Girl Unknown(12)

‘Have you been drinking?’ I could smell the beer on his breath.

‘A quick one in the common room.’

I snapped open a can of tonic and began pouring it into the gin.

‘I had to take the man for a drink – out of courtesy, Caroline. He’d come over from England to do the viva as a favour.’

‘I tried calling you.’

‘Did you? I must have had the phone on silent.’

He moved past me to the sink, filled a glass with water and gulped it down.

‘You forgot, didn’t you?’

He put the empty glass on the draining-board. ‘I’ll run upstairs and change.’

For a Friday-evening supper, I had decided to go for something fairly casual – mussels in white wine to start, then lamb chops and a fennel salad with some crusty bread. A cheese board, and for dessert, toasted brioche with figs and pistachio ice-cream.

Throughout the meal the conversation pitched and rolled between various topics: the water charges, local politics, gossip about a shared acquaintance whose prurient misdeeds had recently made headlines. David, having recovered from his lateness – or perhaps in a bid to make amends – was lively and animated, steering the conversation, never allowing it to flag. Repartee sparked back and forth between him and Chris, with Peter joining in from time to time. It was, on the whole, a very male-dominated discourse. Anna seemed the type of person who was more interested in listening and agreeing, laughing in all the right places, rather than adding much by way of her own opinion. Susannah was unusually quiet. Chris is always the heart of the party – mocking, grandiose – and when things are good between them, Susannah is his perfect partner, taking his cues, matching his quips with barbs of her own, softened by the tongue-in-cheek manner of her delivery. They are the perfect dinner guests – funny, engaging, interesting. But that evening, from the tightness in Susannah’s face, the way her eyes narrowed over her glass as she looked at him, I knew it wasn’t going to be like that. At first it was just casual sniping, nothing major, but gradually over the course of the meal, as she emptied her glass, then emptied it again, she seemed to withdraw into a troubled silence.

After the coffee was finished, over whiskey and port, talk turned to a recent case where photographs of schoolgirls in Northern Ireland had ended up on a voyeuristic website regularly trawled by paedophiles. Anna’s niece was one of the girls whose image had been stolen. ‘It’s shocking,’ she told us. ‘A fifteen-year-old girl, having her image abused in that manner.’

‘What was the photo of,’ Chris said, ‘if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘Of nothing! Girls playing around, messing. It was innocent stuff.’

‘Hmm.’ Chris looked sceptical, and I saw a flare of colour appear at Anna’s throat.

‘Why? What are you saying?’

‘Well,’ he said, shrugging. ‘Teenage girls messing around? It may seem innocent to you, but let’s be completely honest here. A lot of girls have shed their innocence by the time they’re fifteen. You see them hanging around in packs – they’re well aware of their power –’

‘Their power?’

‘Yes! They understand inherently the power they wield over boys and men. What they possess – youthful bodies, burgeoning sexuality – it’s highly potent. My God, you just have to look at how they’re dressed to see they flaunt it. And why shouldn’t they?’

‘It’s one thing for a girl to wear a mini-skirt on O’Connell Street,’ Anna countered, ‘but it’s quite another for some pervert to steal her photograph and put it up on his grubby little website for all his friends to lech over.’

‘Do you know what annoys me?’ Chris said, leaning forward with a new intensity. ‘It’s these people who take photographs of themselves with their smartphones and post them on Facebook or whatever, send them to their friends, then whine when someone else views them.’

‘Hang on a minute.’ Anna sat up a little straighter.

‘It’s the same with these celebrities and their nude pics. For Christ’s sake, who could be stupid enough to post those shots of themselves, and then be shocked when they enter the public realm?’

‘It’s hardly the same thing,’ Peter said reasonably.

‘No, just listen to me,’ Chris continued, warming now to his subject. ‘Caroline, does Holly have a smartphone?’

‘Yes, but we monitor her use of it,’ I hastened to add. ‘She understands we can access her phone at any time, read her texts, her IMs, her Facebook posts, everything.’

‘Okay. And does she ever use her phone to take pictures?’

‘Of course, but they’re very innocent. She’s eleven, for God’s sake! And she doesn’t post them online – she’s not allowed to put pictures up on any social networking sites.’

‘Not now, maybe. But how long are you going to be able to police it?’

‘For as long as we pay her phone bill,’ David interjected, grinning and taking a slug of whiskey.

‘What if she’s staying at a friend’s house?’ Chris went on. ‘That happens still, right?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed, cautiously, not liking where he was going with this.

‘A sleepover with a group of girls. Giddiness sets in. The tone of the conversation changes. They start talking about boys they fancy. Someone gets out a smartphone. Pictures are taken. Someone – a girl whose parents aren’t as vigilant – posts them on Facebook. And next thing you know, you’ve got a picture of your daughter in her nightie doing the rounds of the internet.’