That Girl From Nowhere (54 page)

Authors: Dorothy Koomson

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BOOK: That Girl From Nowhere

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‘Hello, you,’ I say. I stoop to hug her. ‘And hello, you,’ I say to my sister. Her stomach is full, ripe and in ten weeks she’ll be giving birth – she has asked me to be her birthing partner.

‘Declan is just parking the car. Insists on driving into town because taking the bus or a taxi is slumming it, apparently, but doesn’t have a clue about parking. We drove around six times before I got him to drop us at the end of the road so he can go find a space. Well, good luck with that, eh, matey?’ On the fourth finger of her left hand glints her engagement ring. I conspired with Declan to make the twisted platinum band studded with diamond chips. He proposed, she said yes. ‘
I have to give him a chance now that he’s proposed properly instead of just talking about it
,’ Abi said when she told me about it.

‘Lily, Sienna is in there somewhere. Do you want to see if you can find her? I think Uncle Smitty has some cake pops with your name on, too.’

She squeals, and I hold open the door for her to dart inside.

‘How are you?’ Abi asks.

‘I’m fine.’ I know what she’s really asking me. I don’t want to talk about it any more. I’ve talked and talked and talked about it with her, with Seth, with my other mother, and nothing has changed. I can’t change anything that has gone before, I can only change the future. I’ve even made enough peace with myself to be seeing Mrs Lehtinen on a regular basis, working on her wonderful jewellery box.

‘Sure?’ Abi asks. I think sometimes she forgets that I’m the older sister and I’m the one who should be checking she’s OK.

‘Yes, I’m sure.’ I open the door again. ‘There are cake pops with your name on too, plus your picture is on the wall. All in all, I think you’ve pretty much hit the big time.’

‘Enough with the pregnancy jokes, matey,’ she replies before she steps in through the door.

I’m about to return to the shop when a Brighton green and white registered taxi pulls up outside. The door opens and out steps my other mother. She doesn’t pay the driver, but does shut the door behind her. She smiles at me, grins like she is pleased to see me, Clemency the adult, not Talei the baby. She grins at me and opens her arms to me. Turns out that she’s the parent who hugs. Every time I see her I am swamped by them, as I was with Dad. She also spends a lot of time drawing Abi, Lily-Rose and me for her part-time art foundation course.

‘Hello,’ I say. I’m still working on what to call her. In my head she is still ‘my mother’ and ‘my other mother’. In reality, in the words that come out of my mouth, I avoid calling her anything to her face. ‘You look so lovely.’

‘Hello, Clemency,’ she says, clinging on to me for just that bit longer, then she squeezes just that bit tighter. She’s doing that to make up for my father. To make up for Ivor. They’re not coming. Ivor blames everything on me and wants nothing more to do with me. My father … He is complicated. He does not want to see or speak to me. Despite giving me those photographs and confessing to seeing me after I was born, he doesn’t want to be around me. I am a painful reminder of what he did back in 1978 and what he did more recently. I wasn’t even invited to the funeral because neither he nor Ivor wanted to see me. My other mother reckons once he and Mum have been on trial and they know whether the future holds prison or not, he will change his mind.

I try to hide my disappointment at not seeing my father or brother but it is plain on my face. I really thought that this opening would give them the chance to be in touch without doing much. They could have just stood in the corner, talking to the parts of their family they did like.

‘Give them time,’ my mother says. She takes my hands, holds them out and looks at me. Pulls me in for another hug. Holds me close and the smell that is my other mother – vanilla, citrus, cinnamon and talc – takes over me.

The taxi pulls away to reveal a tall man in a dark grey suit and beige overcoat. He could be Ivor but he is taller and younger. He steps on to the pavement and waits politely for my mother to let me go. When we are unlatched, he offers me his hand, which is big with long, rectangular fingers. Much like mine.

‘I’m Jonas, your brother,’ he says. ‘Abi has told me a lot about you, mainly via email, then by phone, but that’s been enough for now. I’m incredibly pleased to meet you.’

‘You too,’ I say. He left because of my grandmother, because my father and mother wouldn’t stand up to her. He stayed away because he couldn’t stand to pretend when she had been awful to all of them for so many years. But he’s here. He has flown all the way over from Montenegro to be here. He didn’t even come back for the funeral.

‘I was so desperate to get in touch with Abi when she told me about you but I knew the second I did, it would mean getting sucked back into all …’ He shakes his head. ‘I can’t believe you’re real,’ he says. Unexpectedly, he’s hugging me. Holding me close in his big arms, like he thinks I might disappear. ‘My sister. My
big
sister. I can’t wait to get to know you.’

‘Me, too,’ I say laughing. ‘Me, too.’

With me, later, here

This is somewhere.

This is where I am from at last. I used to be from nowhere, but now I am from here. Thiswhere. This somewhere. Inside my shop there is a big, disjointed, mishmash of people I am linked to by blood and by circumstance; some are called relatives, others are called friends, but they’re all
here
for me. Even without them I would be somewhere, I realise that now.

I have a shop and it is filled with people who are unique, precious, flawed, and all mine. They’re my jewels. They’re my family.

With Mrs Stoner, March 1978, Brighton

‘Goodbye, little Talei. Precious one, your first mother said it meant. I wish so much we could keep you, but we can’t. You’re going to your new parents now. They’ll look after you and I can tell by the way they look at you that they’ll love you.

‘I’ll miss your little box, too. All those pretty butterflies. I hope you keep it all your life. It’ll be a reminder of how much your other mother loved you. I know your new parents will love you, but I’m sure Kibibi, your first mother, loves you, too. I see it in her eyes every time she looks at you. And so does your first father, Julius.’

She gathered up the box with the baby. She had grown so much she wouldn’t be able to sleep in the box for much longer. Kate Stoner had tried to get her to sleep elsewhere but she didn’t seem to want to. She cried in the Moses basket, in the cot, on the big bed. Nowhere settled her like the butterfly box. The foster mother composed herself, she was almost blind with tears.

The baby didn’t look like the new parents, but she could tell they would care for her. She had been fostering for many, many years and you got a sense about people. The sense she had about the Smittsons was that they wanted nothing more than someone to love and bring up as their own. And the sense she got about Julius and Kibibi, the first parents, was that they wanted nothing but the best for their baby – even if it meant doing this.

With the box in her arms, Kate Stoner descended the stairs, ready to send baby Talei on to the next stage of her life.

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