Girl Unknown(60)

‘He’s known you your whole life, sweetheart. Since before you were even born. That makes things different. Special.’

‘It doesn’t feel that way,’ she said. ‘It feels like she’s all that matters to him now.’

She ran her fingers along the battered ear of her bunny and I remembered a time when she couldn’t sleep without him, how loved he was, and felt a twinge of sadness that she had outgrown him. Tonight was just a blip. Very soon, that bunny would be consigned to a box in the attic along with the other relics of her childhood, and somehow, I didn’t feel ready for that.

‘I’ll talk to Dad,’ I told her.

She lay back, turning away from me, but she was not comforted. ‘It won’t make a difference,’ she said, resignation – not reassurance – in her tone.

I think that was when I decided to take matters into my own hands. I couldn’t rely on David for help, so I resorted to a deception of my own. The danger was alive and living in my house. Necessary evils were called for.

I bided my time, remaining watchful, until early one morning when Zo? was in the shower, the others downstairs having breakfast. I moved quickly and quietly up the steps to her room, finding her mobile phone lying on her bureau. My heart beating wildly, I scrolled through her list of contacts before finding what I needed: Mam Mobile. I scribbled the number on a Post-it, and fled before I could be caught, the hiss of the shower jets coming from the bathroom as I hurried downstairs, my pulse beginning to slow.

My motives for meeting Celine Harte were unclear. I wasn’t so na?ve as to think she could solve my problem by whipping her daughter out of my house and dragging her back to Belfast. I suppose I was seeking evidence of sorts, some confirmation of the fear I felt. Part of me was afraid that I was obsessed with the girl, and maybe losing perspective. Was I right to suspect her of meaning harm towards me and my daughter? Or was she just a mixed-up kid, meddlesome but benign, who would, with time and support, settle down and find her place within the family? Either way, some poor unfortunate had been landed with Zo? as their kid, and I wanted to meet them to find out what exactly I was dealing with.

We met in AppleGreen – a service station on the M1 between Dublin and Newry. Sitting at a plastic table, the coffee cooling, Celine Harte, bundled up in a quilted jacket even though the day was warm, looked at me flatly, her eyes like two inky-black pebbles. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you want?’

Her candour took me aback. The world-weariness of her demeanour gave me the impression that this was not the first time she had been called to such a meeting. I answered with candour of my own. ‘It’s Zo?,’ I said. ‘I want her out of my home.’

If she was surprised by that, she didn’t show it.

‘She’s come between me and my husband,’ I went on. ‘She has some sort of vendetta against me, like she wants to get rid of me. I’m worried about the influence she’s having on my children, my son in particular. I’m afraid she’s a threat to my daughter.’

Celine took it all in, her expression unchanging, then looked down at her cup, a pale skin forming on the surface of the coffee.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to shock you.’

‘I’m not shocked.’ She brought her eyes up to meet mine, tiredness in the heavy lids. ‘It’s what she does.’

The dryness of her tone bordered on cynicism. I expected her to go on – it was a shocking thing to say of your own daughter – but rather than qualifying her statements, she just stared at me in stony silence.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ I admitted. ‘Am I imagining it, or does she want to tear us apart? So much has happened.’

‘Why don’t you tell me what she’s done?’ she suggested, and I thought I detected a trace of sympathy entering her voice. Resignation, perhaps, or maybe it was pity.

I told her everything, about Zo?’s behaviour when alone with me and how markedly different it became when David was around. I told her about the lies, the deception, the inflicting of damage on her face, then blaming me. She listened to it all without betraying any emotion, except when I told her about Zo?’s suicide attempt. Briefly, she closed her eyes, then was back with me, having pushed down whatever pain had surfaced at the catalogue of trouble Zo? had brought upon my family. I told her everything, except the part about Holly – the incident at the quarry. For some reason I was reluctant to discuss it – to suggest her daughter was capable of a cold-blooded killing might overstep the mark – and I wanted Celine Harte to share with me what she knew and understood of Zo?. I didn’t want to risk her growing defensive.

She finished her coffee, pushed the mug to one side, then leaned her clasped hands on the table in front of her, as if she were about to pray. The words she spoke to me then had the rehearsed quality of a prayer, or perhaps a parable, the telling of a story, one she had told herself or others many times over. There was no pleasure in the telling, no spark in the tale. Rather, a kind of bleakness, as if she had learned long ago that, no matter how she told it, the outcome would always remain the same.

She began by telling me about a family whom Zo? used to babysit for while she was still at school. ‘Every Saturday night, religiously, for over a year. Then it just stopped. I asked her about it, but she said it was nothing, told me to mind my own business. I let it go. But then,’ she continued, ‘one afternoon, the mother comes down the road to me all distressed. She tells me that Zo? has been pestering her husband, hanging around his workplace, calling him at all hours of the day and night. The wife had found out about it – she’d looked at his mobile phone, seen the lewd texts Zo?’d been sending him. She showed me some – disgusting things – not to mention all the poison written about his wife. Zo? believed this man was in love with her, you see, that he was going to leave his wife for her. The way she got between them …’ She leaned forward. ‘She was fourteen years old.’