Girl Unknown(16)

‘I know as a first measure it’s not ideal,’ I said. ‘But I’ve thought about it, Caroline. The assertion Zo? is making, it could be a complete fiction. We need to know if she’s telling the truth.’

‘So when did this take place?’ She gestured to the note discarded on the table – 6.30 in Madigans.

‘Yesterday. I met her at the pub before the dinner party.’

‘You told me you were taking a visiting professor out for a drink.’

‘Well, I didn’t. I met Zo?.’

‘Why didn’t tell you me? Why did you have to lie?’

‘We had guests in the next room, Caroline. Do you really think that was the time for me to bring this up with you?’

Her fingers tapped the table. ‘And you’re not going to tell her about the test?’

‘I’m not, no.’

‘I see. I just wish you’d come to me earlier,’ she said. ‘Your whole plan … it makes me uneasy.’

I said nothing. What was the point? I had no plan, but the wheels of whatever it was had been set in motion. Caroline held her hands to her face. She was deep in thought – weighing everything up. I stood up and looked back to the sink, the wine glasses refracting the morning light. I thought of that morning in Donegal and, just like that, she was there, a ghostly presence in the background, my old flame, Linda. And when I missed her, when I wondered what might have been, when I had been with someone else, or when I was with my wife, she still seemed to be there, in the shadows, and – it happened more than once – when I made love to someone else, I felt in some strange way as if I were still making love to her.

‘Send the test off,’ Caroline said. ‘Get the preliminary results. But promise me you won’t seek the girl out or spend any time with her that you don’t need to. Not until we know for sure.’

‘I promise,’ I said.

The radio was playing in the background: a listener was complaining about the impending water charges. Another demonstration was being planned in town, he added, and as he did so, it occurred to me that within this house, within the confines of what we called our home, a real and indelible crisis was going on, which would disrupt our family unit irrevocably, but outside, beyond the boundaries of our home, life carried on – people were up in arms about water charges, about employment, about governance and corruption, but the very same people were going about their daily business. Life carried on – no matter what.

‘What are you two talking about?’ Holly said, standing in the doorway with her coat on. I don’t know how long she had been standing there or how much she had heard.

‘I’ll be with you in two minutes,’ Caroline said, and Holly went back to the living room. ‘No contact with the girl,’ she said to me. ‘Not until we find out more.’

‘Agreed,’ I said.

She stood up stiffly, as if the truce she had made with me was unsatisfactory, but one she had to accept whether she liked it or not.

Without looking at me again, she called to Holly, ‘Come on, love. Time to go.’

Holly kissed my cheek before she left and, it occurred to me only then that I had made a promise to Caroline that there was no way I could keep.





7. Caroline


My husband is not a vengeful man. Yet that Saturday morning when he told me about this daughter, about Zo?, as I sat and listened to him talking of DNA tests and establishing parentage, one distinct notion kept rising to the surface: this was David’s way of getting his own back.

It was all so unsettling, so worrying. Who was this girl? What did she want from us? I had no way of knowing how it would impact on our lives. No idea to what extent she would want to become involved with our family. Would she expect to be treated in the same way as David treated Robbie and Holly? Would she expect us to provide for her? Pay her college tuition? Her rent?

I said nothing of this to Holly as we drove west of the city. Instead I allowed her to chatter on as she switched from one radio station to another, a happy buzz of excitement coming off her at the prospect of our shopping trip to Ikea. Since turning eleven, she had developed a pressing desire to assert her own taste and I had promised to buy new furniture for her bedroom. It was late morning by the time we had finished pushing through the showrooms and I was downstairs in the warehouse, a little weary and looking forward to coffee and a scone, when it happened.

Holly had returned to the bed-linen department, having changed her mind about the pattern she had chosen, so I was alone in the aisle, scanning the stacks of brown boxes for the one I wanted. Having found it at last, I pulled it out and hoisted it on to my trolley. I was just straightening up when a woman came towards me and slammed her trolley into mine. Instinctively, I gripped the handle and looked up at her. Her eyes bright with fury, she was staring at me. Before I could say anything, she slammed her trolley into mine a second time and I let out a cry. The force of the impact caused some of her items to clatter on to the concrete floor. I didn’t move, the suddenness of the aggression, the sharp focus of it, shocking me into inaction. She was a woman of my own age wearing jeans and a grey turtle-neck, dark hair drawn back into a ponytail. I had seen her occasionally at the school gates before the time of my indiscretion, but not since. Now she was fixing me with an expression of venom as if she wanted to slam me with her trolley, to push me back against the shelves stacked high with boxed furniture and watch as it all came crashing down on my head. There was something electric about it, the snap of current passing between us. It lasted no more than a minute. Then she drew back from me and turned, half walking, half running, struggling with the heavy trolley as she rounded the corner. The items that had slipped from her cart – a set of mixing bowls and some magazine files – remained on the floor where they had fallen.