That Girl From Nowhere (22 page)

It must be fun living in this house with two people vying for control all the time: my mother had ten minutes alone with me in the kitchen, now my grandmother needs to get her share, too. They’re probably like this the majority of the time, having refined the subtleties of the game over years and years of living together. I love my parents, I adore Seth’s parents, but the
thought
of living with them for pretty much all of my adult life would drive me more than slightly insane, let alone doing it.

My grandmother rests heavily on my arm, and her weight causes me to miss a step. We move slowly and carefully across the room, every piece of furniture an obstacle, every slightly unlevel piece of carpet a hazard. ‘See you later, Gran,’ Ivor says.

‘See you later, Gran,’ Abi and Lily echo. Will I be expected to do that? Call her ‘Gran’ when I leave her. Because that will not be happening. I still haven’t properly labelled her that in the privacy of my own mind, it’ll take even longer for whatever that label is to come out of my mouth.

Her room is the other living room in the house. She obviously can’t manage stairs, and after she has pointed me in the right direction, I edge along at her pace until we reach a white, six-panelled door. I’m expecting, I think, a room that is dark, dingy, that smells of inaction and age and confinement. I’m expecting flock wallpaper, heavy, closed drapes. Instead, the white, opaque blinds are open, and like the lounge the room is filled with light. The window is also open, and a breeze has been through the room, clearing away any hint of fustiness.

There is a large bed at the far end and along its side are metal rails like the ones you’d find in a hospital, obviously to stop her falling out. On the pillow is a leather-bound book, the words
Holy Bible
embossed in gold on the cover. Pushed up against the wall beside the bed is a large chest of drawers which is topped with dozens of square white boxes, and even more small amber medicine bottles, most with their white, printed labels facing out. There are two large, comfortable-looking easy chairs in the room, positioned near the window; between them is a bookcase filled with books with cracked spines.

‘There,’ she says. My grandmother points to the chair beside the window and nearest the bed. She lands heavily in her seat, rests back and stares at me again. She has been doing that a lot. My father hasn’t looked at me since he welcomed me ‘home’ and all she has done is look at me. I thought, at first, it was her seeking out any similarities, but it’s more than that. Maybe it’s that ‘real’ thing. Or maybe it isn’t. But there is definitely
some
thing.

‘Sit, sit,’ she says.

Cautiously I lower myself into the other seat. Something has changed: in the atmosphere of the room, in the dynamics between us. Maybe it’s because we’re alone, but I am suddenly on edge, nervous, unsure.

‘God has brought you back to me,’ she says. ‘He is wise and He is good. Just when I need Him, He has answered by bringing you back to me. You are … You are going to help me. I need you to help me,’ she says. ‘I was not sure what I wanted to do was the right thing until I saw that God has sent you back to me.’

I wish she would stop saying that. I believe in God in many ways, but the way she says it, uses it, makes me defensive. It makes me question whether I truly have a faith or if it is something I have because Mum and Dad took me to church every week. I like to keep my religion to myself, to say prayers when I need and want to, to take comfort in knowing that sometimes I can feel connected to something bigger than myself that is ‘out there’. Maybe God, maybe The Universe, maybe simply the sky that covers us all. Whatever it is I believe, I don’t force it on to others and I like it better, I like people better, when they don’t do it to me. Everyone can believe what they like, all the more so when they don’t push it on to me.

I press my lips together to stop myself speaking. To stop myself from saying that I’d rather she left Him out of it if she could.

She begins to shake, and shame blossoms in my chest. I’m being too hard on her. I take my comfort in a divine being when I need to, maybe she is the same. When you are ill, too, like she obviously is, you may need to take that comfort more constantly. I shouldn’t judge her for that.

‘You will help me, won’t you?’ she asks.

‘If I can,’ I reply. I wonder what she thinks someone she has just met will be able to help her do when she has a whole family down the hall in the living room who are at her beck and call. ‘What is it you want help with?’

This woman, my grandmother, who has only really been in my life for the past hour, fixes me with a gaze that is determined and a little frightening, woven through with strands of defiance. Maybe I was mistaken; maybe those outside this room aren’t as devoted and loving as I thought. Whatever it is that she wants to do is clearly something they’re unlikely to agree to. She says nothing for a time, and the longer she stares at me with her brown eyes, the colour dimmed by age, the more a feeling of dread meanders outwards from the pit of my stomach. I should not be sitting here having this conversation with this woman. I should have brought her back here and left her to it. The longer I sit here, the longer things are going to go wrong for me.

Eventually, so eventually I thought she was planning on remaining silent, she speaks. Cautiously, haltingly, she says: ‘My time has come. I am too old … too sick … too tired to carry on in this world.’ She pauses but her eyes continue to drill into me. ‘My time has come. I want … I want to leave this Earth. I need you to help me.’

There’s a ringing in my ears, in my head, and I know it’s because I’m imagining things, hallucinating, probably dreaming. And the ringing is my alarm clock trying to get me to wake up from this dream that has slid quietly and unknowingly into a nightmare. I need to wake up. I do not want to be speaking to someone who has asked me to …

‘Did you just ask me to help you to die?’ I ask. I’m not asleep. The ringing in my ears isn’t an alarm clock, it’s the sound of sheer disbelief as it moves through my body.

‘Yes.’

I wrinkle my face at her. This must be some kind of test. A test for what I don’t know, but it must be. Or some kind of joke, which is unfunny and has no punchline that would ever make it funny. Any minute now she’s going to laugh, she’s going to tell me not to take everything so seriously and that it was all just a joke. Not funny. But then, the things that some people find hilarious – hideous, mean-spirited, unpleasant stuff – have never appealed to me. ‘I think I’d better go,’ I say to her. I stand up. The longer I sit here and no ‘Only joking!’ is forthcoming, the more sick I feel.

‘You will help me,’ she says. This is not a question, a request from a virtual stranger, it is a prediction. She seems to know something I don’t.

‘I don’t think so,’ I say. I’m not used to being so direct and firm with someone older than me, it goes against the respect for elders that I’ve had instilled in me since I was tiny. This isn’t an ordinary situation, though. This needs to be knocked on the head right away.

‘You will, Clemency … This is the reason … why you met Abimbola … as you did … My family was not complete without you … Now it is. And it is … because you were brought back to help me.’ Her certainty, her conviction about what is going to happen, what I’m going to do, is enough to shake me. Not simply upset me, but make me question whether that is why all of this has happened in the way it has happened. Maybe this is what I’m meant to do. Maybe I am meant to help this woman die.

‘No,’ I say to her sternly. I’m saying it to myself as well, of course. Because it’s the most ridiculous idea that I would have been brought back into their lives for this. ‘No. I am not going to do it. So please stop asking. I’m going to go now. It was nice to meet you but now I’m going to go. Goodbye.’

‘I will see you again,’ she says. Another prediction wrapped up like a present in the folds of an unsubtle threat. ‘I will see you again. You will help me.’

To: Jonas Zebila

From: Abi Zebila

Subject: Update

Thursday 2 July 2015

Jonas, my brother,

They’ve just left – Clemency and her mother have been for a visit and it went well. I didn’t want to say anything until it’d actually happened – I half expected her to cancel at the last second, but she didn’t. Like I say, I think it went well.

She sent me a message almost straight away saying:

‘Thank you for arranging today. I feel so lucky to have you in my life. Clemency x’

So that’s something? She didn’t run away, although when everyone started crying I wouldn’t have blamed her. Yes, dear brother, you read that right, everyone started crying. Proper, full-on sobbing – even Daddy, even
Ivor
. It was a mess. If I was her, standing there watching a bunch of virtual strangers crying because I’d walked into a room, I would have run for it. Ironic, huh, that the one time I’d have expected her to hit the road, she stood there and took it.

She brought her adoptive mother with her. Clemency calls her ‘Mum’. She’s white, by the way. So was her adoptive father. It never occurred to me that either of them would be, let alone both of them. Her mum, I suppose I need to call her, is so nice, she brought a photo album. It was so strange, seeing all those pictures of Clemency growing up and looking exactly like me. She seemed happy in the photos – she was always smiling.

Gran asked Clem (I don’t think she’ll mind if I call her that) to help her to her room. She was gone for ages, and when Clem came back she definitely had the look of someone who’d been Gran’d. I don’t know what Gran said or did, but Clemency had that expression on her face that everyone has after spending time with Gran. I hope Gran didn’t put her off.

Everyone’s being really quiet now, it’s only Lily-Rose who’s talking at all and she wants to keep going through the photos. Mummy is clearing up and looking off into the distance like she’s reliving her life again or something, and Daddy has looked through the photos several times with Lily-Rose. Ivor’s gone out to wherever Ivor goes. He seems embarrassed that he cried, too, and also, I don’t know, angry isn’t the right word. He seems put out, maybe scared about what Clemency will mean for him and his position in the family. I really can’t think what else it would be.

Brother, it’s at times like this that I miss you. You were noticeably absent today. You would have loved Clemency, she would have loved you. Aren’t you just tempted to break the silence to find out about her? Not even a little?

Love you. Miss you.

Your sister,

Abi

xxxxxxx

I watched Mum try to control herself. She did a great job: she managed to control her face, her tears, her voice, but she couldn’t control her hands from shaking.

Their living room felt so small, so hot, so claustrophobic. I looked down at my hands and they were trembling. I was shaking, too.

‘It’ll be fine,
quine
, I promise you,’ Dad said. ‘I’m fine. I’ll be fine. We caught it early. We’ll all be fine.’

I nodded at Dad. He didn’t lie to me. Mum had no problem with it, she always did what she thought was best even if it meant twisting the facts to suit the reality she wanted to paint. But Dad? He never did that. Even if it was something he knew, I didn’t want to hear he would find the words to tell me the truth. He was telling me the truth right at that moment, but I also knew at any given moment that truth could become a lie.

Mum and I arrived home in the silence that we travelled back in. We barely acknowledged each other when we retreated to our separate rooms. There was nothing much to say, nothing we could dissect together because our experiences of the past few hours were so different, so disparate, I don’t think we’ll ever find any common ground over this.

Once I have closed the door behind me, I throw down my bag and head straight for the wardrobe nearest the window and remove the large butterfly box. Unceremoniously, I put the lid to one side then ferret through the box, crammed with the photos of my life, and remove all the pictures I have of Dad. I lay them on the chest of drawers which sits beside the wall where my photo wall is slowly taking shape. The photos I have just liberated from the box, which still have blobs of Blu-Tack on the back, need to go on the wall. I’m putting Dad back where he belongs, back where I can see him. I work feverishly but carefully, the need to have him visible again makes my fingers move at speed.

I can’t believe what that woman asked
, I keep thinking as I reinstate Dad.
How dare she? How DARE SHE!

My dad would have done anything to be here, he would have given anything to have stayed with us, with his family. I would have given anything to have him back, to spare him what he went through. The thought of anyone not feeling like that about life stirs up a tornado-like rage inside me. To have
that person
think I would be interested in being a part of anything that would shorten a life, something so precious, makes me so angry I can barely think without wanting to break something.

I should tell my other mother. I should tell my father. I should tell Abi. I should tell someone who will be able to stop her, talk sense into her. Let her know that she has options other than that.
They
know her, and even if they don’t get on with her all the time, none of them would want her to feel like that, to do that.

Dad is slowly returning to my wall. As I put him back up, I am seeing him as he was. Frowning at the train timetable when we were off on a day trip to Birmingham. Wearing my mortarboard at graduation. Dancing with Mum at the party after Sienna’s christening. Drinking a pint of Guinness at the Guinness factory in Dublin when we went there for his fiftieth birthday. Wearing his red and white Christmas jumper and yellow cracker hat. With his head in his car trying to fix it with no idea what he is doing. Sitting on the beds in my various rooms in my shared houses during my college years and always wearing the same frown because he can’t believe how much I am paying for a tiny room. Standing outside our old house in Lewes, holding my two-year-old hand, pointing at Mum who is taking the picture.