Girl Unknown(46)

‘She never finished her PhD?’

He shook his head, adding: ‘That’s not to say she never studied again, though. Quite the opposite. She was always working away at something. City and Guilds courses, Open University. Night classes in creative writing or women’s studies. One year she decided to learn Italian, another she took up Mandarin. “Mandarin?” I said to her. “Sure, what would you want with that?” I used to tell her she’d be better off learning how to drive, but she wouldn’t hear of it.’

Something snagged in my brain. ‘She couldn’t drive?’

‘No. Preferred to get the bus. Or a taxi, when she was feeling flush.’

He filled me in on the scant details of their life together: she had worked in a book-shop; he taught at a local school, taking a leave of absence when his wife became sick. I thought of Linda and all those night courses, desperately seeking an outlet for her busy intelligence, and heard the wild flapping of wings tossing against a closed window. An exotic bird trapped in a room.

‘I was so sorry to learn of her death,’ I told him. ‘It seems wrong. She was too young.’

He nodded slowly, growing solemn, and neither of us spoke.

‘Linda’s mother also died in her forties,’ he said after a minute. ‘Did you know that?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘The same type of cancer.’

‘So it was hereditary?’

A frown-line became pronounced on his forehead while he considered that.

‘They couldn’t say so for sure. And, you know, our lifestyle … Well. We weren’t exactly health freaks.’

I heard the scratch of cigarettes in his voice, and thought of Linda smiling mischievously at me over her glass of wine. The air in the room had changed, the sadness within him dragging at me. I had an urge to get out of there and thought it best to get to the point, and address the purpose of my visit.

‘About Zo?,’ I began. ‘I just wanted to let you know that she’s living with us now – with my family.’

‘Right,’ he said, as if the information didn’t weigh too heavily on him.

‘Also, I’m going to be paying her tuition fees from now on, just in case you felt any responsibility in that department. I’m happy to step in now.’

A pucker of confusion around his brow. ‘Her fees? But she has money for that.’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘She does,’ he said firmly. ‘Linda left Zo? money specifically to pay for her education. Believe me, I know. I put the cheque into Zo?’s hand myself. Six thousand pounds.’

I stared at him, unsure what to believe.

‘She failed to mention that, did she?’ Gary said drily, reading my confusion.

‘She did.’

He gave a brief, mirthless laugh. ‘She has a loose association with the truth, that one.’

The way he said it only served as a reminder of all the hints and intimations Zo? had given of this stepfather with whom she didn’t get on. Suspicion rolled over in my mind.

‘God knows what she’s told you about me,’ he added.

‘She said you two never hit it off.’

Another laugh, more a quick exhalation of air through his nose. ‘That’s putting it mildly.’

The hardness of his manner faltered a little as he ran a hand over his forehead as if to rub away the tension there. Adopting a softer tone, he said: ‘It’s not all her fault. I suppose I’m partly to blame. It was such bad timing, you see, her coming along when she did, just after Linda’s diagnosis.’

‘Sorry, what do you mean?’ I asked, confused by the turn the conversation had taken.

‘You asked me about Linda’s cancer,’ he said patiently, ‘was it hereditary or lifestyle or just pure misfortune? Perhaps all three. But the one thing that keeps me awake at night is the thought of all the hormones she pumped into her body. We couldn’t have kids, you see. Unexplained infertility. We did IVF seven times,’ he went on, with a brief shake of his head. ‘Seven times. All those hormones, all those tests and procedures.’

All those disappointments, I thought. I tried to imagine how they managed on their salaries – fertility treatment wasn’t cheap. The house, the estate, it began to make sense to me.

‘All those hormone injections she’d had,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t help but think they contributed in some way. That was how I felt when the diagnosis came. And when Zo? showed up on the doorstep like that, the child she had given up all those years before, well, the timing of it … It felt like a cruel irony.’

I stared at him blankly. A buzzing feeling had started in my head, the room seeming to dip and sway around me. There was a radio on in the next room and I wished, irritably, that he would turn it off so that I could think. ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘What do you mean, the child she had given up?’

He scrutinized me again, in a way that suggested he was still making up his mind about me. ‘Yes. After she was born. You didn’t know?’

‘No,’ I said, hardly trusting myself to speak with all the emotions and questions clawing around inside me.

‘It was the one real regret of Linda’s life,’ Gary continued. ‘She never forgave herself for it.’