Girl Unknown(13)

‘Christ,’ David said, shaking his head.

‘So what are you saying? That it’s inevitable?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘Maybe it is.’

‘My niece wasn’t pictured in her nightie,’ Anna added. ‘I’d just like to make that clear.’

‘I heard there was flesh shown in those pictures,’ Chris countered.

‘That doesn’t mean they were having a pillow-fight in their underwear!’

‘Now there’s a thought,’ Chris said, grinning and winking at Peter.

Peter stiffened. I looked at Chris and wondered how much he’d had to drink. It had been a few months since I’d seen him and there was a new fleshiness to him, shadows around his eyes that suggested ill health or unhappiness. He was a bit of a shambles, what with the weight he’d put on, the doughy pallor of his complexion. He had always possessed a kind of louche charm, relaxed good looks and a face enlivened by humour, but in the half-light thrown by the lamps and the candles, he looked washed-up, bedraggled, lost.

‘I think you’re making too much of this,’ David told him, adopting a friendly, reasoned approach. ‘The photos were probably of girls in their hockey gear, or something equally innocent. The fact is the trolls and sickos trawling those websites will corrupt even the most innocent image into something titillating, but it’s a perversion in their own minds, nothing these girls are projecting.’

Chris laughed then, a honk of disbelief. ‘Oh come on, Dave!’ he said, slamming one hand on the table, still playful although a hardness had entered his voice, his eye. ‘Can you hear yourself?’

‘What?’

‘You make it sound like they’re all angels! You, of all people, should know about the scheming ways of teenage girls!’

David paused, just briefly, his glass halfway to his mouth. Then he laughed. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

But something had entered that pause. A shiver of uncertainty. A cool doubt I had felt of late.

Chris was off now, explaining how David, as a university lecturer, must rub shoulders every day with teenage girls, harlots, as he described them, calling into his office, batting their eyelids at him in a bid to up their grades or be excused from a tutorial or whatever. Good-natured banter, I suppose, but most of it flew straight past me. I couldn’t stop looking at David. The change was so subtle that only a wife would have noticed. The flush of colour in his cheeks from the drink had faded, most of the blood leaving his face. His lips had thinned slightly, and a new sharpness entered his eyes. He seemed wary, shaken even. I stared at him and it came to me then: my husband was keeping something from me.

How long did the moment last? The opening out of that realization within me, everything falling into place: his recent behaviour, the silences, the sudden snapping, the forgetfulness. I had put it down to the pressures of work, the consuming nature of his passion for history. Now I saw it was something else. I knew all the signs of concealment – we had been there before. I saw it and felt the heat of sudden anger flare within me. I wasn’t afraid – not then. That would come later, when I knew her, when I felt the insidious creep of her presence through our lives. What I felt more than anything was shock.

I don’t know what Chris said next – I missed it in the storm of my own private feeling – but whatever it was, it made Susannah snap.

‘Oh, my God,’ she said, the disgust in her voice hauling me out of my reverie. ‘Do you even listen to yourself, Christopher? Have you any notion at all of how ridiculous you sound? How sad and creepy you come across?’

‘It’s called honesty, my dear,’ he replied, his voice elevated and a hard smile on his face. ‘Something you wouldn’t recognize in your line of work.’

Susannah is a corporate lawyer, openly acknowledged as the real breadwinner of the two. Chris, who worked for a newspaper in a sub-editorial role that matched his whimsical nature, liked to refer to himself as a kept man, often joking how work for him was like a hobby. There were no such jokes that night.

Turning to Peter and Anna, who seemed increasingly uncomfortable, he explained: ‘Oh, I know she looks like a woman, but Susannah is actually a shark.’

Susannah is striking, with strong dark features and a sharp angular haircut. On that occasion, her features appeared even more pronounced than usual, lipstick in a deep plum, her mouth a grim slash in her face. ‘Listening to you talk of teenage girls in such a manner, you’re just another drunken lech,’ she said. ‘God, when I hear you say these things, it makes me so fucking thankful we never had children.’

His eyes grew small. ‘We never had children, Susannah, because I didn’t want them. I knew any child I had with you might be born with a dorsal fin and several rows of teeth.’

There was a moment of silence, like a held breath, before Susannah stood up so suddenly her chair swung backwards and Peter had to grab it before it fell. Without saying a word, she left the room.

Chris broke the silence. ‘Oops,’ he said, and tried to laugh, but it came out as a gasp.

‘Are you all right?’ David asked.

Chris picked up the dessert spoon from his plate, turned it over, then put it back. In the hall, the front door slammed.

‘One of us should go after her,’ I said.

Looking at his plate, Chris said: ‘Be my guest.’