Girl Unknown(25)

‘Like what?’

He thought for a moment, then alighted on the word. ‘Hard.’

I stood up and walked past him to the counter, threw the wine from my glass into the sink, a burgundy splash over the white surface. ‘That wine tastes too sharp.’

I turned on the tap and watched it sluicing down the drain, took the dishcloth and held it under the water, then flicked off the tap and wrung it out. I started to clean the plughole, the taps, the area around the sink.

‘Why are you angry with me, Caroline?’

I wiped down the granite counter-top.

‘I haven’t done anything to you,’ he went on. ‘I haven’t been unfaithful.’

He must have seen the way I stiffened, for he continued in a tone of irritation more than apology: ‘I didn’t mean it like that. What I meant was, it happened a long time ago, when I was free and single. I didn’t screw Linda behind your back – we weren’t together then. I never knew she was pregnant.’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘Of course not!’ His voice rose, for the first time a note of real anger in it. ‘She never told me. I never knew there was a baby. Not until Zo? came into my office that day. Caroline, none of this has happened to hurt you. It just happened, that’s all.’

He was so maddeningly rational. I had reached the end of the counter and pulled out the pestle and mortar. I saw a mark left on the counter. I went at it with the cloth, the perfect black circle it had made so stark against the natural veins running through the stone.

‘I feel like you blame me for all this,’ he said, ‘and it’s not my fault.’

‘I know it’s not your fault.’

‘It was just a mistake.’

‘I know.’

‘You’re going to rub a hole in the granite, the way you’re going.’

I flung the cloth into the sink. ‘It’s because of the baby.’

‘What baby?’

I turned, leaned back against the counter and gazed at him. ‘Our baby, David. The one we didn’t have.’

It took a moment for his expression to clear and I saw, with a shock, that he had pushed that whole painful episode in our history out of his mind. He had moved on.

‘Oh. That.’

‘You’d forgotten, hadn’t you?’ I asked.

His fingers went to the stem of his glass – there was still some wine in the bowl, which he began to swirl in a slow, meditative way. ‘I hadn’t forgotten. I just don’t think about it any more. It was so long ago, Caroline.’

I felt the counter behind me, the hard surface of it there to steady me. ‘She would have been twenty-one now,’ I said. ‘Or he.’

He put his glass down, his brow creasing with a pained expression.

I waited where I was – I wouldn’t go to him – and after a moment, he got up off the barstool, came over and put his arms around me, pulling me into his embrace. I don’t know how long we stood there, holding each other, and all the while I was trying to feel the warmth of his hug – the sincerity within it – but I kept thinking, He’s trying to silence me. Trying to close down that avenue of conversation.

He drew back, looked at me, our faces close to each other. ‘You okay?’

‘Yes. I’m fine.’

He held me there for another moment, then reached for the wine bottle and turned away.

‘Is that it?’ I asked.

‘What?’

‘Is that all you’re going to say on the subject?’

He stood at the other side of the counter, filling his glass again, the look of forbearance on his face making me want to scream. Patiently, he said: ‘It was a long time ago. I thought we’d put it behind us.’

‘You tell me about this girl – this daughter you fathered back when you were a student – and you never once think about our baby? The one we got rid of?’

My voice broke and I had to stop, feeling the rising commotion inside me. I wanted to tell him that when I met Zo? – when I looked at her – all I could think of was the pregnancy I had terminated. After so many years of holding it at bay, controlling it, never allowing it to cast its shadow over my life, here it was in front of me in the shape of that girl. All the memories of what had happened seemed stored up in her. I’d looked at her and felt myself being dragged back to a time when I was sick with fear and uncertainty, overwhelmed by the mistake we had made and the decision we’d had to face. Sitting alongside her in the sun, I’d felt as if I was back in the waiting room, a form attached to a clipboard on my knee, the deep-pile of the carpet underfoot, the crisp receptionist behind her wall of Perspex, and all the while my legs wouldn’t stop trembling. Twenty years old, in my final year at university, my whole life ahead of me. I had thought that once it was done I would feel relief. That I could forget. And I did. But there was also the slow advance of dread crawling up from that empty place, the awkward rumblings of conscience.

‘Anyway,’ I said, giving myself a shake as though to dispel the chill from the past. ‘It’s just nerves. All this waiting – it’s making me jumpy.’

He glanced up at me with a guarded expression.

‘Once those test results come through, we can put this whole wretched business behind us.’