Girl Unknown(30)

She left the kitchen. I picked up the napkin and began to mop up the spilled wine. Some of it had dripped on to the floor and I bent to wipe it away.

‘I can’t believe I did that,’ Caroline said, in a half-amused kind of way.

Her response annoyed me. It was almost as if she took some kind of pleasure in what had happened. As if it was a small triumph for her.

‘Unfortunate,’ I commented.

‘Shall I open another bottle?’ she asked, oblivious to my prickliness.

I stepped past her and threw the sodden napkin into the bin. ‘Hardly worth it now, is it?’

‘Oh, God. You’re not angry because I spilled your wine, are you?’ Her voice still held that slightly mocking tone.

‘Her first time here … I don’t want her put off by us knocking wine over her.’

‘It’s not the end of the world, David. No point crying over spilled Burgundy.’

Caroline’s efforts to defuse the situation made me more agitated. ‘Maybe I should check on her. Make sure she’s okay.’

Caroline made a little noise of irritation at the back of her throat. ‘You stay here and finish tidying up,’ she instructed. ‘I’ll check on Zo?.’

She disappeared out of the kitchen and Holly joined Robbie on the couch. The TV was on, and the two of them were absorbed. I continued with the clear-up until I heard feet on the stairs. Coming out into the hallway, I saw Zo? descending. When she caught sight of me, she smiled broadly. ‘Thanks so much, David,’ she said, reaching the bottom step and taking her coat from where it was hanging on the newel post. ‘This has been really lovely.’

‘You’re not going already?’

‘Afraid so,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’ve an essay to hand in tomorrow, so I need to go home and work on it.’

Caroline was on her way down the stairs.

‘Let me give you a lift,’ I said, helping Zo? into her coat.

‘I can walk home,’ she said, laughing at my offer. ‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’

‘No worries,’ I said, and she rewarded me with a grateful smile.

While Zo? turned to thank Caroline for the meal, I put my head around the door and told the kids she was leaving. Robbie came out to say goodbye, but Holly remained on the couch. I decided not to make an issue of it.

‘Sorry about the wine,’ I said, once we were alone in the car. ‘Caroline isn’t normally that clumsy.’

She told me not to worry, laughing it off.

I felt real affection for the strength she had shown: it was no mean feat to walk into another’s family home and join the established rhythms of their life as seamlessly as she had. It showed real maturity. ‘I know that can’t have been easy,’ I said.

‘It was really nice to meet everyone.’

‘I hope you didn’t feel we grilled you too much.’

‘Not at all,’ she replied. ‘It was nice getting to see another side to you.’

‘How do you mean?’

She shrugged. ‘Outside college, the private you, that’s all. How you are with your family.’

‘Well, I hope you can get to know all of us better.’

‘I’d like that. Holly and Robbie are lovely. Robbie’s so like you.’

I wondered had she been hoping to see traces of herself in his or Holly’s face, some linking traits that marked them out as her siblings.

Neither of us spoke for a few minutes, the car filled with silence as I drove through Rathgar village towards Rathmines. While the afternoon had passed off well, I still felt a lingering sadness. It had started the moment she mentioned Linda’s funeral. Briefly, I thought about how different our lives might have been had Linda made contact: a phone call, a letter – that was all it would have taken. Instead, she had decided to raise Zo? alone. What was so terrible about me that she’d felt she couldn’t get in touch?

We turned the corner into Rathmines, passed the neon shop-front signs blinking in the dark, the fast-food joints, then a charity shop and the church with its copper dome. She directed me down a side-street and we turned on to a terrace of Georgian houses that had seen better days. I pulled the car up alongside the kerb.

‘Can I ask you a question?’ I began tentatively. ‘Did Linda ever talk about me?’

She considered her answer carefully, as if she were remembering something difficult and painful: ‘Towards the end, when she was dying.’

‘But not before then? Not when you were growing up?’

‘Not really,’ Zo? said hesitantly, gazing out of the window. Her hand was on the door-handle, and I sensed her need to go. All the questions she had been asked that day – it must have been exhausting. But, still, I wanted to keep her there, to find some kind of resolution to the problem that had been bothering me from the moment she had come into my office and made her revelation: why hadn’t Linda told me?

‘Well, there was one time,’ she said shyly, as if reluctant to divulge the information. ‘I must have been eight or nine. We were in Greystones with our cousins, and she took me on a special outing, as she called it, like it was something secret just the two of us were to know about and no one else. She borrowed her cousin’s car and drove up to Dublin, to Belfield. She took me on to campus. It was the first time I had ever been to a university.’