Girl Unknown(53)

The door closed, I looked down at the screen and saw the text message that had come through. It was from Aidan and it was open. I read it quickly with a growing sense of alarm: When I said I missed your laughter, I should have said that I missed your lips, your lovely mouth, you. You’re in my head again, Caroline.

‘Shit,’ I said out loud.

The front door was open when I stepped into the hall and said her name. She was pulling on her jacket and made no sign of having heard me.

‘Zo?,’ I said again, and grabbed her arm.

She wrenched it away, tripped on the step and steadied herself against the wall of the porch.

She hurried away from me, her ponytail swinging as she went down the path. Weak sunlight came from overhead, filtered through a canopy of fresh spring leaves. I held my robe closed with one hand and called again, but she didn’t look back, her step quickening now as she pulled her jacket tight around her. I thought about her reading that text and something loosened within me. Gazing after her helplessly, I watched as, armed with that new knowledge, she hurried away from me, rounded the corner and was gone.





16. David


It was late that night when she came home. I was sitting at the writing desk in the living room, darkness pressing against the window, the only light thrown by the anglepoise lamp on to the notes spread in front of me. The rest of the household was sleeping when I heard the crunch of her feet on the gravel outside.

I could have stayed where I was, working out my thoughts for the radio interview I was scheduled to give early the next morning. All week, I had been meaning to prepare for it, but what with my trip to Belfast, the time had got away from me, and despite my good intentions, here I was on the eve of the interview with very little done. In hindsight, I often come back to this moment, and wonder had I chosen to remain at my desk, not got up from my chair and gone out into the hall, would things have turned out differently. So much of what went wrong in the ensuing days and weeks seemed to stem from that night’s events. But hindsight is not my friend. It never will be.

The argument we’d had in the kitchen the night before had been on my mind all day. There was a bad taste in my mouth from how we had left things, and I suppose it was for that reason – a desire to smooth things over – that I went out into the hall to see her. She was hanging her coat on the newel post, her back to me, when I said her name and she turned around.

‘Christ,’ I exclaimed.

The left side of her face, from eye-socket to cheekbone, was badly bruised, swollen and grazed, with a dull purple stain of dried blood. ‘What happened to you?’

‘It’s nothing,’ she said, letting her hair fall over her face.

‘Let me see.’ I stepped towards her.

I reached out to touch her chin, and she allowed her face to be angled towards me, her eyes bright and large in the light’s glare.

‘I fell. It’s not serious.’

‘That cut is close to your eye. We should get it checked out.’

‘It looks worse than it is.’

‘Who did this to you?’ I asked, shocked by the livid wound.

‘I told you, I fell …’

‘I know you didn’t.’

Her eyes moved quickly towards the top of the stairs. ‘Can we not talk about it here?’ she asked. ‘I don’t want the others to hear.’

‘Come into the kitchen, then.’

Meekly, she followed me and watched as I drew open a freezer drawer, emptying ice-cubes from the tray on to a towel.

‘Here,’ I said, gathering it all together. ‘Put this against your face. It will help bring the swelling down.’

She did as I asked, wincing as the cold compress touched her cheek.

‘What happened, Zo??’ I said, my voice softer now that I was getting over my shock.

‘I can’t tell you,’ she answered, and then she began to cry.

Gently, I moved her towards the kitchen table, and sat next to her, taking her hand in mine, trying to appear calm in the face of her obvious distress. ‘Please tell me, Zo?. Let me help you.’

‘If I tell you, she might get angry with me again.’

‘Caroline?’ I said, reading between the lines. ‘Are you saying she did this to you?’ I couldn’t keep the disbelief from my voice.

Zo? said nothing, just stared down at the table-top, holding the compress to her face.

While it was no secret that Caroline wasn’t happy about Zo?’s presence, there was no way she would ever physically attack her. I knew my wife. I understood her boundaries. I couldn’t help but think this was some ham-fisted attempt on Zo?’s part to get back at Caroline for the things she had said the night before.

‘I’m sorry, Zo?, but I find that very hard to accept.’

She took the compress away, stared down at the towel, soaked through now, then said in a small voice: ‘I knew you wouldn’t believe me.’

‘Keep that against your face,’ I instructed, partly because I felt a little queasy – the violence of the wound, the swollen flesh, the seeping cuts – and partly because I was annoyed at being drawn into another of her dramas. The whole thing was exhausting.

‘It was my fault,’ she said, in that same quiet voice.

‘What?’

‘She didn’t mean to do it. She wouldn’t have, if I hadn’t …’