That Girl From Nowhere (44 page)

‘No one else in the family mentioned this happening. Who else was there at the time to verify your version of events?’

The detective has open pores on his nose. I’m not sure what that says about him apart from the fact that his nose looks like the crater-covered surface of the moon, but it’s a piece of information that lodges itself into my brain. I’m trying to work out how to tell the truth without sounding like I am guilty.

‘No one,’ I eventually say.

‘You were alone in the house with Mrs Zebila at the time that you say you picked up her medication?’

‘Yes.’

‘How many other times were you alone in the house with her?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Can you estimate? More than two, less than twenty, say?’

‘About ten,’ I state. I feel the man beside me grow still. He does not know this, no one does.

‘Was it during one of these ten or more times you were alone in the Zebila house with the victim that your fingerprints came to be on her jewellery?’

‘I looked through her jewellery a few times, yes.’

‘It’s an impressive collection, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘How much do you think her collection is worth?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You’re a jewellery expert, you must have worked with thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of items over the years. Can’t you even estimate?’

‘No, I don’t do valuations. It’s a very specialised skill.’

‘Well, if you can’t estimate, which I’m surprised by given the length of time you have worked with jewellery, I’ll tell you. It is upwards of two hundred thousand pounds. Could be closer to half a million. Does that surprise you?’

‘Yes. She just had it in a box in the bottom drawer. I looked at it and sorted it out but I didn’t realise it was worth so much.’

‘Really? I find that hard to believe when you’re such an experienced jeweller.’

‘It’s true,’ I insist. Who knew my obsession with looking at pretty jewellery and hearing stories about people would result in this line of questioning?

‘Just out of interest, did you have a key to the Zebila house?’

The police rarely ask a question they don’t know the answer to. I learnt that from watching all those cop shows. They know I have a key, or they suspect I have one and they want me to confirm their suspicions. Do I brazen it out or tell the truth?

The man next to me now looks in my direction, disturbed that I haven’t answered already and that he didn’t know I was alone in the house with his mother several times. That I went through her very expensive jewellery collection.

‘Yes,’ I say. And my father’s entire body swings towards me.

‘How did you come by this key?’

‘My grandmother, Mrs Zebila, gave it to me.’

The policeman visually logs the reaction of the man next to me.

‘Why would the victim do that?’

‘Because she wanted me to have it? Because she thought it might make me feel part of the family?’
Because it would make slipping in and doing what she wanted easier. And what she wanted was for me to kill her.

‘But neither of you mentioned it to any other member of the family, is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you kill your grandmother?’

‘No.’

‘Did you feel like killing her when you found out that it was her who called Social Services to have you put up for adoption before you were born and pressurised both of your parents to give you away?’

‘No, because I didn’t know she did that.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, I’m sure. My birth mother hinted at it, but I didn’t know my grandmother called Social Services or that she put pressure on my parents.’ My father should probably be bowing his head in shame but he isn’t. He is still staring at me, stuck back at the revelation that I have access to his house whenever I want.

‘Did you put pressure on your grandmother to end her life?’

‘No.’

‘Did you make her believe that she would be better off dead as payback for what she did to you?’

‘No.’

‘Did you think that after you killed her you could let yourself into the house and help yourself to her jewellery whenever the mood took you?’

‘No.’

‘Did you want her dead?’

‘No.’

‘We have evidence that since you came into their lives, Mrs Zebila started to express thoughts of suicide and ending her life early. Do you know anything about that?’

Over the years I have collected old-fashioned tools to help me craft my metalwork jewellery and one of my favourite things is an old steel screwdriver. It looks like a wooden-handled whisk with a turning handle at the side. Where the whisk blades would be, there is a gap where you insert the different screw bits. The first ring I ever used it to make, I secured thick pieces of silver and copper wire into my metal clamp then fed the ends into the open end of the screwdriver. I turned the wheel handle, wound it slowly but consistently, twisting the wire into something new, unrecognisable from what I started with. This police officer is like that steel screwdriver with the metal strands of the truth – he is twisting what nearly happened between my grandmother and me into something new and shiny and unrecognisable; a version that will make me look guilty.

‘Do you know anything about Mrs Zebila’s sudden thoughts of suicide?’ the officer asks again, showing me the twisted, reshaped strands of truth.

‘Not in the way you mean,’ I reply.
Not in the way you’ve twisted things.
‘She told me she was tired and old and ill and that she wanted to die.’

Another visceral, shocked reaction from my father. Him staying with me was a spectacularly bad idea. It seemed wonderful before, that my father was willing to publicly acknowledge me, that it was a chance for us to bond. Now he is finding out things he shouldn’t know, in ways he shouldn’t have to.

‘You were more than willing to help her out, I take it?’

‘No. I told her to talk to her doctor or nurse. I thought if she talked to them, they’d make her see her condition wasn’t as bleak as she thought. They’d give her hope and comfort, show her that with the right medication she could live a comfortable life for her remaining years.’

‘She did talk to her doctor and nurse, as it turns out,’ the policeman says, ‘but had a different take on what you’ve just said. She told them both that she was thinking of ending things and that someone had come into her life who had not only made her feel it was possible, but had eagerly agreed to help her.’
That woman
, I think.
That woman.
‘Judging by the look on Mrs Zebila’s son’s face, I am guessing this is the first time he or anyone else in his family has heard of her plans to end her life.’
That woman. That woman.
‘I think it’s safe to assume, Miss Smittson, the person she was referring to, was you.’

They’ve let me go without charge. But I’m not to leave the area, and I’m not to think for one second that any of this is over because they are continuing the investigation against me. They will be going through my home and place of business looking for evidence that I carried out this crime; that I had maybe helped myself to her jewellery and had convinced her to kill herself to cover it up. The police officer told me if it was true that she did want to die, it would not be any better for me – that they take cases of assisted suicide very seriously, because even supplying the means for someone to kill themselves is a criminal offence. ‘We all know Mrs Zebila was not capable of carrying out the act herself,’ he said, ‘especially not injecting such a huge dose of insulin let alone the other medication, which means someone else would have done it for her.’

Mum’s face, small, extremely pale and scored with fretful lines, is the first one I see. A little behind her is my other mother, her face as worried and concerned as a mother’s would be. To Mum’s right stands my husband, a full head and a half higher than both of the women.

‘I think it’s best that you stay away from my family from now on,’ is what my father says to me when we leave the interview room and are shown out into the reception area. Mum has reached for me, pulled me towards her and hugged me tight. I wonder if that is what causes him to say that. I called Dad ‘my dad’ in front of him and he hadn’t been happy, and Mum is the person I go to for comfort. Or is it the shock of finding out all those things about his mother that he probably would rather not know?

‘Julius!’ my other mother says, horrified that he is doing this.

My father glares at my other mother, and when he does, I see
his
mother, my grandmother: her sternness in his forced-together lips, her stubbornness in the frown on his brow, her determination to get her own way in the set of his jaw.

‘What are you saying?’ my other mother says. Even though less than a week ago she put me off coming to see them.

‘This is for the best, Kibibi.’

‘It is,’ Mum says. ‘I was about to say the same thing.’

I release myself from her hug like a toddler releases themselves from their buggy they’ve outgrown and push myself free. ‘Mum, don’t—’

‘No, Clemency, this has gone on long enough. I have watched them welcome you with open arms, then cast you aside when it suits them. And now this.’ She shakes her open hands upwards, to emphasise the place we’re in. ‘
This
. It’s gone too far. You’re to stay away from them, do you hear me?’

‘I’m not nine,’ I tell her.

‘I think Mrs Smittson is perfectly correct. We welcomed you into our home and you have violated our trust by not being honest with us.’

‘I thought you said no daughter of yours could do such a thing,’ I say quietly. I’m sure he’s sat next to innocent and guilty people before, did I sound like a murderer, a killer to him?

‘That was before I knew
all
of the facts. You are to stay away from us or I will have the police charge you with harassment.’

Is this what
that woman
wanted? To have me out of their lives at any cost? Even at the cost of her own life?

‘I didn’t do it,’ I say.

‘I will be telling Abi to avoid all contact with you also,’ Mr Zebila, as he has morphed into in the last few minutes, states. ‘Ivor has always had his doubts.’

‘Come on, Clemency,’ Mum says. ‘We are leaving.’

‘I didn’t do it,’ I say to my other mother.

She looks incredibly, heartbreakingly, sad. Her features are soft, her face a little downcast and her eyes are a liquid brown that swim with soon-to-be-shed tears as she stares at me. Her hair is so neat – each strand is glossy, black, smooth and perfect. I’m sure she never has tangles in her hair. She most likely has them in her mind, her heart, but not in her hair. I have them in all those places. The hard Sussex water is playing havoc with my hair, and the complicated Sussex life is playing havoc with my mind and heart.

‘Please tell Abi I’m sorry I won’t be seeing her,’ I say to my other mother.

She doesn’t reply.

‘And Lily. I’ll miss her, too.’

‘Come on, Clemency,’ Mum states.

I grab my other mother and hug her, hold her close. She relaxes for a moment in my arms, and I’m overwhelmed by how comforting it is to hold her. If I had known it would feel like this, I would have done it a million years ago. A second or two later, she stiffens and retreats. That moment is enough – it tells me she believes me. She believes me that I didn’t do it.

‘You must promise me you will not see those people again,’ Mum says in the taxi home.

Seth does not turn from his place in the front seat to look at us, but I know he’s listening, wondering what I will say because he knows how ‘complicated’ my mother can be. How despite the effect she has on me, when she makes me promise something, I always do. Except, Seth knows this is different.
I
know this is different. Mainly because I am different and ‘those people’ are my family, too.

‘Promise me,’ Mum insists when my silence is her answer.

‘I promise,’ I say. In my flat black ballet shoes, the only shoes I could put on in a rush, I have, obviously, crossed my toes.

To: Jonas Zebila

From: Abi Zebila

Subject: Please reply. PLEASE!!!!!

Monday, 17 August 2015

It’s all gone a bit batsh*t around these parts. Which is why I am plotting my escape. I think it’s going to have to be Declan. I make him sound like the terrible option but he’s not. He’s simply the commitment option and I’m not ready for commitment. But, there are times in your life when you have to sh*t or get off the crazy pot, and I am getting myself off the crazy pot quick smart.

Daddy actually thinks Clemency killed Gran. He truly believes it. He came back from the police station and informed me I wasn’t allowed to go near Clemency again. I was so taken aback I actually said, ‘I’m not nine, Daddy.’ And he told me I would do as I was told while living in his house. Like I don’t pay rent, like I don’t do chores, like I didn’t help feed, clean and take care of Gran. Well, that’s it, I’m done. I’ve texted Declan that he needs to start looking for a bigger place for us all to move into. He’s over the moon.

Mummy didn’t say much during all of this. She kept looking at Daddy with resentment in her eyes. When he’d finished she said, ‘I’ll never forgive you or your mother for what you’ve done. You took my first child away from me. My eldest son is rude, unpleasant and talks to me like I am beneath him because that is what your mother taught him to do. She drove away my second son. I suspect my second daughter is already planning on leaving and never returning. And now you have taken away my first child again because of your mother. I will never forgive you, Julius.’ And then she left the room. Daddy just stared after her and Ivor looked terrified. For the first time in Ivor’s life someone had told him he wasn’t the be all and end all of everything. He’ll miss that about Gran, I think: not being her golden child any more. That sounds mean, but when I think of some of the things Gran said to me and about me just because I wasn’t male or Ivor …

I feel so angry right now. It’s like Ivor doing this thing and Daddy ordering me about has made the scales fall from my eyes. Or allowed me to be honest with myself for the first time in years. I feel like I’ve been part of this conspiracy that let Gran get away with anything she wanted because she was ill. I was so scared of losing her, I moved in to be with her, to help take care of her, and she never really had a kind word to say to me. I didn’t want gratitude, just for her to treat me nicely. How she treated Lily-Rose, how she treated Ivor. She wasn’t even that nice to Daddy if I think about it. She was a mean old woman.