The Brighton Mermaid

  Jude. Jude. Jude.

  I sometimes think that what I saw that night was meant to be seen by Nell. If she had seen it, she would have done something different, I’m sure. She would have told, I think. She would have been brave enough to speak of it and not carry it around inside, making her bite her nails, cut her skin, keep a hundred little rituals that will help her to hide the truth.

  I sometimes think, on nights like this when I can’t sleep and when I do sleep I think of Jude, that my life would be completely different if only I didn’t see what I saw that night.

  Jude. Jude. Jude.

  I sometimes think, on nights like this when I can’t sleep and when I do sleep I think of Jude, that I should tell.

  I know the end is coming. I can feel it fast approaching with every passing day. Nell taking a year off work to focus on this, the stuff in the newspapers, a call I had the other day at work asking if I was related to Enelle Okorie – are all the ticks of the time bomb that is going to explode. Maybe I should tell and detonate it now.

  Maybe I should tell that I saw Jude at our house that night she actually disappeared.

  Nell

  Friday, 6 April

  ‘WATCH OUT!’ shouts the man coming towards me as he raises his pointing finger.

  I half turn to look where he’s pointing and a hand connects with the middle of my back, violently shoving me. My arms go up as I fly forwards, then my body twists as my bag is ripped off my shoulder. I land awkwardly, pain spiking through my right elbow, hammering my right knee as they hit the ground first before the rest of my body. A moped whines into life suddenly and peels away as I lie motionless on the pavement.

  Quick. So quick it takes me seconds to register what has just happened. Why my elbow hurts, why my knee aches, why I don’t have my bag.

  ‘Are you all right, love?’ a woman asks while helping me up.

  ‘That looked nasty,’ says the man who shouted the warning, helping me up, too. ‘Are you OK?’

  I’ve just been mugged.

  In quiet, laid-back Hove, I’ve just been mugged.

  ‘That happened so fast,’ the woman says. She’s still got hold of my arm because I’m unsteady on my feet, shaky where I stand.

  ‘Can’t believe it happened,’ the man adds. ‘I saw him coming for you. I shouted. Did you hear me shout? I shouted.’

  A small crowd is forming around us, people murmuring, talking about what they saw. Which probably wasn’t much given it happened so fast.

  ‘Do you think they got much?’ a third person asks.

  ‘Just my bag,’ I reply.

  ‘That’s awful,’ the first woman, who is still holding me up, says. ‘I can’t believe that just happened. Are you all right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say vaguely. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Do you want me to call the police?’ the man says.

  I shake my head. ‘No, no.’ I do not want him to call the police. The last people I want him to call are the police. Unless I have to, I have very little to do with the police. Most people won’t understand why. I’ve been the victim of a crime and that is the first thing I should want to do. I can see it on the faces of those in the small crowd: What does she have to hide that she doesn’t want to call the police? ‘I’ll call them in a bit,’ I add to explain my aversion. ‘I just need to get my breath back.’

  ‘Don’t blame you, love,’ the woman says. ‘That was awful. So terribly shocking.’

  The outliers of the crowd start to drift away – it’s not that interesting, I imagine, given that I’m not bleeding or hysterical.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say to the woman. ‘You’ve been so kind.’ I lean out of her hold now, and she seems as pleased as I am that I don’t fall over.

  ‘Do you want to go and sit down somewhere?’ the man asks.

  ‘No, no, I’m fine, honestly. I’d better get home and report my cards missing.’

  ‘Do you want me to talk to the police with you?’ the woman asks. ‘Not that I saw much. It all happened so fast. One minute you were standing there and then you were on the ground and this guy in black was jumping onto the back of a moped holding your bag.’

  So the moped did have something to do with it.

  ‘It came right up onto the pavement,’ the man says. ‘That’s why I shouted. Did you hear me shout?’

  I raise my fingers and press them on my eyes. I feel sick. I can’t believe this has happened. I mean, I’ve always known these things happen and I’ve heard people talk about having their mobiles snatched from their hands by people on mopeds, but I genuinely thought that was a London thing. Not a here thing. At all.

  I’ve just been to the post office down by the Floral Clock in Hove and sent all the DNA samples I had to various companies, as Friday is generally my posting day. I then started for home and got halfway there before I remembered I hadn’t sent off the consent and disclaimer forms to be lodged at my solicitor’s, so I turned around and was on my way back to the post office when I was shoved.

  ‘Are you all right?’ the woman asks again.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine.’ I smile at her. It’s just her and the man who shouted here now. Everyone else has gone. ‘I’m perfectly fine. I just need a minute.’

  I always carry my mobile in my pocket, and my keys, so they haven’t got those things. But my purse was in my bag. My glasses. My diary, with the picture of Jude and me pinned to the inside cover. I can’t get that back. I have so few pictures of Jude and I have no idea where the negative for that picture is. That’s gone now. Out of everything, that’s the biggest thing that’s been stolen from me today. I can’t replace it.

  Despite my best efforts, despite me creating an extensive family tree and contacting almost all the people on it in the past ten years, I didn’t find Jude and I didn’t change Jude’s mother’s feelings towards me. There’s no way she’ll give me a picture of her daughter to replace this one.

  I press my fingers onto my eyes again to stop them leaking tears.

  That’s why it’s pointless calling the police. I can tell them what happened, but what can they do about the keepsake items with no value? How can they return the picture of me and my best friend at the circus down by the King Alfred on the seafront? How can they get me back the tenth-anniversary pen from The Super that I had at the bottom of my bag? How will they retrieve the stickers Aubrey gave me that I stuck on the back of my glasses case? The answer is that they can’t.

  I don’t understand why someone would do this to me. Out of all the people walking down this street at this time, why did they pick me? It’s not like I was closest to the edge of the pavement; I didn’t have my mobile in my hand. It wasn’t a designer handbag, just a big, black shapeless thing Macy gave me for Christmas.

  Why me?

  Out of all the other people on this road, why me?

  Bleep-bleep-bleep goes my mobile in my pocket. His message tone.

  No, it can’t be because of that. Why would the Brighton Mermaid cause me to be mugged twenty-five years after I found her?

  I’m being ridiculous. I know this.

  I thank the woman and man for their kindness, reassure them I’m going to go to a café to have a strong, sweet tea to calm my nerves and then I’ll call the police.

  I’m being ridiculous if I think someone is out to get me. Of course I don’t believe that. I haven’t done anything to make someone get me in this way.

  2013

  Nell

  Monday, 20 May

  ‘Are you Nell Okorie?’ the man with black-framed glasses asked. It was late and I’d just finished closing up at the Super when he approached me.

  My gaze swept over him in the orange glow of the street lamps. He had pale skin, brown hair, a face that looked familiar.

  ‘Who wants to know?’ I asked, poised to bolt. The road from here to the main road was slightly uphill, but I could make it. Once I was on London Road, there were pubs and restaurants that would still be open and I could dash into, hide in.

  ‘
Me,’ he replied.

  I took a step back and kept my eyes on him, watching for any sudden movements. ‘And who are you?’ I asked when it became clear he wasn’t going to say anything else.

  ‘Aaron Pope. John Pope is my father.’

  He was getting his son to harass me now? The man was unbelievable. Now I knew where the DNA that made up his features came from, I could see his father plainly on his face.

  ‘Right, well, on that note, I’m going to leave,’ I said.

  He stepped into my path as I tried to move past him and a flurry of fear flew from my stomach to my throat. Was he going to hurt me? John Pope had never raised his hand, but I didn’t know anything about this man. He could be far, far worse than his father. He was taller than his father, and although slender, he looked muscular. Potentially dangerous.

  He seemed to immediately recognise that he’d scared me so he stepped back again, gave me space. ‘My father is …’ he began.

  Now there was a gap between us, the bite of adrenalin subsided a little – but I was still ready to run for it.

  I waited for him to finish his sentence, but he didn’t. He, instead stared off at a point over my shoulder. I’d seen that look before. Whenever something had happened to my father, I would escape as soon as I could to the bathroom to wash my face, hide my crying, and I would see that exact same look on my face in the mirror. Something had happened to John Pope. ‘Your father is what?’ I asked as gently as I could.

  ‘He’s in hospital,’ Aaron Pope replied. He was still staring over my shoulder.

  ‘Right. I see.’

  That was the best I could do. I couldn’t pretend to care what happened to John Pope.

  I wasn’t meant to think like that, of course. People like me, people who’ve been persecuted by people like Pope, are meant to rise above it, forgive, have compassion. I was done with that. The more time that elapsed between then and now, the less compassionate I became. The more adult years stacked up, the angrier I grew at the terrible things I’d learnt to be thankful for. When Dad would come back from police custody, battered and bruised with injuries that officers had – they said – inflicted in self-defence (even though Dad never had any cuts and bruises on his knuckles), I’d be grateful. Grateful . Because he was alive, because he hadn’t become another of the many black men who died in suspicious circumstances while in police custody. John Pope had done that, and I could not feel any compassion for him. At all.

  ‘For your sake, I hope he recovers soon,’ I told my former persecutor’s son.

  I went to move on again and Aaron Pope spoke: ‘Someone tried to kill him.’

  If it had been anyone else, I would have been more surprised. But knowing what John Pope was capable of, knowing how persistent his ‘above and beyond the call of duty’ behaviour could be, the only surprising thing to me was that it hadn’t happened sooner.

  ‘Because of the Brighton Mermaid,’ he added.

  I used my fingertips to rub my tired, gritty eyes. ‘Your father thinks everything is because of the Brighton Mermaid.’

  In the orange glow of the street light, John Pope’s son sized me up, looking me over as though I wasn’t what he’d been expecting. ‘I was on the phone to him when it happened,’ he said quietly. ‘He was talking about her, yes, but he said he was coming to see you because he had a piece of information that would change everything. He was saying that he’d been wrong all these years and that … that he’d made a connection that no one had noticed before. And then … and then …’ His voice broke and his face creased as he hung his head.

  I reached out to touch him, to comfort him – and then I stopped myself. He was a stranger – and worse, he was John Pope’s son.

  ‘A car hit him. It mounted the pavement and drove straight at him. That’s what someone who was there said. It accelerated, hit him and then didn’t stop.’ He shook his head, as if trying to dislodge the memory of it. ‘I was screaming his name, and I could hear him … I thought … I thought I could hear him dying. And I just kept screaming his name. I didn’t even think to call an ambulance. I just kept calling for him.’

  ‘You were probably in shock,’ I said. ‘It probably helped him to hear your voice.’

  ‘Maybe. He’s still in a coma,’ he told me. ‘He hasn’t woken up after surgery yet.’

  ‘It must be a really difficult time for you. How’s your mother coping with it all?’

  Aaron Pope glared at me as though I was winding him up. ‘My mother left him years ago. She couldn’t take it any more. He was obsessed with the Brighton Mermaid case more than any other. She couldn’t stay when he—’ I realised, with some horror, that small shiny tears were rolling down his face. He tugged at his sleeves, pulled them down over his wrists and hands, trying to hide from what he was feeling about this.

  I took him in again: he seemed damaged and fragile, like a cracked piece of porcelain that was yet to completely fall apart. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to grow up with John Pope as a father. Someone that obsessive and hate-filled would not be kind, gentle and understanding at home.

  ‘Mum left a while back.’ He shrugged, trying to act as if he didn’t care, but gave himself away by tucking his hands under his armpits – hiding again, trying to make himself less vulnerable. ‘He didn’t care that she left, not really. He always said you were the only person who understood his need for the truth.’

  ‘Me?’ I replied. ‘Me? Are you sure he said that about me ?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes. You were one of the girls who found her. You wanted the truth as much as he did. He talked about how you were the only one who understood so much that Mum started to think you and he … you know .’

  Aaron Pope took off his glasses and scrubbed his eyes dry before putting them in place again. ‘Do you want me to drive you to the hospital, or do you want to drive yourself ?’ he asked. ‘Assuming you have your own car.’

  It was my turn to look at him as though he was winding me up. ‘Why would I go to the hospital?’

  ‘I know he’s still in a coma, but you can still see him. The nurse told me he kept saying your name before they put him under.’

  I frowned at him. He was serious. He actually thought … ‘Aaron, I’m sorry, but no. Your dad … He … It wasn’t how he said. It wasn’t anything like he said at all. I’m not going to see him whether he’s awake or not. It’s just not going to happen.’

  ‘But he’s so ill; he’s all alone. He’d want to see you.’

  I sighed while searching for the right words. ‘Look, when he wakes up, ask him to tell you the truth about what he did to me and to my family. Then you’ll understand. Until then, I can’t help you, I’m sorry.’

  John Pope’s son looked like he was going to cry again. He seemed desperate and bewildered. I almost changed my mind; almost decided to help him because he really was looking terrified. But I couldn’t do that.

  ‘I hope for your sake he gets well again,’ I told Aaron Pope, and this time when I walked away he didn’t do or say anything to stop me.

  2015

  Nell

  Wednesday, 24 June

  Pope’s son was waiting for me outside my workplace again.

  It’d been a couple of years since he’d first shown up and he seemed to have grown up a lot in that time. Or maybe, he was simply looking normal now as opposed to how shaken and shocked he’d been back then. I had a feeling, the way he fixed his face and exhaled deeply before pulling back his shoulders and taking a large, courage-steeling breath, that he was going to tell me John Pope had died.

  ‘Do you have five minutes?’ he asked.

  I didn’t say anything, just stared at him. I wasn’t ready to hear that Pope had died, that he had left this Earth without me proving that my father was innocent. I wasn’t ready for Pope to have escaped without facing what he did.

  ‘I’m assuming you remember me?’ he said.

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, that’s something. I just need a few minutes o
f your time.’

  ‘OK,’ I replied.

  I led the way across the area in front of the supermarket, to the concrete bench flanked by large concrete planters.

  ‘How can I help you?’ I asked Aaron Pope. I watched people enter The Super, a lot of them seeming dazed and confused, not really relishing going in but needing to. Other supermarkets I’d been to – there was no way I was doing my weekly shop where I worked – seemed to have customers who were focused and ready, lists in hands, bags for life in pockets. Ours always seemed anaesthetised before they rocked up at the door, the general laid-back nonchalance of the London Road area seeming to infect everything they did.

  ‘It’s my father,’ he began.

  I teed up, I’m sorry to hear that , on my tongue, willed my brain to make it sound sincere and not outraged that my father never got to clear his name.

  ‘He needs to see you,’ he said.

  ‘I’m—What? ’ I replied. ‘Eh? He’s not … ? He wants to see me?’

  ‘Yes, he needs to see you,’ Pope’s son repeated.

  ‘So he’s not … ? Why does he want to see me?’

  Aaron Pope nervously moistened his lips. ‘He says he has more information about the Brighton Mermaid and your friend – Judana? He says he needs to tell you about it in person.’

  The man was a joker. An absolute joker. ‘That’s not going to happen. I’m not going to see him. I don’t care what information he has, I’m not putting myself in the same room as him.’

  Aaron Pope looked momentarily defeated. ‘If you’re scared of him, there’s no need to be. He can’t hurt you. He’s been partially paralysed since his accident so he can’t harm you.’

  ‘Not happening.’

  Aaron Pope seemed to deflate, his face taking on a worn-out, defeated look. He was going to get it in the neck if he went back without me, I could tell.