That Girl From Nowhere Read Online Free Page B

be so sensitive
,’ I should say to her. Instead, I tuck it away under my T-shirt, out of her sight, out of her mind.
    Now the butterfly is hidden away, she goes back to admonishing me while rubbing my shoulder. ‘Clemency, you should know by now that you mustn’t be so touchy about things,’ Mum tells me. ‘You should try to grow a thicker skin, so you aren’t so sensitive.’
    ‘OK,’ I say to her, because it’s easier than explaining that while I have normal skin like everyone else, I spend a lot of time pretending the snide comments, the sly digs and the outright vicious remarks about not knowing who my ‘real’ parents are don’t bother me. Mum doesn’t realise that I spend my life feigning the existence of a thick, impenetrable outer layer so that I can be seen to be able to ‘take a joke’, ‘not be so sensitive’, ‘not take everything to heart’. She has no idea that for years I would cry alone because no one understood that every comment made me feel worthless and made me believe that those snipes were true.
    And anyway, all this talk about not being oversensitive would be more credible if it wasn’t coming from the woman who can’t even bear to hear the word ‘adoption’, let alone talk about it in relation to her only daughter. That’s why she has ‘issues’ with my butterfly obsession – it’s a reminder of the fact I’m not biologically hers.
    ‘Clemency,’ she says, before I shut the door behind myself.
    ‘Yes, Mum?’ I reply tiredly. There’s only so much I can take, only so much the positivity I’ve stretched over this new start can handle before it peels away, and starts flapping about uselessly like unsecured tarpaulin in the wind.
    ‘Your father would have loved it here,’ she says. ‘He adored the sea. He always wanted to live by the sea again before … He would have been so proud of you.’ She smiles. ‘Even more proud of you than he was.’
    I nod. ‘Thanks, Mum,’ I mumble, and leave.
    I don’t need her to tell me Dad was proud of me. I knew he was. He told me so all the time. Right up until he died.

4
     
Abi
     
    To: Jonas Zebila
    From: Abi Zebila
    Subject: Please reply. PLEASE!!!!!
    Friday, 29 May 2015
     
    Dear J,
    Another email from me where I hope all is well with you. You didn’t tell me about your purple day. All is not well here, unfortunately. Gran was rushed to hospital while I was at work yesterday.
    Daddy didn’t even bother to leave work. Mummy had to call my office to get me to pick up Lily-Rose. I had to bring her back to work with me because I was up to my ears in client reports and billing, and the billing had to go out yesterday. Lily had a great old time, she was the centre of attention from all the residents. Mrs Lehtinen was the worst for it, practically adopted her there and then, showing her off as something as close to a great-grand-daughter as she could get.
    Did I tell you Mrs Lehtinen is here at the home now? Do you remember her? She was from Finland and her family lived next door and she was great friends with Gran. Her family moved away when I was about five or six. She loved you, I remember that. She’s not been here long but on the first day she recognised me even though I hope I’ve changed a little in twenty years. I didn’t really remember her until she reminded me that it was her who had given Mummy the idea for those sleep boxes that we slept in as babies. And then, of course, she asked about you and it all came flooding back: how you were always her favourite because you used to wolf down those God-awful Jim bars she kept giving us. (I looked them up on the net to find out why they were so boak. Marmalade foam covered in chocolate. I can’t believe Mummy let us eat them.)
    Like I say, Mrs L practically stole Lily-Rose from me and kept telling her stories about what I got up to when I was her age. It would have been embarrassing if they didn’t all show me as being the most amazing five-year-old!!
    On the way home