Girl Unknown(35)

‘That’s okay,’ she said.

‘What are your plans? Will Gary be expecting you?’

‘Gary,’ she replied, disdain creeping into her voice. ‘Who knows what he’s expecting?’

I’d been giving the idea some thought for a while, even though I hadn’t discussed it yet with Caroline. The thought of Zo? spending Christmas in the chilly company of a stepfather who had little affection for her was troubling. I hadn’t intended broaching the subject with her that day, but while it was on my mind, I decided what the hell.

‘Maybe you don’t have to go to Gary for Christmas,’ I ventured.

‘How do you mean?’

‘You could come to us.’

‘David, I couldn’t, but thanks.’

‘Why not?’

She put down her knife and fork, and wiped her mouth with a napkin. I had the impression she was stalling. ‘You should spend Christmas together, the four of you,’ she said eventually. ‘I’d feel I was intruding.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. We’d love to have you.’

‘Even Caroline?’

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘Caroline will be fine. I’ll square it with her.’

She frowned at her plate, half the food untouched. ‘I don’t know. She really doesn’t like me. I don’t want to cause any trouble for you – especially not at Christmas.’

I could have tried explaining to Zo? that she shouldn’t take Caroline’s perceived coldness to her as something personal, but she was so despondent that the words would have sounded hollow. I weighed up the situation in my mind – perhaps, in hindsight, I should have been more cautious – then said: ‘When I told Caroline about you, back in October, it was difficult for her, but not for the reasons you might think.’

She was listening now, her despondency replaced by curiosity.

‘She got pregnant, you see, when we were students. This was before I knew your mother.’

I told her everything. About the pregnancy, the abortion, our subsequent break-up. She took it all in. Only when I had finished did she sit back. ‘Now it makes more sense.’

‘It’s hard for Caroline, you see. She still feels regret about what happened. And when you came along …’

‘I was a painful reminder,’ she said, finishing my sentence. ‘Did you ever regret it?’

‘No. No, I didn’t. We were young. It happened. I never really think about it.’

‘Do you wish Linda had done the same?’

Her question shocked me. She held herself still as she waited for my answer.

‘Of course not,’ I said. Instinctively, I reached for her hand, held it there on the table. With a flash I thought of Linda that day in the Oarsman pub when I had told her about accepting a post-doctoral position in UCD. You’re leaving Belfast? she had said, her voice small and shocked. It was the same day she had given her lecture on Walter Benjamin’s ‘Angel of History’. A doomed creature, she had called it: ‘It wants to make whole what has been destroyed.’ I thought about how Klee’s painting Angelus Novus had been projected on to the wall of the lecture theatre. How beautiful it was, how beautiful she was. I thought about how she had given me exactly the same look as Zo? had just given me, her hand in mine, the same plunging feeling in my heart.

A cheer went up from the rugby supporters – Leinster had scored. I let go of Zo?’s hand and we both sat back.

‘Come to us for Christmas, Zo?.’

She thought about it for a while. Then, smiling up at me, a bashful look on her face that couldn’t disguise her pleasure, she said: ‘Okay, then, I will.’

‘What’s this?’ Caroline asked.

It was Christmas morning; Robbie and Holly were in the next room, still exploring their newly opened gifts while I was making coffee, readying myself for the Christmas lunch preparations. Caroline had arrived downstairs, festive in a red wrap dress and black heels, her hair loosely curled, and now she stood there, holding up the little silver box.

‘A present for Zo?,’ I answered, adding sugar to my cup. ‘Coffee?’

‘Please.’ She turned the box over in her hands. ‘Mind if I look?’

‘Go ahead.’

I poured her coffee while she prised open the lid and looked at the earrings. A pair of freshwater seed pearls, silver threads curling around them in the shape of looping petals. I had spied them in a jeweller’s window in Powerscourt and thought at once of Linda, the one Christmas we had spent together, tinsel draped over the windows in her flat, a plastic Santa on the mantelpiece, looking at the earrings I had given her in the cup of her hand, saying: ‘You do it.’ How vivid the memory remained – my knuckles grazing the skin of her cheek, the whorl of her small ear against my hand, the feel of the soft fleshy lobe as I held my breath and pressed the sharp point into it. That moment seemed to me more intimate, more erotically charged, than the half-hour we had previously spent tussling with each other under the sheets.

‘They’re lovely,’ Caroline said, her voice quiet and contemplative, betraying, I sensed, what might have been a touch of resentment. She closed the lid and returned the little box to the counter, while I gave her her coffee, all the time hoping she wouldn’t ask how much they had cost.