Girl Unknown(26)

I still remember the forced optimism with which I said those words.

‘Caroline,’ he said slowly, and I saw at once how clearly I had been counting on it being false, her wild claim proven to be the troubled fantasy of an attention-seeker. The long, awful time of not knowing was about to end, and my throat grew dry and stiff.

‘Tell me,’ I said.

He didn’t need to say it. The bitter truth was written all over his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told me. ‘I know you hoped it would be different …’

I hardly heard him. I kept thinking back over the words he had used to defend himself. It’s not my fault. Like a schoolboy pleading innocence. It was a mistake.

A mistake he had made twice.

That was what was so unforgivable. The very mistake we had made together – the baby we had accidentally started – he had repeated it with another woman. How maddeningly stupid of him. How unbelievably careless. For a man so self-controlled, composed and careful almost to the point of coldness, it seemed wildly out of character. His Achilles heel, perhaps. Reckless with passion, he had fallen into the same trap a second time. Linda had kept her baby, though, and neither of us could have foreseen the consequences of her decision.

He continued talking about the test results – the science involved – using cold clinical terms, and I thought of these strands of DNA and imagined them to be threads escaping their spools. She was a thread that ran through the fabric of our family. In the same way each of my children was a thread – including the child that was never born – woven into a complex tapestry. Love, trust, fidelity: these were the strands that bound us together.

Families don’t come apart because a thread has loosened. The break, when it comes, is sharp, brutal. It takes ripping and hacking to tear the tapestry apart.





Part Two





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10. David


It was nothing to be ashamed of. That was what I told myself at the time. This daughter who had parachuted into my life out of nowhere didn’t need to be covered up or explained away with a mixture of apology and discomfiture. If a mistake had been made, it was the mistake of a younger man. What is youth without the odd indiscretion? The important thing, I reminded myself, whenever I felt the doubt creeping in, was how I handled it now. It was a situation requiring calm and maturity. I needed to be honest, upfront, and offer no apologies: there was nothing to apologize for.

Not everyone shared this view. Caroline, for one, shrank from the notion when I informed her I was going to tell the children.

‘What?’ she asked, clearly aghast.

‘They have a right to know,’ I told her. ‘And a right to meet their half-sister.’

‘Wait a second. Telling them about Zo? is one thing, but meeting her? What is it you intend to happen?’

‘They ought to have some kind of relationship with her,’ I argued. ‘Get to know her for themselves.’

‘Have you thought about the effect it might have on them?’

‘Of course I have,’ I answered, a little irritated by her response. ‘They’re not babies, Caroline. Robbie is fifteen, and Holly has always been older than her years. I think you’re doing them a disservice, suggesting they might not be able to handle it.’

‘It’s not that,’ she answered. ‘It’s what they might think of you once they find out. That’s what I’m concerned about.’

She had a point. Even though I was openly dismissive of her concerns, when the time came to sit down with Robbie and Holly, Caroline looking on watchfully, I felt an inner trembling at what I was about to admit. In my mind, I had rehearsed my little speech over and over, explaining as gently as possible about a relationship I had had before they were born, the consequences of which were only beginning to play out now, and even though my words were as I had planned, they came out sounding colder and more matter-of-fact than I would have liked. In truth, even though I had reasoned with myself that I had nothing to blame myself for – it was a mistake that could happen to almost anyone – my explanation to my children came out sounding defensive.

‘A half-sister?’ Robbie asked, with a mixture of amusement and disbelief.

‘Yes. Her name is Zo?. She’s eighteen.’

‘What the fuck?’ he had exclaimed, laughing to cover his shock.

‘Robbie,’ Caroline said in partial admonishment, but mostly to steady him.

‘How come you never told us about her?’ he asked me.

‘Because I didn’t know about her myself until a couple of weeks ago.’

‘You didn’t know?’

‘Her mother and I had lost touch.’

‘Who was her mother?’ he asked.

‘That doesn’t matter,’ I replied quickly, unhappy with where his line of questioning was going. ‘She was someone I went out with for a little while. It’s not important.’

Immediately I regretted that statement. For one thing, it seemed to imply that I had been the type of person in my youth who slept around without any thought to the consequences – not the message I wanted to send my children. Also, I couldn’t escape the feeling that Linda was somehow watching me, her spirit present in the room, witnessing my offhand dismissal of a love affair that had been both powerful and precious.