Girl Unknown(39)

‘I’ll go and make up her room,’ she said.

I stood in the corridor by the lifts, waiting for Zo?. There was a window looking on to the tops of the trees, the rooftops of Merrion and Ballsbridge. Outside, the evening was cold and still. I felt a stirring of nerves in my chest. The sky was a bright blue, so clear I could see as far as Howth Head beyond the bay. Seagulls called loud and clear. My fingers tapped impatiently on the sill.

It was back with me again, the déjà vu – the nervous energy in my body fizzing. Something had changed between us, and even though I felt as if I were carrying all the giddy expectancy of a younger man, the solid mass of our bond lay underneath. The hours I had spent with her at the hospital over the past few days, holding her hand, listening to her, comforting her, I had felt it announce itself so strongly that I wondered how I had ever questioned it. I thought of the DNA test I had ordered, the deceitful manner of it, and felt ashamed.

A door opened and I turned to see her carrying her bag, shoulders slumped forward in her grey hoodie, but she gave a half-smile when she saw me and I felt a bloom of hope.

‘Hey,’ she said shyly, and I took the bag from her.

‘Plenty of rest, the doctor said,’ I told her, as I pressed the button to call the lift.

I put my arm about her shoulders. She felt so slight against me, enclosed within my embrace as the lift doors opened, but I could see our reflections in the mirror and she was smiling. For the time being at least, she was safe.





13. Caroline


That first night, David spent a long time up in her room, his low, sonorous tones coming down the narrow stairs as I stood on the landing, looking up at the closed door. I kept thinking of the dark shadows around her eyes and mouth, lending an austere grace to her beauty. The tragic princess. Afterwards, when he came downstairs, he said little of what they had talked about.

‘She’s calm,’ was all he said, as if that was his primary concern.

One by one we went to bed.

I lay awake staring at the ceiling, thinking of her in the room above us. I couldn’t tell if David was asleep beside me. Perhaps he, too, was listening for noises overhead, light footsteps across the floorboards, the gentle creaking of the bed as she turned over. I was listening attentively, every nerve alive to the sensation of this stranger in my home.

Some time before midnight, I heard her voice, words muffled by their passage through floor and ceiling. She was alone up there and I pictured her sitting on the bed, knees drawn up to her chin, talking on her phone to a friend or a boyfriend, filling them in on the new turn her life had taken. I thought of the room surrounding her – the pitched ceiling under the eaves, the paint still fresh and gleaming from the attic conversion completed in the last year. I thought of the striped bedding, the lamp plugged in on the floor, the wall of plastic storage boxes containing some of the children’s old toys and clothes that I couldn’t bring myself to throw out. Boxes of nostalgia, things that were precious to me, now a part of her domain. I tried to tell myself that this was just a temporary arrangement, a fleeting stay until she had recovered. But as I listened to her voice, the high, light note of her laughter coming from up there under the roof, I felt a trickle of doubt. She didn’t sound to me like a girl who wanted to end it all. She sounded relaxed, as if she were settling in. ‘Make yourself at home,’ I had told her, when really I meant nothing of the sort.

I woke up early on the first morning of the new term, and was out of bed, showered and dressed before anyone else had stirred. David came down some time afterwards, his eyes still puffy, wordlessly fixing a pot of coffee while I sat at the counter, eating toast and making a list on my iPhone.

‘Are the kids getting up?’ I asked, after he had taken his first sip.

‘There’s movement. Robbie’s in the bathroom. Zo?’s not going into college so I don’t expect we’ll see her until this evening.’

It was disconcerting – already he was including her in the collective ‘kids’.

Holly came downstairs, followed by her brother, the volume of noise in the kitchen rising with their presence – the clatter of spoons and bowls, the low-key grumbling – and soon enough it was half past eight and we were gathering in the hall, packing lunches into school bags and pulling on coats.

‘Should we check on her?’ I asked David, as he came downstairs with his bag, taking his cycling helmet from the coat-stand.

‘She needs to rest, Caroline, after what she’s been through.’

The kids were piling out of the door now, getting into the car, and David was wheeling his bike down the path. I stood there, looking up the stairs, feeling uneasy. I didn’t like the thought of her being alone in my house. I imagined her tiptoeing down from the attic as soon as we’d driven off, nosing around our bedroom, picking over my things.

I ran up the stairs, making sure my footfall was audible. Knocking sharply on the door, I heard her call, ‘Come in,’ and pushed the door open.

She was lying on her side, propped on one elbow, her head resting on her hand, reading Madame Bovary.

‘Did you sleep well?’

‘Yep.’

‘Well,’ I said, as she glanced up from her book, a hazy look on her face as if her attention was still with the novel, ‘I just wanted to let you know that we’re going now.’

‘Right.’