That Girl From Nowhere by Dorothy Koomson Page B

know this. I nod at her.
    ‘I told the young girl of the family I used to live next door to about it when she was expecting. Many years ago. I told her and she made one. She decorated it with
perhonen
. Beautiful butterflies. She used such
henkeäsalpaava
colours. She had a baby girl.’
    When I was eight Dad took me on a rollercoaster for the first time. We were on our annual trip to Blackpool and I was giddy with the excitement of finally doing something grown-up and adventurous with my dad. We sat next to each other and he held my hand. Right at the top of the rollercoaster, just before the car began its descent, I felt weightless; as light as air, as though I weighed nothing. As if I was nothing. I was suspended above the Earth and in those seconds I felt like I was flying. I was a butterfly, as light as anything.
    I feel like that now. I am suspended above the Earth, weightless, light as air.
    ‘Does she still have the butterfly box, the little girl?’ My voice is working even though I am as light as air, as weightless as a butterfly.
    ‘I do not know. The baby … They … She went to live somewhere else. They said they sent her back to their country in Africa to grow up with family because the girl was too young to look after her properly. But I do not think that was the case. The girl’s guardian, she was my friend and she was so proud. She did not like scandal. We were never to speak of what happened, nor the baby. I suspect …’ Mrs Lehtinen stops turning my pendant over in her hand and places it carefully on the table beside her open jewellery box. ‘But what do I know? I am just a silly old woman.’
    She is just a silly old woman and I am still as light as air. My body tingles and my lungs do not work properly, but I am as light as air.
    ‘You’re not a silly old woman,’ I say.
Ask her. Ask her what happened to the girl who had the baby. Where she is now. Ask her.
    Mrs Lehtinen’s eyes are suddenly, surprisingly, on me. She is as far away from a silly old woman as it is possible to get. ‘The girl, Abi, the one you look like, she is also the daughter of the woman who made the butterfly box. She had a box, too.’
    I stare at her.
Does she know? Has she guessed who I am? Who I might be?
I do this, though. I’m constantly looking at people and wondering if we’re related, if they could be a half-sibling or a parent. I’ve never had a relative who looks like me, who acts like me, who’s interested in the same things as me. I’m always searching. This is probably an extension of that: I have come across a coincidence and I am using it as a passive way to search for more information on who I am and where I have come from. I didn’t go looking for this, it came to me.
    Of course it’s a coincidence, that’s what most things are in life. We believe in Fate, we believe in kismet, we believe in predetermined happenings, when really, it’s all down to coincidence. There must be hundreds of children out there who slept in butterfly boxes when they were born. Hundreds, if not thousands. I mean, what are the chances of me actually sitting down opposite the neighbour of the woman who gave birth to me? Slim to none, I’d say. And what are the chances of the other child of the woman who gave birth to me working here, too? Not even slim, just nonexistent. I am seeing things that are not there.
    ‘OK, Mrs Lehtinen, are there any pieces of jewellery that you’d like to wear again and I can help you with?’ I am back. I know this is all nonsense, my brain searching for familiarity –
family
– in the world of strangers I have grown up in, when I know who my family are. Here I am, back on solid ground. I am no longer floating, hovering above reality. I am back to doing what I am here to do.
    My hand reaches for my butterfly pendant. It is trembling.
Stop shaking
, I tell my hand.
Stop shaking, you’re showing me up
. Mrs Lehtinen is watching me but my hand won’t stop shaking. I enclose my butterfly