Girl Unknown

by Karen Perry

  Chris picked up the dessert spoon from his plate, turned it over, then put it back. In the hall, the front door slammed.

  ‘One of us should go after her,’ I said.

  Looking at his plate, Chris said: ‘Be my guest.’

  The rain had stopped, water pooling in dips in the paving.

  I could see Susannah striding down the street and shouted for her to stop, but she didn’t slow and I had to run to catch up with her.

  ‘Please come back,’ I said, when I finally reached her.

  She kept on walking, holding her coat closed with one hand, her handbag clenched in the other. There was something terrible in her balled-up anger, her refusal to speak until she reached the corner where our avenue meets the main road. ‘I’m so sorry, Caro,’ she said. ‘We’ve ruined your evening, haven’t we?’

  Her eyes flicked past me to a taxi slowing as it neared and she stepped out on to the road with her hand held aloft.

  ‘Please don’t do this,’ I said, but her mind was made up.

  I watched the taxi drive away, saw the sharp silhouette of her haircut through the rear window, and knew that what had happened between them could not be undone.

  Peter and Anna were at the front door when I returned, already in their coats, full of smiles and words of thanks for a lovely evening, then hastily departing. There was no sign of David. I watched them hurry away into the night, before closing the door on the darkness and returning to the kitchen. Chris had his head in his hands, David pouring him another whiskey.

  ‘Chris is staying with us tonight,’ he told me.

  Normally, I am the one to offer comfort, to know the right words to say. ‘I’ll go and make up his room,’ I said.

  As I closed the door, I saw them clink glasses, solemnity in the gesture rather than any measure of cheer. At the same time, I felt my jaw tighten.

  An idea had got its claws into me: that David might be having an affair. A dalliance with a colleague or some post-doctoral student. Some silly girl looking for excitement with an older man, the thoughtless facilitator of his midlife crisis.

  We might have been able to weather the storm of such a crisis, but what was to come – the slow erosion caused by her destructive presence – proved far worse, a dark cavity that would open up and suck each one of us in.

  6. David

  ‘Who is Zoë?’

  I turned and saw Caroline staring at me.

  I had been rinsing the wine glasses from the night before, dog-tired and hung-over. Chris had just left. Her words startled me out of a daydream – a memory of Linda wearing a shirt of mine, her feet bare on the hard tiles of that kitchen floor in our Donegal cottage all those years before. Those same feet, the night before, had pressed into the small of my back, the soft curve of her heels. We’d had so little time left. I’d traced a finger over her temple, along the sloping curve of her cheek, and told her it was all going to be okay. I drew her close enough to feel her body against mine, caught in the green haze of her stare. I kissed her, the tenderness of her lips against mine. A sense of certainty had come over me – the sure knowledge that we were safe, that no harm could come to us. I had been twenty-four, my whole life ahead of me.

  ‘David?’ Caroline said. In her hand was a piece of paper, and she held it up to me. ‘I found this in your wallet.’

  It was the note Zoë had slipped beneath my office door, the one asking me to meet her in Madigans.

  ‘Why were you looking in my wallet?’

  ‘It fell out. I was doing the laundry.’

  I put the tea-towel, which had been slung across my shoulder, on to the draining-board and took a deep breath. ‘Close the door,’ I said. ‘We need to talk.’

  Caroline looked both confused and upset. She shut the door, and the chatter from the television in the next room became an indistinct hum. I gazed out into the garden where everything, for a moment, appeared to be moving in slow motion – the russet leaves falling from the trees, and above them a dense body of clouds rippling by in waves. In the distance, there was the dull sound of a car starting.

  ‘Do you remember me telling you about Linda Barry?’

  Caroline seemed to steel herself. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Zoë is her daughter.’

  ‘Her daughter?’ she repeated.

  I pulled at my earlobe. ‘She’s also one of my students. She came to see me because she thinks I’m her father.’

  Caroline put the note on the table, but she kept her eyes on me. ‘She said that?’

  ‘She said she was pretty sure because her mother had told her who I was, and she had her birth certificate with her.’

  Caroline pulled out a chair and sat at the table. ‘A birth certificate?’ she said.

  Her resolute calm and steady nerve disarmed me. It would not have been unreasonable for her to raise her voice, to display some outrage. Instead there was a steely, implacable propriety. I should not have been surprised. Caroline had always demonstrated a degree of strength and inner resolve.

  ‘It didn’t actually name me as father …’

  ‘Then how can you be sure she’s your daughter?’

  ‘I can’t, not categorically. But there was a resemblance to Linda, I suppose, and the dates match up. She had some photographs …’

  ‘Photographs?’

  ‘Of myself and Linda.’

  Caroline looked about her as if to reassure herself, to check that she was where she thought she was – that the kitchen, with its stereo on the counter, the glass fruit bowl, the children’s assorted books and computer games, the black-and-white framed pictures of us as a family on the far wall, were all there. I thought for a moment she might reach out and touch something – the need in her appeared so real.

  ‘And where is Linda now?’ she asked evenly.

  ‘She’s dead,’ I said, and it sounded like a vindication, though I hadn’t meant it to.

  Caroline’s eyes widened. ‘Dead?’

  I took the chair opposite her and went on to tell her what I knew of Linda’s passing.

  She reached for a napkin from the holder on the table. ‘When did this happen? When did the girl tell you?’ she asked.

  ‘I found out at the start of the week.’

  ‘The start of the week? Why didn’t you say something?’ Caroline said, a little more worked up, annoyed now. ‘Why did you wait to tell me?’

  ‘To be honest, I needed more time.’

  ‘More time?’

  ‘It was a shock to have her walk into my office and make that claim. I needed time to think it through before telling you.’ I remained calm, pragmatic. ‘I wasn’t trying to keep it from you.’

  ‘You should have told me straight away,’ Caroline said.

  ‘I wanted to get things clear in my head.’

  ‘And are they?’

  I hesitated. In my head there was an image of the whitewash of water whipped up by the wind on the beach in Holywood, breaking relentlessly, wave after wave, against the shore, where Linda and I stood hand in hand.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said in answer. ‘The girl makes a convincing case …’ I meant Zoë, but I was thinking of how Linda and I had tripped down Botanic Avenue on those evenings on our way to the pub or a poetry reading at Oxfam.

  ‘But we need to be sure,’ Caroline said. ‘We need to know for certain whether she is your daughter or not.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve thought about it and there are several ways of finding out.’

  ‘What? Like a paternity test?’ she asked, with a grim laugh.

  ‘Why not?’ I answered, reaching out to her to try to reassure her, but her hand remained motionless.

  ‘All these years …’ she said.

  I wanted to say what a relief it was to tell her, but I didn’t. Something stopped me – the strange mix of emotions I was feeling, at once frightening and painful.

  ‘You never suspected?’ Caroline said.

  ‘No … never.’ As I watched for her reaction, I noticed
something else, something within me, a disbelief at my own words because, to put it quite simply, they were not true. I had suspected. But it was a buried, unconscious suspicion. You see, ever since that weekend in Donegal, the seed of possibility had stayed with me. Had we been careful? Linda had asked me back then. Careful: up until then, we had always been careful. In fact, care was what had defined our relationship. We’d had to be both careful and circumspect. Nobody knew we were there in Donegal. Nobody knew we were together. Nobody knew we were even lovers. She was my student, after all.

  ‘It’s hard to believe …’ Caroline said, bringing me back to the present. ‘What will you do if it’s true? What will we do if she really is your daughter?’

  ‘If she is, she is. It doesn’t have to change everything. It doesn’t have to disrupt the lives we have. We’ll adjust, get to know her, try to make room for her in our family.’

  ‘As simply as that?’

  I said: ‘Why not?’

  ‘Have you thought how this might affect Robbie and Holly if it’s true?’ she said. ‘If they find out that they have a half-sister?’

  I had thought about it. I was worried about how they might react. There had been enough disruption in their lives, and God knew I didn’t want to see them hurt. But I really did think we could make it work.

  ‘We’ll manage, but first let’s get through this next step.’

  Caroline considered what I had said, and asked: ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘She’s young … bright, a little shy. She has all the gaucheness of a teenager and at the same time enough nerve to walk into my office and introduce herself as my daughter … Whether it ends up being true or not, I have to take it seriously.’

  Caroline listened, concentrating on what I had said, trying to process it all. ‘The DNA test,’ she said. ‘That’s what you mean by “paternity test”, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How are you going to do it?’

  I thought about how I had met Zoë in the pub, how my hand had found the loose strands of hair on her coat and clutched at them. ‘A hair follicle.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘I’ve done it.’

  ‘You’ve done it?’

  ‘Zoë doesn’t know. I took some strands of hair from her coat.’

  ‘You’re kidding me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But that’s not ethical.’

  ‘I suppose not. I thought it was the best thing to do at the time,’ I said, my voice wavering.

  ‘But, David, that’s dishonest – it’s underhand,’ she said, appealing to my reason.

  ‘And you’re an expert on honesty now?’ I snapped. Caroline was more disappointed than hurt. I apologized, but the awkwardness was back, as well as another worry, another fear I couldn’t name as yet.

  ‘Would it not be better to be upfront with Zoë and say to her that this has been a shock and would she mind if we had a professional check it out, just to be sure?’

  ‘I know as a first measure it’s not ideal,’ I said. ‘But I’ve thought about it, Caroline. The assertion Zoë is making, it could be a complete fiction. We need to know if she’s telling the truth.’

  ‘So when did this take place?’ She gestured to the note discarded on the table – 6.30 in Madigans.

  ‘Yesterday. I met her at the pub before the dinner party.’

  ‘You told me you were taking a visiting professor out for a drink.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t. I met Zoë.’

  ‘Why didn’t tell you me? Why did you have to lie?’

  ‘We had guests in the next room, Caroline. Do you really think that was the time for me to bring this up with you?’

  Her fingers tapped the table. ‘And you’re not going to tell her about the test?’

  ‘I’m not, no.’

  ‘I see. I just wish you’d come to me earlier,’ she said. ‘Your whole plan … it makes me uneasy.’

  I said nothing. What was the point? I had no plan, but the wheels of whatever it was had been set in motion. Caroline held her hands to her face. She was deep in thought – weighing everything up. I stood up and looked back to the sink, the wine glasses refracting the morning light. I thought of that morning in Donegal and, just like that, she was there, a ghostly presence in the background, my old flame, Linda. And when I missed her, when I wondered what might have been, when I had been with someone else, or when I was with my wife, she still seemed to be there, in the shadows, and – it happened more than once – when I made love to someone else, I felt in some strange way as if I were still making love to her.

  ‘Send the test off,’ Caroline said. ‘Get the preliminary results. But promise me you won’t seek the girl out or spend any time with her that you don’t need to. Not until we know for sure.’

  ‘I promise,’ I said.

  The radio was playing in the background: a listener was complaining about the impending water charges. Another demonstration was being planned in town, he added, and as he did so, it occurred to me that within this house, within the confines of what we called our home, a real and indelible crisis was going on, which would disrupt our family unit irrevocably, but outside, beyond the boundaries of our home, life carried on – people were up in arms about water charges, about employment, about governance and corruption, but the very same people were going about their daily business. Life carried on – no matter what.

  ‘What are you two talking about?’ Holly said, standing in the doorway with her coat on. I don’t know how long she had been standing there or how much she had heard.

  ‘I’ll be with you in two minutes,’ Caroline said, and Holly went back to the living room. ‘No contact with the girl,’ she said to me. ‘Not until we find out more.’

  ‘Agreed,’ I said.

  She stood up stiffly, as if the truce she had made with me was unsatisfactory, but one she had to accept whether she liked it or not.

  Without looking at me again, she called to Holly, ‘Come on, love. Time to go.’

  Holly kissed my cheek before she left and, it occurred to me only then that I had made a promise to Caroline that there was no way I could keep.

  7. Caroline

  My husband is not a vengeful man. Yet that Saturday morning when he told me about this daughter, about Zoë, as I sat and listened to him talking of DNA tests and establishing parentage, one distinct notion kept rising to the surface: this was David’s way of getting his own back.

  It was all so unsettling, so worrying. Who was this girl? What did she want from us? I had no way of knowing how it would impact on our lives. No idea to what extent she would want to become involved with our family. Would she expect to be treated in the same way as David treated Robbie and Holly? Would she expect us to provide for her? Pay her college tuition? Her rent?

  I said nothing of this to Holly as we drove west of the city. Instead I allowed her to chatter on as she switched from one radio station to another, a happy buzz of excitement coming off her at the prospect of our shopping trip to Ikea. Since turning eleven, she had developed a pressing desire to assert her own taste and I had promised to buy new furniture for her bedroom. It was late morning by the time we had finished pushing through the showrooms and I was downstairs in the warehouse, a little weary and looking forward to coffee and a scone, when it happened.

  Holly had returned to the bed-linen department, having changed her mind about the pattern she had chosen, so I was alone in the aisle, scanning the stacks of brown boxes for the one I wanted. Having found it at last, I pulled it out and hoisted it on to my trolley. I was just straightening up when a woman came towards me and slammed her trolley into mine. Instinctively, I gripped the handle and looked up at her. Her eyes bright with fury, she was staring at me. Before I could say anything, she slammed her trolley into mine a second time and I let out a cry. The force of the impact caused some of her items to clatter on to the concrete floor. I didn’t move, the suddenness of the aggression, the sharp focus of it, shocking me into inaction.
She was a woman of my own age wearing jeans and a grey turtle-neck, dark hair drawn back into a ponytail. I had seen her occasionally at the school gates before the time of my indiscretion, but not since. Now she was fixing me with an expression of venom as if she wanted to slam me with her trolley, to push me back against the shelves stacked high with boxed furniture and watch as it all came crashing down on my head. There was something electric about it, the snap of current passing between us. It lasted no more than a minute. Then she drew back from me and turned, half walking, half running, struggling with the heavy trolley as she rounded the corner. The items that had slipped from her cart – a set of mixing bowls and some magazine files – remained on the floor where they had fallen.

  Shaken by the encounter, I glanced around to see if anyone else had witnessed this strange assault, and there was Holly. She was holding a different set of bed-linen under her arm. She came towards me, and – this is the part that really kills me – she put the package on top of the boxes and, without looking at me, without uttering a word about what she had just witnessed, she said, in a small, flat voice, ‘I think that’s everything.’ Then she walked towards the checkouts.

  Holly has always been the more resilient of my two children, even though she’s the younger. She lacks the sensitivity of her older brother, which has worried me from his infancy. I suppose because she is the baby of the family I sometimes underestimate her strength of mind, her astuteness. But every now and then she surprises me with her maturity. Did she know somehow what I had done? Who this woman was?

  ‘Holly,’ I said in the car. ‘About what happened back there –’

  ‘Please, Mum,’ she interrupted. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  Throughout the journey home we were silent, but I kept thinking of her reaction – the coolness of it. Was it possible she knew? It made me wonder at how much she had been exposed to, my daughter with her steady gaze, her father’s cool demeanour. The guilt was stirring within me again. It was never far away.

  More than a year before Zoë came into our lives, I became involved with a man whose son went to school with Robbie. The word ‘affair’ seems wrong – a false name for what occurred between us. I don’t think you can properly call it an affair if there was never full-on sex, can you? A fling, perhaps, although that makes it sound so throwaway, as if I’m the type of woman who whimsically forgets her marriage vows whenever the fancy takes her. I’m not that type of person. His name was Aidan – is Aidan, for he hasn’t died, he’s just not in my life any more; we met through the Parents’ Committee. This ‘fling’, for want of a better word, lasted three, maybe four months. It wasn’t love, never that. When it ended, Aidan and his wife took their son out of Robbie’s school and the family moved to a different part of Dublin. David and I made the decision to keep Robbie where he was. In hindsight, I think it was a mistake.