Girl Unknown(10)

‘You came.’ She smiled, getting to her feet.

‘Zo?,’ I said.

‘I saved you a seat.’ She gestured to a stool. ‘I’m so glad you’re here. I wasn’t sure you’d come. Let me get you a drink.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Please. It’s the least I can do.’

‘I’ll get my own,’ I said, catching a barman’s attention. I ordered a pint and another bottle for Zo?.

She leaned on the table, one hand wrapped around her beer, her face open and expectant. About us, voices rose. Laughter rang out, and brass instruments played boisterous ragtime through hidden speakers. We almost had to shout to be heard.

‘I had no idea this place would be so busy,’ she said. ‘I’d have picked somewhere quieter.’

The truth was, I felt protected by the noise and the clamour of people. Somehow, I didn’t want to be cloistered in some quiet snug with a student, a stranger. I couldn’t tell who might be watching.

‘I just thought that, as it’s close to college, it would be convenient.’

Our drinks arrived, and before the glass had reached my mouth, she was raising her bottle. ‘Cheers.’

‘Sláinte,’ I said, with a strange premonition of how I might have taken Robbie for his first drink, to a dark pub, where a father and son could bond. Instead, here I was with a girl I barely knew.

‘I wanted to apologize,’ she began, ‘for the other day. Taking you unawares like that. It was unfair. I’m really sorry,’ she said, small creases appearing at the sides of her eyes.

She wore a plain red sweater, and I wondered briefly whether those big army boots were still on her feet. ‘You’re not mocking me, Zo?, are you?’

‘God, no!’ Her eyes became round, but the anxious smile hovered at the corners of her mouth. ‘I just think we got off on the wrong footing.’

‘What you’re saying about me … about me being your father, it’s very serious.’

‘I know, I know.’ She looked down at the table, shaking her head.

I drank deeply and waited. I had prepared something to say, but I wanted to get it right. However, she spoke next and what she said surprised me: ‘I want you to know that you don’t need to be afraid …’

‘Afraid?’ I said.

‘Of me,’ she said, in a small voice. ‘I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to get you into any trouble.’

‘What sort of trouble could you get me into? I haven’t done anything wrong.’

‘No, I know. I meant that I don’t want to make things difficult for you with the university, or with your wife.’

‘My wife?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Have you told her about me?’

It had been nearly a week. Not a long time in the scale of things, but it had been a painstaking week of concealment and circumspection. All that time I had been keeping it from Caroline, telling myself I was protecting her, but what I was really doing was protecting myself. I hated keeping secrets. In fact, as a couple, I’d thought we were done with all that. The past had already taught me one thing: secrets will out, and by keeping them, there are always repercussions, but I had ignored my own hard-learned lesson. Right then, not telling Caroline seemed like a big mistake.

‘I haven’t told her about you, no,’ I admitted. ‘Not yet. Not until I’m sure …’

‘Until you’re sure?’ she queried. ‘That I’m not making the whole thing up?’

‘You can’t blame me. It’s a shock, and I still have to establish the veracity.’

‘ “Establish the veracity”,’ she said, under her breath, reaching for her bag. For an instant I thought she was going to leave. Instead, she rooted in the tartan canvas satchel until she found a tatty envelope. She reached into it and placed a document on the table in front of us. ‘My birth certificate.’

I ran my fingers over it. The date read ‘3 March 1995’. My eyes sought the details of paternity, but there was nothing conclusive: ‘Father Unknown’.

Before I could say that the document didn’t prove anything, she said: ‘You might recognize these.’ She placed a strip of photographs on the certificate. ‘They were taken in May 1994. If you look at the back, you’ll see Linda’s handwriting.’

Four square photographs from a booth in a railway station. My youthful face beaming back at me. A set of different poses – two students larking around. I’d sported a beard that year – strange to see it now. It wasn’t just the beard that was different: my eyes seemed wider, my face more open. There was humour and fun in it, and for a second I was back in that booth, Linda on my knee, my arms feeling her tremble with laughter as she half turned to me, her face against mine, telling me to be serious now. I remembered how she had held me close, our smiles captured as the flash startled us, hanging on to each other, it seemed, for dear life.

‘I do remember … It’s just that it’s difficult for me,’ I said, hardly daring to touch the photographs. I wanted to say something else. I wanted to tell her that, if she really was my daughter, everything would be all right. We would sort it all out. But the words wouldn’t come. Instead I ended up sounding like the uptight academic I didn’t want to be, a supercilious father-figure. My phone rang. It was Caroline. I hadn’t told her I was going out. I’d have to say I was working late, or taking the external examiner out for a drink.