Girl Unknown(73)

‘What is it, then? Is it David?’

‘It’s Zo?. Have you seen her arms, Chris?’

He made a kind of tutting sound, clearly unimpressed, but Caroline was not to be silenced.

‘And you know she tried to kill herself at Christmas.’

‘Yes, I know,’ he replied, his voice dipping. ‘We’ve talked about that. I believe I can help her. I’m good for her –’

‘For God’s sake, Chris, you’re only out of a marriage about five minutes! Now you want to nosedive into another – with her?’

‘You don’t like her,’ he said, with the smugness of his own certainty. ‘That’s what’s really the issue.’

I heard the dull slap of something flung on to the counter.

‘I’m not sure you’ve really thought about what you’re taking on. She’s mixed up – vulnerable.’

Her tone had changed, caution tempering her forthright words.

I was still standing in the narrow hallway, my eye caught by the flash of movement beyond the French windows leading on to the patio. I saw the splash of water, an arm raised and then disappearing again, as Holly did her laps of the pool. I could have gone outside, joined her, turned my back on the low-grade argument rumbling in the kitchen. But I didn’t.

Chris was sitting at the table, his iPad in front of him. ‘Here he is,’ he said. ‘The birthday boy.’ There was forced jolliness in his tone.

‘Happy birthday, love,’ Caroline said, with warm affection, briefly forgetting her annoyance with Chris as she came and put her hands on my chest, reaching up to kiss me.

‘Thanks. Any coffee going?’

‘I was going to bring you breakfast in bed.’

It was clear she had been to the market already, the counters and table littered with her purchases. I picked up a croissant from the plate and Caroline poured me some coffee while I took a seat opposite Chris. He eyed me warily. My mood the night before, my reaction to his preposterous announcement, made him unsure of me. No doubt he was thinking that, having slept on it, I’d have mellowed. He thought wrong.

‘So how old are you now, Dave? Forty-two, forty-three?’

‘Forty-four.’

He whistled.

‘I don’t know why you’re so smug. You’re only a few weeks shy of it yourself.’

He grinned, determined to be sunny in the face of my terseness. ‘Forty is the new thirty,’ he declared.

‘Does that make nineteen the new nine?’ Caroline asked.

‘Touché,’ he replied, but his smirk seemed to sag a little. I had a sudden urge to lean across the table and slap it off his face.

‘When are you leaving?’ I asked, not caring that it was rude. I wanted him gone, even if that meant Zo? leaving too, and I didn’t care that he was stung. In truth, I wanted to hurt him.

‘Actually,’ Caroline said, pausing in her slicing of melon, ‘there’s a bit of a problem.’

‘What?’ Her eyes were fixed on me and I sensed she was reluctant to break the news.

‘There’s been an accident on the bridge.’

‘What sort of accident?’

She put down the knife, wiping her hands on a tea-towel. ‘An oil tanker crashed into the toll booths early this morning.’

‘What?’ I could hardly believe it, yet I had smelt the smoke when I’d woken up, even from where we were, on the far side of the island from the bridge.

‘They told me when I was at the market. There’s a massive fire. No cars can come on to or get off the island.’

‘Here,’ Chris said, offering me his iPad, which was opened on a French news page. ‘My French is shit but from what I can gather they’ve sent in fire brigades from La Rochelle to try to tackle the blaze.’

I scrolled through the images of smoke billowing from the inferno, the long bridge snaking across to the mainland. ‘How the hell did it happen?’

‘Who knows?’ Caroline said, returning to her task.

‘Maybe the brakes failed,’ Chris offered. ‘Or it could have been a terrorist attack.’

‘On ?le de Ré? Hardly an obvious target for ISIS or Al-Qaeda.’ The notion was absurd.

‘Whatever,’ Caroline said, setting the bowl on the table with a sharp clink. ‘There’s no way off the island. Not today, at any rate. Maybe not for a few days.’ She didn’t sound happy.

‘I know it’s not ideal,’ Chris said, coming over all reasonable, ‘but let’s try to make the best of it, hmm? Can’t we use the time to try to reconcile our differences?’ Caroline cast him a doubtful look but he went on: ‘Zo? so badly wanted to come here, to tell you our news in person. If you’d seen how excited she was, how insistent on sharing this with you … Can’t you please try to be happy for us? For her, if not for me?’

He went on a bit about how much we all meant to him and Zo?, but I had no interest in listening to the fairytale he was peddling – about how we were family, about mending the wounds – so I cut across him: ‘What about Susannah?’ I asked.

That took the wind out of his sails. He selected a strawberry from the bowl and popped it into his mouth. ‘What about her?’

‘Does she know about your engagement?’