Girl Unknown(33)

He let go just long enough to turn out the lights and was back with me again, the two of us sliding under the covers. For a few moments everything else dissolved around us, the world narrowing to this room, this bed, this breath, this touch.

Afterwards, he fell asleep with his arms around me. A short while later, I gently moved away, and he settled into a deeper sleep.

I stayed awake, listening to the noises of the house around me – the creaking of wind in the gables, the ticking of pipes deep in the recesses of the house, and the soft breathing of my husband next to me. I thought about Zo?, her weak handshake, her behaviour towards me. With the others, she was all warmth and charm and interest, but I got cold politeness. She hardly even looked at me, her eyes always sliding away from mine. I thought about it now, and realized the subtlety and slyness of it.

The spilled-wine incident had chilled me. I remembered again her laughing refusal when I offered to lend her one of my T-shirts, the way she warmly shrugged off any apologies, making light of the matter. ‘It’s not a problem,’ she had said, of the splash across her T-shirt, like evidence of some act of violence, while she smiled and laughed, and then excused herself to use the bathroom. David mopped up the wine while I cleared away the dishes. Together we set the room to rights. Zo? was in the bathroom for at least ten minutes and we both assumed she was rinsing the wine from her top.

‘I’ll go and see if she needs help,’ I told him.

The cloakroom off the hall was empty, and as I climbed the stairs, I heard the sound of running water coming from the bathroom. I knocked on the door and said her name.

‘Come in,’ was the reply and I pushed the door open to find her leaning against the sink, attempting to wash out the stain from the T-shirt she was still wearing. It seemed an awkward task, and she didn’t look up from it, her mouth set in a thin line of determination. As she wrung water from the hem, the T-shirt rose a little higher from her waist and I could see a band of pale flesh at her midriff, so thin she was almost concave.

‘I just came to see if you needed help,’ I said. ‘Did you manage to get it out?’

‘No.’

‘Perhaps some salt would help?’

She let go of her clothing and turned to me, her face a small pinched mask. ‘It’s fucking ruined,’ she said.

The words seemed to bounce off the cold surfaces of the room.

‘Zo?, I –’

‘Don’t bother,’ she snapped, pushing past me, taking the stairs two at a time.

I remained in the bathroom, trying to make sense of what had just passed between us. The ferocity of her words had taken me aback, the speed at which she had swung from warmth to hostility leaving me reeling.

There were voices in the hall, and as I came down the stairs, I saw David helping her on with her coat.

‘I can walk home,’ she was saying, laughter slipping easily between her words. ‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’

‘No worries,’ he answered, and she beamed back at him.

Then, seeing me on the stairs, she directed her smile at me, as if nothing had passed between us. As if the ugliness of our encounter in the bathroom had never happened.

‘Thank you so much for a lovely lunch, Caroline,’ she said warmly. ‘I really enjoyed it.’

I must have mumbled some kind of goodbye but, for the life of me, I can’t remember what. It was breathtaking, the way she turned on the charm in front of David, reserving her cool hostility for the occasions she and I were alone together.

I could have said something to David – but what? That she had snapped at me? Told me her T-shirt was ruined? He would say I was reading too much into it, that I had misinterpreted her tone. To his mind, the whole time she was with us she had been polite, friendly – charming, even. He would think I was being unfair. Still, I regretted having let it pass with no mention at all.

I lay in bed listening to the patter of rain on the roof, the wind strengthening. Soon enough it was howling around the eaves, lashing against the windows. David stirred in his sleep but didn’t wake. I lay there in the darkness, staring at the ceiling long after the storm was spent.

My unease after that first visit faded as the days passed. There was work, a dental check-up, the usual household obligations. Before I knew it, Sunday blew in and she was among us again – Zo?. I hadn’t thought she would return so soon, but when David put it to her that she was welcome to join us, she apparently accepted eagerly.

Just like that, it became a pattern – a set-piece that bookended the week. November passed, the weeks studded with these curious occasions. Curious because, although they became more relaxed as we got to know her, I still felt there was something stagey about them.

Each week now tilted towards Sunday, as if all the other days were just treading water to make time pass. That day, those visits were taking on a significance that made me feel uncomfortable. I could see it in the behaviour of the others. Come Sunday morning, a bounce and vigour would enter Robbie’s step, and at the same time I could see a tightening in Holly’s face. As for David, it used to be his Sunday treat to take himself off alone to our local for a quiet pint and to read the papers for an hour or two in the afternoon. Since Zo?’s arrival, that had stopped. Instead he would drive to Rathmines to collect her, and after lunch, he’d drop her back again, like some kind of shared custody arrangement after a marital separation. Only Zo? was not a child. And if David was in any way put out by this, he didn’t show it. In fact, he appeared happy.