ROSALIND STOPPS has always wanted to tell the stories of the less heard. For many years she worked with children with disabilities and their families.
She has five grown up children, three grandchildren and an MA in creative writing from Lancaster University. Rosalind’s short stories have been published in five anthologies and read at live literature events in London, Leeds, Hong Kong and New York. She lives in South East London with large numbers of humans and dogs.
When she is not writing fiction she is, mostly, reading it or working as a host at London’s South Bank Arts Centre. The Stranger She Knew is her debut novel.
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published as Hello, My Name is May in Great Britain by HQ in 2019
Copyright © Rosalind Stopps 2019
Rosalind Stopps asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © April 2019 ISBN: 9780008302580
For Dom and Tom, with love.
Contents
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Acknowledgements
About the Publisher
September 2017
Lewisham
I could hear the words in my head but they wouldn’t come out.
I’m fine, I wanted to say, you can leave me here, I’ll be OK. It was the blood, that was all, I could smell blood, and I’ve always hated that. I wanted to explain to them. It makes me feel funny, but not funny ha ha, I would have said but they’ve got no sense of humour, young people. I didn’t like the way the man was looking at me. I’m not just a stupid old woman, I tried to say. I may not have been speaking very clearly but there was no need for him to look at me like that. I tried to tell him, don’t look at me like that, young man. I wanted to say it in quite a stern way but my mouth was doing that thing again of not working properly, as though I was drunk or I’d had something nasty done at the dentist. All that came out was a slur of s’s and some spit. I noticed he didn’t like the spit much, ambulance man or no ambulance man, he didn’t like that at all. I’d say he flinched, leaned back a bit, but he couldn’t go far because he was kneeling next to me on the floor.
It made me laugh that, him kneeling, it’s not a thing you see much. Reminds me of going to church when I was a kid, I tried to say, but the spitty thing was still going on. Try to relax, he said to me, try and calm down, deep breaths, we’ll get you sorted. I gave up on talking, tried to roll my eyes instead but of course that made him call his colleague over, the young woman with the thick ankles. She was wearing a skirt and I was surprised at that. I’m sure they’re allowed to wear trousers these days and if I was her I would have done. Cover up those ankles. I might have rolled my eyes again. They probably thought I was dying or something, because it was all rushing around after the eye rolling, no more of the calm down stuff, just lobbing me onto a stretcher like I was already gone and couldn’t feel anything. At least I was wearing trousers, I thought, and it made me laugh. It felt like a laugh inside. I don’t know what it looked like on the outside.
I might have gone to sleep for a moment or two after that. I’m surprised I was tired because I’d been doing nothing but lie around on the floor resting since I fell. I didn’t know how long I had been there but it must have been quite a while. Someone told me later I’d been there for two whole days and two nights. I’m not sure if that’s right or if it’s just another one of the things they say to old people to keep them in order. I’m still thinking about that one. I certainly remember watching the clock on the wall and thinking that it was going slowly, and that I might need to wind it up or put a new battery in it. I couldn’t remember which. And I can remember hearing someone push something through the letterbox. It was probably only a flyer for some kind