Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

I eschewed the Telegraph today in favour of alternative reading matter. I had spent an obscene amount of money on a small selection of women’s magazines, flimsy and lurid ones, thick, glossy ones, all of them promising a range of wonders, simple but life-enhancing changes. I had never purchased such items before, although I had, of course, leafed through a few in hospital waiting rooms and other institutional settings. I noted that, disappointingly, none of them had a cryptic crossword; indeed, one contained a ‘soapstar word search’ that would insult the intelligence of a seven-year-old. I could have bought three bottles of wine or a litre of premium-brand vodka for the price of that little pile. Nevertheless, after careful consideration, I’d worked out that they were the most reliable and accessible source of the information that I needed.

These magazines could tell me which clothes and shoes to wear, how to have my hair styled in order to fit in. They could show me the right kind of makeup to buy and how to apply it. This way, I would disappear into everywoman acceptability. I would not be stared at. The goal, ultimately, was successful camouflage as a human woman.

Mummy has always told me that I am ugly, freakish, vile. She’s done so from my earliest years, even before I acquired my scars. So I felt very happy about making these changes. Excited. I was a blank canvas.

At home that evening, I looked into the mirror above the washbasin while I washed my damaged hands. There I was: Eleanor Oliphant. Long, straight, light brown hair that runs all the way down to my waist, pale skin, my face a scarred palimpsest of fire. A nose that’s too small and eyes that are too big. Ears: unexceptional. Around average height, approximately average weight. I aspire to average … I’ve been the focus of far too much attention in my time. Pass me over, move along please, nothing to see here.

I don’t often look in the mirror, as a rule. This has absolutely nothing to do with my scars. It is because of the unsettling gene mix that looks back at me. I see far too much of Mummy’s face there. I cannot distinguish any of my father’s features, because I have never met him and, to the best of my knowledge, no photographic records exist. Mummy almost never mentioned him, and on the rare occasions when he came up, she referred to him only as ‘the gametes donor’. Once I’d looked up this term in her New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (from the Greek , ‘husband’ – did this juvenile etymological adventuring spark my love of classics?), I spent several years wondering about this strange set of circumstances. Even at that tender age, I understood that assisted conception was the antithesis of careless, spontaneous or unplanned parenthood, that it was the most deliberate of decisions, undertaken only by women who were serious and dedicated in their quest to be mothers. I simply could not believe, given the evidence and my own experience, that Mummy had ever been such a woman, could ever have wished for a child so intensely. As it transpired, I was right.

Finally, I summoned the courage to enquire directly as to the circumstances of my creation, and to seek any available information about the mythical donor of spermatozoa, my father. As any child would in such circumstances – possibly even more so, in my particular circumstances – I had been harbouring a small but intense fantasy about the character and appearance of my absent parent. She laughed and laughed.

‘Donor? Did I really say that? It was simply a metaphor, darling,’ she said.

Another word I’d have to look up.

‘I was actually trying to spare your feelings. It was more of a … compulsory donation, shall we say. I had no choice in the matter. Do you understand what I’m telling you?’

I said that I did, but I was fibbing.

‘Where does he live, Mummy?’ I asked, feeling brave. ‘What does he look like, what does he do?’

‘I can’t remember what he looked like,’ she said, her tone dismissive, bored. ‘He smelled like high game and liquefied Roquefort, if that’s any help.’ I must have looked puzzled. She leaned forward, showed me her teeth. ‘That’s rotting flesh and stinking, mouldy cheese to you, darling.’ She paused, regained her equanimity.

‘I don’t know if he’s alive or dead, Eleanor,’ she said. ‘If he’s alive, he’s probably very rich by dubious, unethical means. If he’s dead – and I sincerely hope that he is – then I imagine he’s languishing in the outer ring of the seventh circle of Hell, immersed in a river of boiling blood and fire, taunted by centaurs.’

I realized at that point that it probably wasn’t worth asking if she had kept any photos.

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