Girl Unknown(5)

It was a reasonable request, I supposed, but I resisted. ‘Did Linda put you up to this?’ I asked. ‘Does she know you’ve come to see me? Did she tell you to come?’

In retrospect, I see how foolish I was – how ridiculous I must have sounded – to think an old girlfriend had spent the last eighteen years hatching a plan to bring about my undoing.

‘My mother’s dead.’

Dead? Said so matter-of-factly, and with such certainty that there was no room for doubt. Still my initial and irrational response was to contradict her, even though I had had not one scintilla of contact with Linda since I had seen her last. Linda, my old flame, dead. I couldn’t quite believe it. Briefly, I remembered, without wanting to, the first time I had kissed her: she had dared me to. ‘Go on,’ she had said that night, as I walked her home from an evening guest lecture. ‘You know you want to.’

I had played dumb, but all the time, I was stepping closer to her, and she was stepping closer to me, until her hands gripped the pockets of my coat and my hands found their way to her waist. It had not been a lingering kiss. She had pulled away quickly, and I followed her, feeling I had been on the brink of making a terrible mistake but not knowing if the mistake was to follow her or to let her slip away.

And now she’s dead? I was stunned by the revelation, numbed. How strange and unreal it is to hear of an old lover who has passed away. To think that the time you shared is no longer a common memory between you, no longer a testimony subject to agreement and dissent, no longer a space of contested but cherished moments already gone – like the rising smoke from a bonfire on a Hallowe’en night that we’d stood beside in Belfast. Gone – like the fading autumn light at sunset. It’s like a sudden pull in the heart, a brief awakening, and the realization that their life has continued all the time you were apart, all the time they were forgotten; still they remained, creating their own history. A sudden burst of memory, the brush of old and tender feelings, then it fades.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I told her. ‘What happened?’

‘Ovarian cancer. It’s just coming up to a year.’

Now it made some sort of sense to me: a young woman whose mother has just died seeks some kind of replacement to make up for her loss. It’s possible. Psychologists might call it transference, and stranger things have been known to happen, certainly, on this campus. But I was curious. ‘And when did Linda tell you about me?’ I asked.

She pushed back her hair. ‘It was towards the end.’

‘Is that why you came to this university?’

She blushed, shifted in her chair. ‘I dunno. Maybe. I’ve always liked history and, with Mam gone, I just wanted to get away, you know. Start again somewhere new.’

Whatever the truth of her claim, I couldn’t help but admire her a little, the curious tilt of her chin, the bravery in her optimism.

A sudden rap on the open door startled her. She stood up quickly. Another student appeared. ‘Dr Connolly.’

‘Just a moment,’ I said.

The girl was already fixing the strap of her satchel over one shoulder. ‘I should go,’ she said.

Awkwardly, beneath the gaze of the other student, we said goodbye to one another. I turned back into the room, went to the window and waited for the young man to sit. Below in the courtyard, staff and students sat at tables among the birch trees; the sound of their conversation rose in a barely audible hum. Shadows moved overhead, the day darkened. The student behind me cleared his throat.

‘Would you mind waiting?’ I said, making for the door. ‘I’ll just be a moment.’

She was at the stairwell by the time I caught up. Hair falling over her shoulders, strolling away. I called to her and she turned. A door opened and a flurry of students drifted out, passing us in a noisy group.

‘I wanted to ask you,’ I said, ‘have you told anyone else? Any of your friends? Anyone in the class?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Can I ask that you don’t? Please. Not yet, not until I’ve had some time to take it in.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said, her voice flat and unreadable. In her eyes, there was a flash of pity. I felt a nudge of something, too: shame, perhaps. However foolish, I still believed I could contain whatever it was that had been released.

‘I won’t say a thing,’ she said, slipping into the stream of students passing, leaving me there, sweat on my palms, holding on to the rail, conscious that I was about to be swept up by something more powerful than I understood, something dangerous and beyond my control.





3. Caroline


I can remember when it began.

One afternoon in early autumn, I had been called away from the office unexpectedly because of David’s mother, Ellen. There had been an incident.

I was just settling her with her tea-tray, the telly on, when my mobile rang, David’s number appearing on the screen.

‘Caroline?’

‘I was just going to call you.’

‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Has something happened?’

Something in his voice: a scratch of irritation or a wrinkle of concern.

‘Who is it?’ Ellen asked, her voice still quavering with nerves.

‘It’s David.’ I turned up the volume of the telly, then closed the door gently behind me. In the hallway, I sat down on the stairs and felt the carpet rough at the back of my legs, a musty smell rising from it. ‘Your mum,’ I told him. ‘She went wandering again.’