The Brighton Mermaid

  ‘I will,’ I mumble at the police officer.

  ‘Is there anyone we can call to come and stay with you?’ he asks.

  I shake my head. Before I called the police I almost called Macy. My finger actually hovered over her number on my phone, but I decided against it. Aaron, possibly, but then that would be more line-blurring. And Zach I couldn’t impose upon like that. So that was the end of that. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  The forensics woman who is dusting for fingerprints is going over the television at the moment. She’s working quietly, methodically, but for some reason it sounds very loud – like every touch of her brush is a canon firing, every lift of her fingerprint paper is nails dragged down a chalkboard.

  ‘And you’re sure nothing was taken except the computer hard drives?’ the officer asks. The other police officer reappears from the bedroom area, and comes to stand beside him. The pair of them are dressed in black, short-sleeved uniforms, they have radios on their lapels, handcuffs on their waistbands, truncheons on the other side. And heavy black boots that I would have made them remove under other circumstances because I don’t allow outside footwear inside my house.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I had my tablet and my laptop with me.’

  ‘Why do you have three computers, Miss Okorie?’ the first officer asks pleasantly enough.

  I’ve been waiting for this question, because they have seen the papers strewn around my living room and my office. All the papers and printouts and sheets I’ve pinned and stuck to my noticeboards have been ripped down, often torn in half or scrunched up before being thrown on the floor. The police officers will have looked at what these papers are, they will have seen that some of them are things that I, a civilian, shouldn’t technically have. He was always going to ask, but he’s going about it in a roundabout way.

  ‘Because I have,’ I reply.

  ‘We do really need to know as much as possible so that we can help you,’ he says.

  I sigh. My face hurts, my arm hurts, my head hurts. I hurt. Not just the injuries. This, it hurts. This feels like someone has violated me, has taken the time to defile and degrade me. And that, quite simply, hurts.

  I think I need to move , I decide. I close my eyes and try to move them to loosen the tension behind my eyelids.

  ‘I look for people,’ I say. ‘I found the Brighton Mermaid twenty-five years ago. I look for who she is in my spare time. That’s why I have three computers. I need them for different things.’

  ‘I really think we should take you to the hospital,’ the policewoman says.

  ‘I’m fine. Truly. Just tired.’

  ‘You’re showing signs of concussion,’ she replies. ‘You’re slurring your speech, not making much sense.’

  ‘No, truly, I’m fine. I just need to lie down.’

  ‘If you won’t go to the hospital, then we’ll take you to the station for the police doctor to look you over.’

  Not happening. I am not stepping foot in a police station if I don’t have to. ‘OK. Hospital.’

  They both look at me blankly. ‘I said, hospital,’ I repeat.

  They look at each other then back at me. It takes a second or two for me to realise I’m speaking gibberish. I sound fine to me, but to them, it must sound like nonsense.

  ‘Hospital. Hospital. Hospital.’

  It’s suddenly very hot, but I’ve wrapped my arms around myself because I’m so cold. I have concussion. I hate that the policewoman was right. I hate that—

  Nell

  Wednesday, 25 April

  I wasn’t even awake for the ride to the hospital in an ambulance.

  I’ve never been in one before and I wasn’t awake for it. I was awake though for the brain scan, for the bit where the doctors told me I have a tiny bit of brain swelling caused by the blow, and I was awake for the nurse patching up my eyebrow with thin white butterfly stitches.

  I was also awake for the bit when Macy arrived.

  She is currently pacing the cubicle, rubbing her hands over and over each other. She can’t sit, she can’t look at me and she can’t really speak. She keeps starting at the sounds she hears outside the curtain. She hates hospitals anyway, but the fact she got called to come to one because her sister was being brought in by ambulance has pretty much awoken every single anxious nerve in her body.

  If I hadn’t been unconscious, I would have told them not to ring her. But she is down as my next of kin, and her number is one of the most recently called in my phone, although how the police got into my phone without my passcode I’d rather not think about.

  ‘You wouldn’t have told me, would you?’ She sounds angry but she’s not. She’s hurt. And scared. Terrified , probably. Losing the people she loves is one of the things that strikes terror into Macy’s heart. I’m the same, but Macy … she comes up with scenario after scenario about what could happen until they feel real, like they are actually going to happen. This , what is happening right now, will be one that she has played through many, many times. And it’s come true. Which means the others could come true. ‘You wouldn’t have told me about this because you’d try to protect me.’

  ‘It’s not like that, I swear,’ I say. ‘It all happened so quickly. And I would have told you … eventually.’

  ‘You treat me like I’m nine years old sometimes. You and Shane both. You can tell me stuff. I am strong enough to hear it.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So what do they think happened? Who broke into your house?’

  She may think she wants to hear it, but the reality is, she doesn’t. She just doesn’t. If she knew I am in touch with Pope after all these years and that I regularly go over to his house … I have no idea what that would do to her.

  ‘I don’t know. The forensic lady said she usually has a good idea who does these things because the criminals usually work in a specific way. But this one was new to her. Especially since they didn’t even go near the TV or the DVD pl—’ Should not have said that. Should NOT have said that .

  Macy, my pretty, clever, wonderful little sister, stops pacing and wringing her hands. She stares directly at me. Out of the two of us, she’s the one who looks most like our dad. She has a lean face, soft cheekbones, big eyes and a soft, wide mouth. I look more like my mum, as my face is slightly rounder, my lips slightly plumper and my mouth not as wide. The way she looks at me now is the way Dad looked at me two days after I found the BM and I’d recovered enough from the ordeal to be questioned about what I’d got up to when I went out.

  Dad kept staring at me until I told him every single detail about where I’d been, what I’d drunk, who I’d spoken to. Macy’s going to do the same, I can tell.

  She’s my younger sister, I keep trying to remind myself when this sort of thing happens. I’m meant to be the take-charge one.

  ‘Why didn’t they take anything valuable like the telly or DVD player?’ she asks.

  ‘They did take my computer hard drives,’ I offer rather pathetically.

  ‘This is about the dead body, isn’t it?’ she says through her teeth. Mum’s the one who talks through her teeth when she’s angry. ‘This is someone coming after you because of that dead body, isn’t it? Isn’t it? ’

  ‘Why would you immediately jump to the conclusion that this is something to do with all of that? Why don’t you think it’s something to do with the other cases I’m working on?’

  ‘Other cases! Do you realise how delusional you sound? You’re not some private detective, you know.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Do you? When are you going to stop all this, Nell? You left your job and now look. You’ve been hurt because of that body. Because of the Brighton Mermaid .’ She spits out the last three words because she never likes to say them. She never likes to romanticise what actually happened.

  ‘You don’t know that,’ I reply.

  ‘Yes I do. So do you.’

  ‘Macy, you do realise that you’re younger than me, don’t you?’

  ‘Nell, you d
o realise that you’re older than me, don’t you?’ she mocks. ‘And maybe it’s time you started acting like a grown-up.’

  ‘Because you do so well in the grown-up stakes,’ I retort.

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means … It means I’ve got a pounding headache and I need to go home.’

  ‘Right, I’ll go and find a nurse who can discharge you.’ She starts to leave. ‘We’ll have to get a cab back to my place because I was shaking too much to drive.’

  ‘No, you’re all right. I need to go home, secure my flat. Make some calls.’

  ‘You can’t go back to your flat on your own after what happened.’

  ‘I won’t be on my own,’ I say. I’ll have the large, solid memory of what happened to keep me company . ‘I’ll, erm, I’ll call my boyfriend.’

  My sister lets go of the curtain and comes back to the bed. ‘You haven’t got a boyfriend.’ I have hastily promoted Zach to boyfriend and I hope he won’t mind, but needs must.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You do not.’

  ‘I actually do.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Zach.’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘The apartments in town near Jubilee Library.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Forty.’

  ‘What’s his favourite food?’

  ‘Saltfish and ackee.’

  Macy folds her arms across her chest and harrumphs. ‘If he’s real, I want to meet him,’ she says.

  ‘He’s real and you’ll meet him soon enough.’

  She stares at me with her head to one side for a long while. It really is like looking at my father. ‘Please stop all this, Nell.’ She says this quietly because she knows that’s more likely to get through to me. ‘You know, what happened happened. We can’t go back on it. Can you just stop and go back to your job and do something else? Find a new hobby? This is dangerous.’

  ‘The thing of it is, Macy, I can’t quit and do something else. I just can’t.’ I can’t tell her about Pope’s ultimatum. How time is running out on me stopping him going after our dad.

  ‘Why not?’

  I wish I was feeling a bit better – more grounded, less light-headed – while we have this conversation, but it needs to be had, I realise now. I can’t keep doing this in secret if I’m at risk. I drag my knees up under the blanket on the A&E bed and wrap my arms around them. ‘Because the Brighton Mermaid stuff is basically who I am.’

  ‘It’s not,’ she protests.

  ‘Please listen,’ I beg. ‘It’s hard enough to explain without having to wonder if you’re actually listening to me or waiting to tell me I’m wrong.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she mumbles.

  ‘Jude and I found her. And everything that has happened since then seems to have been about that. Jude disappearing, Dad being arrested, all those years and years of harassment. Even the fact that I can’t settle down with anyone … It’s all been about that night. I hate that it’s true, but it is. I’ve tried so many times to do something else, be someone else. I almost didn’t come back to Brighton after college because I knew as soon as I passed those gates, I’d be her again – the Girl Who Found the Brighton Mermaid. All this twenty-fifth-anniversary stuff doesn’t help either. I just need to find out who she was. I just need to find out what happened to Jude. If I can find those things out, I can maybe start again. You know, lead a different life.’

  ‘And what if you don’t find out who she was, Nell? It’s been twenty-five years – what’s going to change now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. But I do know what’s going to change: Pope will set off the bomb that is reopening the investigation into our father, and I will be forced to leave Brighton. As selfish as it sounds, I will need to leave to stay sane.

  ‘My life has been about her, too, you know?’ Macy says. She lowers her gaze and traces her finger in circles along the edge of the blanket.

  ‘Yes, I do know. And I’m sorry about that. I am so, so sorry that something I did has completely wrecked your life.’

  ‘I didn’t say it’d wrecked my life. My life isn’t wrecked. I have three amazing children, I have a partner, a lovely home and a great job. Not many people can say they have that.’

  I notice it even if she doesn’t – the lack of adjective to describe her other half. ‘Are you and Shane having problems?’ I ask.

  ‘No!’ she shoots back. ‘Maybe … Yes.’

  ‘I had no idea,’ I say.

  ‘Well, why would you? He’s, like, perfect and I’m a nutcase.’

  ‘Don’t say things like that about yourself.’

  ‘I know what I do isn’t normal. I know I shouldn’t call you at that time on a Saturday morning, and that it isn’t going to change how the week goes whether you answer or not. But I can’t stop. There are so many things that I know I shouldn’t do, but I can’t stop doing them in case something terrible happens. I know that’s not normal, but I can’t seem to stop. I think Shane’s getting sick of it. Sick of me.’

  ‘Has he said something?’

  ‘No, but I can tell. I mean he’s asked me to marry him again, but he’s so quiet and, I don’t know, shifty almost these days. I thought for a time things were back on track, but no, he’s always on edge again. It’s only a matter of time before he leaves, just like Clyde did. And I feel powerless to do anything about it. I hate the things I do, the way I push people away or push their buttons, but I can’t seem to stop it. It’s clearly getting to Shane.’

  ‘Or … Or it could be that he gave me the number of someone to talk to about doing some searching work for and he’s worried how you’ll react when you find out?’ I offer knowing what her reaction will be.

  ‘He what ?! After all those conversations, after all the times he agreed with me that you should get a bloody grip and live in the real world, he does that? I’ll bloody murder him.’

  ‘“Get a bloody grip”, huh?’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ she replies. ‘I swear, he’s as bad as you are sometimes.’

  ‘It is my life, you know?’ I say to her. ‘I do get to choose what I do with it.’

  ‘But it feels like you’re wasting your life doing this.’

  ‘Maybe so, but it is my life. And I’ve just explained to you why I do what I do. Can’t you just accept it? And not give Shane a hard time for helping me?’

  My sister mashes her lips together as she stares at me. She’s having an internal battle about what she wants to say and what she should say.

  ‘Look, Mace, this will all be over after this year. I will be done with it all. I just need to give it one last proper big try.’ That’s if Pope will even stick to the deal.

  ‘OK, all right.’ She shrugs – for effect, not because she doesn’t care or even accepts that it’s my life to ‘waste’. ‘I’ll go and find the nurse to ask about you being allowed to go home.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say and relax back against the bed.

  ‘You’d better get on your phone.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You better call or text your boyfriend so he can come be with you. You heard them earlier, you can’t go home on your own, so either he comes to be with you like you said, or you come home with me.’ She smiles sweetly, like she used to when she was a little girl. ‘Your choice.’

  Nell

  Wednesday, 25 April

  Zach comes through the glass doors of A&E almost at a run. Macy and I are sitting in the waiting area at the top of the long hill you have to walk up to get to the casualty department.

  We’ve run out of things to talk about, mainly, I think, because she’s been waiting for me to admit I don’t have a boyfriend.

  When I texted Zach and said I was at the hospital and could he come over at some point to drive me home, he called me back straight away to say he was coming. I asked, ‘Aren’t you at work?’, and he said yes but he was coming anyway.

  And here he is, dress
ed in a dark grey suit, white shirt and red tie. Looking impossibly handsome. He pauses in the doorway for a moment, looks around and then strides towards us when I call his name.

  ‘Told you,’ I mumble at Macy while her eyes nearly bulge out of her head.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Zach asks. I stand to greet him and he immediately wraps me up in a hug. ‘What happened? Are you all right?’ He loosens his grip on me slightly to look at my face. He does a double take when he clocks the swelling around my eye, my puffed-up lip, the thin white strips that are holding the skin above my eye together. ‘Did someone hit you?’ he asks.

  ‘No, no. They shoved me aside while they were running out of my flat – the door frame did this.’

  He hugs me again. ‘What did the doctors say?’

  ‘That I can go home as long as someone stays with me for at least forty-eight hours.’

  ‘Done. We can stay at my place. I should be able to get a couple of people to cover my lessons.’

  His concern and willingness to upend his life for me is both unexpected and surprising. ‘Erm, that’s not necessary,’ I say. ‘I just need a lift home.’

  Zach is about to protest when Macy, clearly a bit perturbed at being ignored, loudly clears her throat. I step out of Zach’s hold and point to my sister. ‘Oh, sorry, Zach, this is my sister, Macy. Macy, Zach.’

  Zach sticks his hand out and smiles. ‘Oh, hello. Nice to meet you.’ If he remembers that it was her who rang and rang the morning after the night we met, he doesn’t let on.

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ Macy replies. It’s her turn to double-take – when she realises Zach has no eyebrows or eyelashes as well as no hair. ‘I had, erm, better be going then if you’re going to take Nell home.’

  ‘I don’t think you should go home,’ he says. He turns to my sister. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t think she should go home if the place has been burgled. But she won’t listen to me. The only reason she’s not coming home with me is because she said you’d help her clean up.’