Losing My Identity Read online

  Losing My Identity

  Fiona Cameron

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  This edition first published in the UK 2019 by Flying Swan Press, Apt 3657, Chynoweth House, Trevisomme Park, Truro, TR4 8UN

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Copyright © Fiona Cameron 2019

  The moral right of Fiona Cameron to be recognised as the author of this work has been asserted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  This novel is a work of fiction and a product of the author’s creativity. Names, places, locations and characters are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-0-9933314-7-3

  One

  Leila knew it was all in her mind. No one had ever smoked tobacco inside her home. But that ethereal, imagined blue drift of Balkan Sobranie cigarette smoke was enough to bring tears to her eyes. She turned her head and burrowed her nose into the pillow, to catch a final vestige of the Eau Sauvage cologne she sprayed there at night. That, at least, she could control. Occasionally it triggered a dream about Sam; always Sam the way he’d been when they were first together.

  Dreams were precious, because Leila was a chronic insomniac. Years before, she’d stopped worrying about not sleeping. She’d bought the most luxurious bed she could find and kept a Roberts Sports Radio on the bedside table, tuned to Radio 4 and shackled to the least uncomfortable earbuds money could buy. Not that the earbuds were strictly necessary, since she lived alone. But it seemed like good manners. There were neighbours, and the sound-proofing between floors in these old Glasgow tenement flats was non-existent.

  She tended to doze for a couple of hours after three a.m. That’s when the dreams would come, if come they did. As often as not the first sound she was conscious of was the calming, liturgical cadence of the shipping forecast – though why that wakened her she’d never figured out. So she had surfaced that morning to the phantasm of Turkish tobacco accompanied by the words ‘low over Fitzroy one thousand and twenty-four, losing its identity’, and thought, That’s the very worst mishap that can befall. To lose your identity. I wonder what I’ll tell myself as I’m dying? Who will I blame, as my mother blamed me?

  The GP had signed her mother’s death certificate specifying ‘Myocardial infarction.’ And she had been in her hundredth year, after all. But as far as Leila knew, there had been nothing specifically wrong with Greer’s heart (apart from an element of hardness towards her only daughter, and that was hardly a medical condition). It wasn’t as if she’d lain for more than an hour or two; the daily woman Leila paid for had found her dead in her bed that first morning. Surely, if there had been signs of any untoward circumstances the daily wouldn’t have dared conceal them? But then, there were those four handwritten A4 sheets Leila had found, right at the top of the first dressing-table drawer she’d have been likely to go to, because it was where her mother kept the keys to her desk. She’d been so disturbed by what Greer had written that she’d burned them at once. She regretted it now…

  It’s only after someone dies you remember all the questions you meant to ask. And – sometimes – to say, ‘Sorry’.

  Leila knew she’d die alone too. The thought didn’t trigger self-pity; she’d always found that the least attractive of vices. She had chosen her path, and she was happy with it.

  After all, she came from a long line of women who were self-sufficient and had no need of other people – particularly of men. Her grandmother Flora, her mother. Her great-grandmother too, by the sound of it. Of the three, she’d inherited Flora’s steady, sensible nature. A survivor. A coper. A lone wolf.

  The only time she experienced a frisson of loneliness was when she’d bought a new Iittala glass bird and set it in its place in the cabinet and turned on the LED lights. She’d feel a pang because there was no one to share in admiring her acquisition. It passed quickly. And if she was set in her ways, then they were good ways. They were her ways, honed by six decades of practice.

  The only person in the world you can depend on is yourself, as Flora would say.

  She had everything she needed: work that brought a secure living; money in the bank; a healthy pension lined up. She was her own boss, as a consultant for Scheiffers Pharmaceuticals, and she made her own hours. The days were long past where she’d have to rise in the middle of the night to perform a Caesarean on a valuable cow, or administer the coup de grâce to a cat that had been run over. She could please herself whether she retired the following year at sixty-five or kept going till she dropped. She owned the freehold of a pleasant home, on which not one penny was owed. She enjoyed cooking, and wasn’t one of those sad old maids who always had just enough in the fridge to feed one, and drank tea made in a chipped brown pot. No! She concocted delicious meals for herself and enjoyed them all the more because there was no need to make idle chit-chat, or worry about whether everyone else shared her tastes. No debts, no pets, no ties. She could afford to live well, dress well, and collect studio glass birds made in Finland (though she’d never paid a silly price for one; she was a Scot, after all! She’d seen the rare ones, the limited editions, on eBay for ridiculous amounts). Beholden to no one, pet, that’s the best way to be. Another of Flora’s aphorisms.

  Life was good.

  Except – Leila’s head had been filled with pragmatic concerns ever since that day six weeks back, just before Christmas in fact, when she’d been idling on the internet and found the bleak digitised newspaper announcement about her friend and former colleague, Beatrice. She had been overwhelmed by a vast cloud of guilt (for hadn’t there been that cry for help the previous year?), and written bland letters of enquiry to the solicitors who’d placed the announcement, and to the coroner’s office in Bournemouth. What she’d really wanted to ask was: natural causes? Suicide? She’d already trawled the websites of local and national newspapers without finding any other reference, so she was confident it was nothing more dramatic.

  ‘Died on or about 5th March.’ That was the phrase that had opened the floodgates of mild panic. ‘On or about’. As a loner, Leila knew what that signified. There, but for the grace of God…

  Life is a journey, not a destination. Yet more Grannie wisdom.

  A journey none of us asked to be sent on. You didn’t even get a tannoy announcement: ‘This train is now arriving at the Pearly Gates, where Leila Ghazali terminates. Please remember to take all your personal baggage with you…’

  She had kept up with just one person from university – Catherine Fitzherbert – and Catherine wouldn’t worry if she didn’t hear from her for months on end. No one from school (nor they with her; after all, they could have found her if they’d wanted to. She had changed neither her name nor her permanent address).

  She didn’t know any of her neighbours, other than to nod to, though she supposed several of them knew her by name. A reclusive woman of
a certain age is often the object of curiosity, particularly when her appearance marks her out as essentially an outsider (and she was unlikely to forget that the only place she’d ever had racial abuse yelled at her in the street was in Glasgow. ‘Paki’, a bunch of kids had called after her as she walked across George Square one Saturday afternoon, years before. Most people guessed Portuguese or Greek when they first met her…).

  In fact, Leila was possibly the oldest continuous (in a manner of speaking) resident in the whole of Roseisle Drive. There would be no one else left who remembered her grandmother. Precious few who really knew her mother either, though some would have stowed that memory because she was famous. She was in the papers – even half-page obituaries in the Scotsman and the Times. Greer Gibson: Last of the Glasgow Girls? They’d mentioned with surprise that the ‘internationally-known artist’ lived in the same flat in unfashionable Dennistoun that had been her home since early childhood.

  Leila supposed she ‘knew’ the young couple in the flat that lay immediately above hers, entered off the close; they held a key to her house. But then, they were aware her work often took her away for days at a time. Would they notice if it were weeks? Would they think to call the police before there was a smell?

  The farmers she visited on her work-rounds wouldn’t worry if she didn’t show up. They might start to worry if two visits were missed; that’d make it at least two months. Scheiffers would send increasingly irritable emails demanding an upload of the latest test data. They wouldn’t send a human. A wreath, possibly, when her body was finally discovered, after the kitchen window was so thick with bluebottles that no light entered.

  She knew in her head that whatever had happened to Beatrice was not actually her fault, just as the circumstances of Greer’s death were not her fault. And perhaps others, because if she’d been with Sam that day, he might not have been strolling towards Sassine Square at precisely that moment; it had possibly been the first time she’d seriously considered accepting his invitation to visit Beirut, even though they were no longer a couple, and it was years after the war was technically over…but her work had, as always, intervened. ‘Next time,’ she’d promised; but there would be no next time. And to think of all the days when she’d harangued him about his chain-smoking, shrieking that it would kill him!

  ‘Not your fault,’ her brain reassured. Her gut told a different story. Murder can take many forms, passive as well as active. She had learnt that from a long career dealing with sick and dying animals.

  Perhaps there were worse outcomes than an end like Beatrice’s or Greer’s, in one’s own space, one’s own bed. Ending up like a cabbage in a ‘care home’ where nobody cared. Might as well be buried alive. Could you write it into a will that you didn’t want that? Who checked to ensure your last wishes were fulfilled? She could nominate Catherine, but she was the same age, and nowadays they saw each other twice a year, tops.

  Thoughts like those made her miss Sam terribly, although she recognised that he’d have been completely unreliable as the holder of a power of attorney. Possibly the way he’d gone was best. Out of the blue, instantaneous. Sufficiently instantaneous as to be painless (at least, that’s the only way Leila could bear to conceive of it). Had he thought of her in that last nano-second, as she was sure she would of him, when her time came?

  Stop it, Leila. Morbid is bad.

  In any case, what finally did for Beatrice could have been any manner of happenstance. A heart attack. People die of heart attacks in their late sixties.

  Or an accident. Leila prodded the back of her head gingerly. There was still a tender patch, even after two days. An action as mundane as changing a lightbulb could kill you, if you weren’t concentrating fully. Maybe that’s how Beatrice died: a simple mis-step. A moment of inattention when she was at the top of a stepladder. It happens.

  That was the worst of living alone. There could be any number of deathtraps. Leila had read recently about a woman who had a stroke while she was in her bathroom; the door had a round handle, and she couldn’t grasp it to get out, reach a phone to summon help. She’d died slowly, where she’d fallen.

  Every door in the Roseisle Drive flat had its original round handle – some brass, some ceramic. She really ought to do something about that. Replace them with lever handles? Or just stop closing the door of whatever room she was in. Although she’d lived alone for more than sixty per cent of her life, Leila habitually not only closed the bathroom door, but locked it. Bad call!

  She knew Beatrice’s death had been no accident or freak of nature.

  The click of the letter box had her cantering into the hall. An official-looking envelope; heavy, luxurious paper.

  Dear Ms Ghazali

  Thank you for your enquiry. I can confirm that Miss Beatrice Atkins died around 5th March 2013, and this firm dealt with the administration of her Estate.

  Unfortunately, there are no staff remaining here with any knowledge of the Estate, and this is all the information I can find.

  Yours sincerely

  Lynnzee Pert, Trainee Legal Executive, Barclay, Jones and Stevens, Solicitors, Old Bank House, Syme Street, Dorchester

  What kind of solicitors were these? All the staff who’d been there in 2013 had buggered off by 2014? The accurate translation was: Hoping to make a few illicit claims on her loot were you, you with the Arab-sounding name? Ghazali indeed.

  She could have changed her name, of course – she’d not claim that the thought had never crossed her mind. Easy as pie, in Scotland. You didn’t even need a solicitor. Less paperwork than an Islamic divorce. But Leila was stubborn. Apart from dropping the ‘El’ while she was at university, she’d never contemplated calling herself anything more conventional. She’d asked Greer once – probably the year she moved up to the secondary department of school – why she hadn’t registered her as Leila Gibson. Her mother had fixed her with that icy turquoise stare. ‘Because everyone would have thought you were illegitimate.’ They’d probably thought that anyway, since her parents had split up before she was born, and Youssri El-Ghazali had never visited Glasgow, to the best of her knowledge.

  In any case her unusual handle was an intrinsic part of her identity, along with her very un-Scottish colouring and the pink coveralls and fuchsia-bright Hunter boots she wore for work. ‘Here comes the pink lady,’ the farmers would say. There were worse nicknames! Pink was her favourite colour. She’d never perceived it as a girly shade. It was the colour of power, because it was feminine, and females were by far the stronger sex.

  On a sudden, she remembered that it was Thursday. Spooked by the Beatrice thing, she’d made a stupid New Year’s resolution to join a group that met frequently. Know new people, interact with them. Get a little more framework in her life, without letting anyone so close they could hurt her. She’d looked at the classifieds in the Citizen for inspiration, and that’s how she’d found the Kelvin Chorale.

  And tonight she was supposed to be attending her first choir practice. She decided not to go. After all, the mere act of joining a choir wasn’t going to mean the difference between dying amidst a group of adoring friends or being found months later with her face chewed off by maggots. Or rats. Leila knew that the story about never being more than six feet away from a rat was urban myth. It was more like a hundred-and-sixty feet. But there were rats, particularly in older buildings in areas of dense urbanisation, like Dennistoun.

  She decided to turn up after all, just that one time, to spite Phyllida Logan, the uppity bisom who’d held court at the audition the previous week, with her mouth-only smiles and her over-politically-correct efforts to ensure she pronounced ‘Ghazali’ just as it should be.

  Leila found she’d been absent-mindedly folding and refolding the solicitors’ envelope. They say you can’t fold a piece of paper more than seven times. She counted the number of folds she’d achieved. Six. I wonder how many times you can fold and refold an identity before it tears? Just go this once, Leila. If you hate it, you need never go bac
k.

  She washed her hair, spent the rest of the morning doing her admin and data entry for Scheiffers, then wasted the entire afternoon deciding what to wear. In the end, she opted for black trousers and a cream silk blouse. Professional and stylish – but no hint of mutton/lamb dichotomy. It being a Glasgow February, she selected black leather boots with a small stacked heel, a hip-length cream cashmere cardigan and her Burberry – the one that had given faithful service for more than thirty years and looked as good as the day it was new. It had been a sensible buy, that coat. An investment.

  She giggled to herself as she drove into the city centre. Kelvin bloody Chorale. She remembered childhood journeys with Flora to a shop down a flight of steps beside the River Kelvin, where the painted china was fired and new paint pigment purchased, in glass phials like miniature test tubes. Colours with magical names: Ashes of Roses, Rose du Barry, Heliotrope, Burnt Sienna, Chrome Yellow, Chinese White… You could smell the Kelvin long before you saw it in those days. Now it had all been cleaned up. Fish lived in it once more. But Kelvinside had always been Kelvinside – though unless you were a Glaswegian, the cynicism in the term ‘Kelvinside accent’ would probably escape you. Phyllida most assuredly had a Kelvinside accent.

  The choir’s website was pricelessly twee. The Kelvin Chorale is a mixed voice choir celebrating its tenth season of music. We undertake several public performances each year in a wide variety of venues. Since 2008, we have also taken part in the annual West of Scotland “Choir of the year” competition. In 2013, we were awarded “highly commended” status.