Girl Unknown(50)

‘You lied to me. You say you didn’t mean it, but you must have known at some point I’d find out.’

‘Why does it have to matter?’ she implored. ‘What difference does it make? They’re not my parents – not really.’

‘Zo?, they brought you up.’

‘So? That doesn’t mean they loved me.’

‘Can someone tell me what’s going on?’ I asked, startled by what I was witnessing. It was the first time I had seen any sort of confrontation between them. If I’m honest, I felt a small trill of excitement – the whisper of hope that David had finally seen her true colours.

In terse tones, David explained what he had learned of her adoption. He looked tired, almost dishevelled, as if he had slept in his clothes, or not slept at all. Although he kept his voice low, I knew he was simmering.

‘What about the money?’ he asked her.

‘There was no money.’

‘Zo?, he told me Linda left you six thousand pounds for your education. That he put the cheque into your hands himself. Are you trying to tell me he didn’t?’

‘David, he gave me a cheque all right, but what he didn’t tell you was that it bounced.’

‘What?’

‘There were no funds in the account,’ she explained. ‘Linda didn’t have any money. Nor did I want any from her. Christ, do you think I gave a damn about the money? All I wanted was her, my own mother, even if it was just for a short while.’

He ran a hand over his face, and I couldn’t tell if he believed her or not. I, on the other hand, didn’t believe a word that came out of her mouth. ‘You lied to us,’ I told her.

‘No, I didn’t!’

‘You let us all believe Linda had brought you up,’ I went on, my voice growing insistent.

She wore a petulant expression and refused to look me in the eye, her body still turned towards David. Somehow, that infuriated me even more.

‘Why would you do such a thing?’ I asked. ‘Deny the existence of people who have cared for you, brought you up, loved you –’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, Caroline. Loved me? That’s a joke.’

David listened, clearly troubled.

‘They never loved me. They thought adopting me was an act of charity. But they didn’t want me for who I was. They’re the kind of people who think children are things that exist in storybooks. They expected me to be Anne of Green Gables or Pollyanna, but I’m not fucking like that.’

The expletive was a sign that we were getting to her. I saw David blink in surprise – the first time he’d heard a foul word from her honey lips. She saw his surprise and when she spoke again it was in a lowered voice, her shoulders dipping forward fractionally.

‘They didn’t love me. They treated me more like a servant than a daughter.’

‘You could have told us all this,’ David said. ‘You should have been truthful.’

‘I know. But I was ashamed.’

‘Oh, please,’ I said.

‘It’s true,’ she insisted, still looking at David. ‘With my dad … things happened. I thought if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.’

‘What things?’ David asked.

She lowered her gaze, mumbled that she wasn’t sure if she should tell.

‘Zo?, tell me,’ he insisted.

She ran her hand over her mouth. From her reluctance and the closed manner of the reveal, I knew where this was going. She didn’t say outright that she had been abused, but it was all there in the picking at her cuffs, the summoned tears, allusions to inappropriate behaviour after she turned sixteen. It was about this time that she made contact with Linda.

David’s hand was over his mouth, his eyes fixed on her, clearly troubled by her account. Did he believe it? The way she told it, all the pausing and hesitation, it seemed rehearsed, every stammered word, every meaningful glance cleverly designed to reel him in. She looked decidedly uncomfortable but there was something studied about it, deceit at the back of her eyes.

‘All my life, I’ve felt shunted about,’ she said, her voice small and plaintive, ‘as if no one really wanted to claim me. Always searching for some way of fitting in, but I never could. Not until I found Linda. Then things began to make sense. We were only just getting to know each other when she died, but I’m so grateful for the time we had. You’ve no idea how precious it was to me.’ She bit her upper lip to compose herself, a row of small teeth pressing the colour from her mouth. Holding David’s gaze she said: ‘I’m grateful to her for leading me to you. These past few months, getting to know you, getting to know your family, even being a part of it in some small way – it’s meant everything to me.’

Frustration rose within me. The way she went to work on him right there in front of me was shameless.

‘I know, Zo?,’ he said quietly. ‘And it’s not that I don’t feel the same way. I just want you to understand that we have to be able to trust you.’ He continued to talk about the importance of honesty within a family but I could see that he was thawing. Her story had got to him. She was nodding as she listened, playing the penitent, bowing her head in remorse, and I felt a lurch of fear. How easily she had crept in among us, her troubling occupancy of the attic room, the nights I lay awake listening to the soft pad of her feet overhead, the murmur of her voice travelling to me through the floorboards. All this time, I had felt her duplicity, the coldness at the heart of her behaviour towards me. Just when I thought her deceptions would be revealed, and David would see for himself her untrustworthy nature, I felt the chance getting away from me. Drained by the encounter, he was bringing it to an end – the prodigal daughter, the forgiving father. Panic set in.