Girl Unknown(34)

Another thing: those Sunday nights, after she had left, after we had all settled down to sleep, he would reach for me in the darkness, drawing me to him, fingers exploring the plains and declivities of my body, meandering lines traced over my skin. There was something different about our lovemaking then. It seemed to gain a new charge, a new intensity. I put it down to a release of tension. Sex on those occasions was rather like sex after a long and bruising argument – the sweet resolution of our bodies finding each other, the unspoken forgiveness in the dark. While there was something restorative about it, a small part of me was troubled. I worried that while for me it was a release of tension, for David it was something else.

I used to believe that when you embark on an affair you lose interest in sex within your marriage. I have learned since that desire can be a blind, grasping thing. In those months when I was seeing Aidan, I would often turn to my husband with the most ferocious passion, the desire within me like a little ball of electricity, charged and directionless and constantly seeking an outlet. When I made love to David, it was with a blend of passion and guilt, desire and remorse, and afterwards I had to resist the impulse to curl up under the sheet at the furthest side of the bed from him, my back turned so he couldn’t see my shame.

On those nights after Zo? had left, when David reached for me in the darkness and I felt his intensity, it crossed my mind more than once that he was like a man in love.





12. David


Timing is everything, isn’t it? Had Zo? come to me earlier, when she was still a child, when I had a chance to be a proper father to her, would things have worked out differently? The irony is that when she arrived in my life I actually thought the timing was perfect. My mother was dying. There had been no official prognosis, but I could see for myself the steep decline she had slipped into, the steady corrosion of her thoughts and memories that brought a corresponding weakening in her body. Within those short weeks, it was like witnessing a shrinkage in her, not just her brain growing porous, but her body diminishing to a frightening degree. When I helped her into or out of the car, I noticed with alarm the thinning of her limbs. I began mentally to prepare myself for what was imminent. While the sadness of my mother’s decline was in my thoughts, I found some consolation in my growing relationship with a daughter I had not known existed. Zo? coming into my life at that time seemed a natural exchange – where one light was dimming, another had begun to glow.

She came to us every Sunday, and as the weeks progressed, I noticed with a touch of happiness how she relaxed, opening up a little more each time. I felt a corresponding loosening within myself. At college, it remained awkward, and our dealings there retained a note of professional distance. But at home I could be myself, and so could she. As the days of the week passed, I would find myself looking forward to Sunday.

I knew that Caroline wasn’t happy about it. She had made some noises about Robbie and Holly feeling displaced but I couldn’t help thinking that at the back of her words lay a petty meanness, a sort of jealousy over the time and attention I was giving to Zo?. Whenever we came close to discussing it, the conversation would teeter on the threshold of argument. Mostly we went around it in circles, avoiding anything too combustible. I promised to do something with just our kids, and managed, on a couple of occasions during those autumn months, to spoil Robbie and Holly. Those events passed off peacefully enough, but still I had the niggling feeling that such gestures towards Caroline and the kids were a lame effort at ameliorating the disruption I’d caused by introducing Zo? into their lives.

She didn’t come to the house every Sunday. Sometimes I took her to my local for a pub lunch, just the two of us – partly as a sop to Caroline’s mood, partly because I felt it important that we spend a little time alone together to get to know each other better.

‘How’s the studying coming along?’ I asked one Sunday.

We were sitting in the corner snug, surrounded by wooden panelling adorned with tinsel, a rugby match on the telly above the bar, two lasagnes sitting in front of us.

‘Okay, I guess.’ She took a forkful of food, spitting it out quickly, her tongue burned. ‘God, that’s hot!’ She laughed, looking flushed and youthful.

‘Here, take a drink.’ I pushed her lager towards her, drinking from my own pint while she raised the bottle to her lips.

‘I can’t wait for the exams to be over,’ she admitted. ‘Any hints you can give me about your paper?’ she added jokingly.

‘Nice try,’ I said drily, enjoying her playfulness. ‘You know I won’t be correcting yours. Undue influence, and all that.’

‘Sure. I know.’

I was relieved that she didn’t argue: I didn’t want to go into the protocols of an ethics committee. Besides, any mention of McCormack made me feel queasy; he had been given the task of grading a tranche of my papers, Zo?’s included, and to reciprocate I had agreed to take some of his students’ scripts. It had been an awkward moment, but Alan had dealt with it perfunctorily at the exam board. It was enough to gloss over it with Zo?.

‘You must be looking forward to Christmas?’ I asked.

‘A break, yes, Christmas not as much.’

‘Bah, humbug,’ I joked, and she laughed.

‘No, it’s not that. It’s just weird now, without Mam.’

‘Of course. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.’