. I have been going for eighteen years too long already.

  I thought I wanted to find my birth mother.

  I had her last name and I found her easily. I didn’t have to wait until my birthday because she is famous. My parents are infamous.

  I cannot meet my real mother.

  I cannot meet my real father.

  I could go back to my old life and face whatever’s waiting for me in Rio. I could pretend I never found out any of this and go back to being Ella Black and be grateful for it. For a moment I picture myself doing that. I could go back to school, do my university application and take my A levels. I could grab hold of the stupid orange lifebelt and let myself be pulled back on to the boat and pretend I never fell off.

  That is impossible.

  The Blacks know who I really am and I never want to look them in the eye again. I cannot pretend I don’t know, and I cannot pretend to be the baby they never managed to have. No one else can ever know where I came from. Yesterday I thought I could tell Christian everything, but I cannot tell him this. I am absolutely on my own. This was the Blacks’ shameful secret, and now it is mine. I know they tried to tell me I was adopted, but I also know they would never have told me who my biological parents were. No wonder they backed down gratefully when I refused to hear the truth.

  I feel a twinge of sympathy for them. Their lies were better than the truth. They did a good thing; it’s impossible to argue with that. They did a good thing, but I can’t go home to them.

  I need to go back online and see the details of the crimes. I was clearly conceived right in the middle of it, and I can’t even say that William Carr might not be my dad because you only have to look at him to see that he is.

  This, finally, is real. I am Ella Hinchcliffe-Carr, child of murderers, and my dark side, my demonic Bella, is my truth. Bella Carr. That would be my birth name.

  I lean back against a tree and close my eyes.

  I had only vaguely heard of Amanda Hinchcliffe and William Carr. I can summon it up in little flashes of newspaper coverage: a sidebar of other famous serial killers when something happens; a link on the internet; a mention here or there. But that’s all. I suppose the Blacks must have shielded me from it, and I try to revisit my childhood to see them distracting me with cookies and kittens when anything came on the news. I suppose that, if something is in the news when you’re a baby, it’s faded from the headlines by the time you’re old enough to notice it.

  My school knows who I am.

  I see that in a flash. Not all the teachers, but Mrs Austen knew. I remember her tearing a piece of paper to shreds as she told me that I had to go with my parents whether I wanted to or not. She knew who I was all along.

  It must have been strange for her.

  She knew, and maybe some other teachers did too, but I don’t think the students had any more idea than I did. They’d better not have. The idea of my friends knowing that about me makes me shudder.

  I made most of the teachers like me by ruthlessly controlling my bad side and pretending to be quiet and nice (if you pretend to be something it’s almost the same as being it), but at my heart I am bad. I have always known that. Now I know that I was made from badness and born into badness. I have bad genes, and no amount of education, healthy food and ballet lessons was ever going to make me good. I tried to be nice, but more and more I had to fight against my real self to do it.

  Fiona and Graham Black are, on the face of it, the nicest people in the world. They are never mean to anyone. Those new parents gave me everything I ever needed or wanted or asked for, and yet I still smashed a bird to pieces with a hammer and slashed a stranger across the face with a broken bottle; and that is easily explained by the fact that I am the product of a famous criminal partnership. We are up there, us Hinc
hcliffe/Carrs, with Hindley and Brady and the Wests. You don’t mess with us.

  I cannot live with this. I stand up, stretch and walk to the edge of the sea. No one is around. It’s nearly dark. I can hear the sound of drumming from a house nearby. I step into the water. I don’t have a bike with me so I suppose I must have walked here. I cannot remember a thing between surrendering myself to a gleeful Bella and finding that I was sitting on the beach. I know why I came here. I know what I have to do.

  I walk out in a straight line, up to my knees. I’m wearing the same little shorts so I can get thigh deep before they get wet. I pause with the water just below them. I can walk on, keep walking, and die, and they will find my body easily because this water doesn’t seem to be the sort that moves around.

  I want to. I desperately want to. I want to walk out and find a lovely blankness. Everything would go away. All of it. I have the power to extinguish myself.

  But

  I can’t.

  I want to but I can’t.

  I

  want

  to

  but

  I

  can’t.

  My feet won’t take the steps. My body is refusing to choose to die. Bella is screaming at me to turn round and walk back to the world. I can’t push myself under the water: if I did that I wouldn’t be able to breathe, and I need to be able to breathe even though I don’t want to be alive any more. I can’t get past that.

  I can’t conquer my need to breathe.

  I can’t die. I don’t seem to be strong enough to take those last few steps.

  I’ve failed at dying.

  I knew this would happen. The one time I tried to harm myself in my old life, I took a craft knife into the loos at school and tried to get rid of the demon like that. I’d read about self-harm and I thought it might be the best way for me to deal with Bella without hurting anyone else, even though the idea made me feel so sick I couldn’t stand up and had to slump against the partition wall. I put the blade against my arm and waited.

  I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t override my instincts. That’s why I just have two silvery lines on my left arm that no one sees. That was all I could manage. I couldn’t do it then and I can’t do it now.

  I turn and walk slowly out of the water. I am a different person, just the way I wished in that other lifetime. If only I’d had the faintest idea. I seem to have decided to live, but I can’t stay here. I can’t tell anyone who I am. I need to start again. I need to leave everything behind – every single thing – and find a new life.

  I pick up my bag and walk back to the hostel. I can’t see Christian tomorrow. I need to get away.

  I see from Ana-Paula’s face that something has happened to make her worry about me. I don’t know how much time passed between my seeing the face on the screen and finding I was on the beach. I might have smashed up the whole town, striding through it like Godzilla. I have no idea.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she says in careful English.

  I nod, even though it’s a lie. She talks in Portuguese, and I don’t understand a word so we can’t communicate, and that’s all right by me. However, she is not giving up. She takes a pencil and a piece of paper, sits at the table in her warm kitchen and draws a picture of a girl who looks enough like me, with tears on her face. She adds a laptop and some primitive bikes. As she draws she talks, adding arrows to show me leaving the bike shop in tears and running away.

  She mimes flinging the laptop on the floor.

  She draws a boy like Harry Potter, his mouth open in shock.

  I try not to cry, but I know I’ve failed when she puts an arm round me and hugs me tight. She smells of coconuts. Her huge baby bump is pressed up against me and I feel the baby squirming around.

  That makes it worse.

  8

  30 Days

  I sit up all night thinking. I spend an hour reading about my real parents on my phone, watching the battery dip. Then I tiptoe into Ana-Paula’s kitchen and write her a note saying: Sorry I had to leave. THANK YOU. I put it on the table with some money.

  I write a much more difficult note too. It says:

  Dear Christian,

  I love you. I fell in love with you completely. I love you with all my heart. I know I’ve only known you a few days but I feel I know you better than I’ve ever known anyone, ever, and I love you.

  I’m sorry I can’t stop saying that.

  I’m sorry I’m not here.

  I’m sorry.

  This is nothing to do with you and everything to do with me.

  I’ll always love you. Thank you for everything. I can’t stay.

  Ella xxxxxxx

  I fold it in quarters and write CHRISTIAN on the outside. I don’t even know his last name. I hope that it will get to him.

  According to the timetable the first ferry leaves at half past five. Quite a few other people are waiting for it, but I avoid their eyes and wrap myself in a cloak of misery. I hope I can get away before Christian arrives. I need him to keep the best Ella in his head, the one he loved. That me – the one who was between Ella Black and Bella Hinchcliffe-Carr – only existed for a few days.

  She was the one with possibilities.

  The engine starts and the ferry moves off with a jolt. I stare out of the window. This boat is much emptier than the one I arrived on two days ago. I lean my forehead against the glass and watch the island disappear in the dawn.

  I know now what my parents were doing for the year before I was born. Amanda, my mother, would go to a carefully selected public place and cry. When a kind woman stopped to ask whether she was all right she would say yes, but ask the woman to walk her home, just round the corner. She would lead her directly to the flat in which Billy, my father, was waiting. He would keep her there for days, doing things that I have forced myself to read about and will never erase from my brain, and then, at night, he and Amanda would go and throw the body in the canal, because of course I’m not from a privileged little town in Kent, but from a city far away from there that has canals running through it.

  They got away with it for a long time because Amanda chose a place without CCTV and without witnesses, a short walk from their home. The women would be reported missing, but nobody linked them to Amanda and Billy because they had no connection.

  Until, one day, they did. One of their victims was less of a loner than the others; her family made a huge and immediate noise when she went missing, and there was a sighting of her walking with a young woman. When the police dredged the canal they found not just the body they were looking for but the other ones too. Everything unravelled, and in the middle of the unravelling I was born.

  Amanda was eighteen and heavily pregnant when she was arrested. The newspaper reports barely mentioned the fact that the baby (name and sex never given) was removed as soon as it was born and taken into care. That is where my public story ends.

  I was in care. I was adopted by people who couldn’t have their own baby and were reduced to rescuing one from murderers, and I was named Ella Black and brought up for seventeen years thinking this was who I was.

  My adoptive dad claims they tried to tell me I was adopted. They clearly didn’t try very hard, or I would have known. I can see why they decided not to tell me though. I wouldn’t have told me if I was them. All they did was the best they could.

  I was ‘given a new identity’, it says, in one of the brief mentions of my existence. Ella Black: a new identity. I have a new identity, like Jason Bourne. I was brought up oblivious to the fact that there was a fundamental truth about me that they never told me, like Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker.

  I have enlarged the photos of Amanda Hinchcliffe pregnant at her trial until they are as big as I can get them, and I stare and stare at them and I know that this was where I began. I imagine a creature growing under the fabric of her baggy sweater, inside the waistband of her stretched leggings. I grew inside her, and before I was big enough to breathe she was caught tricking kind passers-by into coming
home with her to be tortured and murdered.

  I stare at her face. She was only a tiny bit older then than I am now. She has a nose like mine. It is a completely ordinary nose, but it’s the same as my ordinary nose. Perhaps all noses are the same shape, but my nose, like hers, is neither big nor small. It doesn’t turn up at the end. It has no lumps or bumps in it.

  I study her eyes. I would like a mirror to check, but I think there’s something about our chins that is the same. Her hair, in these pictures, is thick and dark, and no amount of looking at it can change that. Mine is straight and fine and currently purple, but otherwise blondish.

  I want to look like her because I don’t want to look like him.

  This phone is almost out of battery. It has my old life on it. It has my friends from school and my enemies from school, and all my photos and texts and emails. In its search history it has the truth about my birth. I was going to throw it into the sea, but I can’t do it because the entire truth of Ella Black is on it.

  The boat arrives in Rio, and everything is quiet. There is no sign of Christian: of course he wouldn’t be coming back to the island at half past six in the morning. I step into the pale sunlight and smile as my ears start to ring and my vision blurs. I welcome it.

  I’VE GOT THIS.

  Thanks.

  I walk across the square in the cool sunshine and I feel my strength surging as I go. The old me drowned in the sea last night. This me has feet that barely touch the ground. This me has nothing to be afraid of because nothing can touch her.

  NOTHING

  CAN

  TOUCH

  ME.

  BRING

  IT

  ON.

  I’VE GOT THIS.

  I am Bella through and through, and I am strong. I feel the violence beneath the surface, and I know that I could do anything to anyone now. I’m not sorry about the man’s face any more. I’m not sorry about anything. I miss Christian with a terrible nagging ache, but I know I can’t see him again because he is too good for me. I am walking away from the love of my life because I have to, because he loves Ella and I am Bella.

  I flag down a yellow taxi, and the driver starts driving before I say where I want to go, and then I say the only word I can think of that will lead me to a place where Christian and the Blacks will not think to look for me.