by Karen Perry
‘What is it, Mum?’ Holly asked one evening, over dinner. David and Robbie looked up from their plates. ‘Why do you keep staring at me?’
‘I’m not.’
‘You are! Every time I look up, you’re staring. It’s freaking me out.’
Scanning my daughter’s face, interrogating it for traces of Zoë. Was there something in the slight flatness to her cheeks, the small nose, the wide, thin-lipped mouth revealing a straight row of small teeth?
An expression sprang up from childhood: The cat can look at the queen.
‘Just eat your dinner,’ I said.
While we waited for the DNA test results, it seemed as if David and I were living within an unarticulated argument. We were cordial with each other but we took a measure of care when moving through our conversations, both of us cautious not to touch on the subject. We talked about the children, about work, exchanged words about shopping, cooking, household tasks. Any thoughts or doubts I kept to myself, and if he had any misgivings he didn’t confide them to me. Then one evening he arrived home from work and I felt a change in him straight away. When he came in from the garden, taking off his jacket as he closed the door behind him, I felt his muted anger in the way he seemed to shrink from my gaze.
‘Glass of wine?’ I asked, and he said sure, moving past me to hang his jacket from the hook on the door.
From the sitting room came a burst of laughter – Holly and two of her friends were watching the One Direction film. Beyond the window, the trees were dripping from a recent downpour, but it was warm in the kitchen, the mellow trumpet sounds of Kenny Durham coming through the speakers.
‘Cheers,’ I said, and we clinked glasses. I sat on the sofa and watched him lean back on a barstool across from me, wondering what was pulling at him. ‘You okay?’ I asked, solicitous, concerned.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you met Zoë?’ he asked quietly.
My breath caught in my throat. ‘David, I’m sorry. I should have told you. I’m not sure why I didn’t.’
He kept looking at me, a baffled expression clouding his face.
‘I suppose I thought if I could just see her, get a look at her –’
‘How did you even find her?’
‘I rang your department,’ I said, shame creeping up through me as I admitted it. It occurred to me that the methods I had employed, the way I had sneaked about, were like the actions of a suspicious wife trying to catch her husband in the act of adultery. If David saw the irony, he didn’t say so. He was swivelling the barstool slightly from side to side, the movement channelling some of his anger.
‘Don’t you think that’s a bit creepy?’ he asked. I had the sense that he was choosing his words. For all the care he took, I could hear the accusation behind them.
‘You’re right,’ I agreed, wanting to smooth things over, even though the need to talk it through was still there, the angry pulse of it running through everything. ‘I’m sorry. It was impulsive. I didn’t think it through properly.’
He drank from his glass, turned and put it on the counter behind him. I thought he was going to let the matter drop. But then he looked back at me and said: ‘Have you any idea how freaked out she was?’
A match striking tinder. The sudden spark, his concern for the girl, seeing how it overrode my apology, my discomfort. The anger I had been holding at bay came to life inside me. ‘How freaked out she was?’
‘Yes. She was in a state when she came to my office today, in tears over what you had said to her—’
‘What did I say? Tell me. What did I say to upset her?’
Still quietly, he went on: ‘She said you demanded to know what she wanted from me. She felt threatened, intimidated—’
‘I didn’t intimidate her. The way you talk of her, you’d swear she was this shrinking violet.’
‘She’s just a kid.’
‘She’s old enough to know how to manipulate, David. Believe me. Clearly, she has you all figured out, turning on the waterworks so you’ll feel sorry for her.’
‘Do you even hear yourself, Caroline? Do you know how harsh you sound? How bitter?’
‘Well, what do you expect from me?’
He was making the barstool swivel harder now, his anger growing.
‘Come on, David. Tell me how you think this should work. Should I just take it on the chin? Say, “There, there, dear. Never mind about all this”, open my home and my heart to this girl – this stranger – without checking first to see if she’s real, if what she says is true?’
The chair stilled and he said: ‘You should have told me.’
‘I know. I know I should, and I’ve apologized for that.’
‘We agreed to wait, didn’t we? Until the test results came back.’
‘Yes,’ I said, my voice cool and firm. ‘We did. And you also agreed that you wouldn’t have anything to do with her outside class – remember?’
‘She came to my office. What was I supposed to do?’
‘Tell her you were busy. Have her make an appointment.’
‘I couldn’t. She was upset—’
‘Oh, David, please. She sheds some crocodile tears and immediately you cave.’
‘Don’t be like that,’ he said.
‘Like what?’
He thought for a moment, then alighted on the word. ‘Hard.’
I stood up and walked past him to the counter, threw the wine from my glass into the sink, a burgundy splash over the white surface. ‘That wine tastes too sharp.’
I turned on the tap and watched it sluicing down the drain, took the dishcloth and held it under the water, then flicked off the tap and wrung it out. I started to clean the plughole, the taps, the area around the sink.
‘Why are you angry with me, Caroline?’
I wiped down the granite counter-top.
‘I haven’t done anything to you,’ he went on. ‘I haven’t been unfaithful.’
He must have seen the way I stiffened, for he continued in a tone of irritation more than apology: ‘I didn’t mean it like that. What I meant was, it happened a long time ago, when I was free and single. I didn’t screw Linda behind your back – we weren’t together then. I never knew she was pregnant.’
‘Didn’t you?’
‘Of course not!’ His voice rose, for the first time a note of real anger in it. ‘She never told me. I never knew there was a baby. Not until Zoë came into my office that day. Caroline, none of this has happened to hurt you. It just happened, that’s all.’
He was so maddeningly rational. I had reached the end of the counter and pulled out the pestle and mortar. I saw a mark left on the counter. I went at it with the cloth, the perfect black circle it had made so stark against the natural veins running through the stone.
‘I feel like you blame me for all this,’ he said, ‘and it’s not my fault.’
‘I know it’s not your fault.’
‘It was just a mistake.’
‘I know.’
‘You’re going to rub a hole in the granite, the way you’re going.’
I flung the cloth into the sink. ‘It’s because of the baby.’
‘What baby?’
I turned, leaned back against the counter and gazed at him. ‘Our baby, David. The one we didn’t have.’
It took a moment for his expression to clear and I saw, with a shock, that he had pushed that whole painful episode in our history out of his mind. He had moved on.
‘Oh. That.’
‘You’d forgotten, hadn’t you?’ I asked.
His fingers went to the stem of his glass – there was still some wine in the bowl, which he began to swirl in a slow, meditative way. ‘I hadn’t forgotten. I just don’t think about it any more. It was so long ago, Caroline.’
I felt the counter behind me, the hard surface of it there to steady me. ‘She would have been twenty-one now,’ I said. ‘Or he.’
He put his glass down, his brow creasing with a pained expression.
I waited where I wa
s – I wouldn’t go to him – and after a moment, he got up off the barstool, came over and put his arms around me, pulling me into his embrace. I don’t know how long we stood there, holding each other, and all the while I was trying to feel the warmth of his hug – the sincerity within it – but I kept thinking, He’s trying to silence me. Trying to close down that avenue of conversation.
He drew back, looked at me, our faces close to each other. ‘You okay?’
‘Yes. I’m fine.’
He held me there for another moment, then reached for the wine bottle and turned away.
‘Is that it?’ I asked.
‘What?’
‘Is that all you’re going to say on the subject?’
He stood at the other side of the counter, filling his glass again, the look of forbearance on his face making me want to scream. Patiently, he said: ‘It was a long time ago. I thought we’d put it behind us.’
‘You tell me about this girl – this daughter you fathered back when you were a student – and you never once think about our baby? The one we got rid of?’
My voice broke and I had to stop, feeling the rising commotion inside me. I wanted to tell him that when I met Zoë – when I looked at her – all I could think of was the pregnancy I had terminated. After so many years of holding it at bay, controlling it, never allowing it to cast its shadow over my life, here it was in front of me in the shape of that girl. All the memories of what had happened seemed stored up in her. I’d looked at her and felt myself being dragged back to a time when I was sick with fear and uncertainty, overwhelmed by the mistake we had made and the decision we’d had to face. Sitting alongside her in the sun, I’d felt as if I was back in the waiting room, a form attached to a clipboard on my knee, the deep-pile of the carpet underfoot, the crisp receptionist behind her wall of Perspex, and all the while my legs wouldn’t stop trembling. Twenty years old, in my final year at university, my whole life ahead of me. I had thought that once it was done I would feel relief. That I could forget. And I did. But there was also the slow advance of dread crawling up from that empty place, the awkward rumblings of conscience.
‘Anyway,’ I said, giving myself a shake as though to dispel the chill from the past. ‘It’s just nerves. All this waiting – it’s making me jumpy.’
He glanced up at me with a guarded expression.
‘Once those test results come through, we can put this whole wretched business behind us.’
I still remember the forced optimism with which I said those words.
‘Caroline,’ he said slowly, and I saw at once how clearly I had been counting on it being false, her wild claim proven to be the troubled fantasy of an attention-seeker. The long, awful time of not knowing was about to end, and my throat grew dry and stiff.
‘Tell me,’ I said.
He didn’t need to say it. The bitter truth was written all over his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told me. ‘I know you hoped it would be different …’
I hardly heard him. I kept thinking back over the words he had used to defend himself. It’s not my fault. Like a schoolboy pleading innocence. It was a mistake.
A mistake he had made twice.
That was what was so unforgivable. The very mistake we had made together – the baby we had accidentally started – he had repeated it with another woman. How maddeningly stupid of him. How unbelievably careless. For a man so self-controlled, composed and careful almost to the point of coldness, it seemed wildly out of character. His Achilles heel, perhaps. Reckless with passion, he had fallen into the same trap a second time. Linda had kept her baby, though, and neither of us could have foreseen the consequences of her decision.
He continued talking about the test results – the science involved – using cold clinical terms, and I thought of these strands of DNA and imagined them to be threads escaping their spools. She was a thread that ran through the fabric of our family. In the same way each of my children was a thread – including the child that was never born – woven into a complex tapestry. Love, trust, fidelity: these were the strands that bound us together.
Families don’t come apart because a thread has loosened. The break, when it comes, is sharp, brutal. It takes ripping and hacking to tear the tapestry apart.
Part Two
* * *
10. David
It was nothing to be ashamed of. That was what I told myself at the time. This daughter who had parachuted into my life out of nowhere didn’t need to be covered up or explained away with a mixture of apology and discomfiture. If a mistake had been made, it was the mistake of a younger man. What is youth without the odd indiscretion? The important thing, I reminded myself, whenever I felt the doubt creeping in, was how I handled it now. It was a situation requiring calm and maturity. I needed to be honest, upfront, and offer no apologies: there was nothing to apologize for.
Not everyone shared this view. Caroline, for one, shrank from the notion when I informed her I was going to tell the children.
‘What?’ she asked, clearly aghast.
‘They have a right to know,’ I told her. ‘And a right to meet their half-sister.’
‘Wait a second. Telling them about Zoë is one thing, but meeting her? What is it you intend to happen?’
‘They ought to have some kind of relationship with her,’ I argued. ‘Get to know her for themselves.’
‘Have you thought about the effect it might have on them?’
‘Of course I have,’ I answered, a little irritated by her response. ‘They’re not babies, Caroline. Robbie is fifteen, and Holly has always been older than her years. I think you’re doing them a disservice, suggesting they might not be able to handle it.’
‘It’s not that,’ she answered. ‘It’s what they might think of you once they find out. That’s what I’m concerned about.’
She had a point. Even though I was openly dismissive of her concerns, when the time came to sit down with Robbie and Holly, Caroline looking on watchfully, I felt an inner trembling at what I was about to admit. In my mind, I had rehearsed my little speech over and over, explaining as gently as possible about a relationship I had had before they were born, the consequences of which were only beginning to play out now, and even though my words were as I had planned, they came out sounding colder and more matter-of-fact than I would have liked. In truth, even though I had reasoned with myself that I had nothing to blame myself for – it was a mistake that could happen to almost anyone – my explanation to my children came out sounding defensive.
‘A half-sister?’ Robbie asked, with a mixture of amusement and disbelief.
‘Yes. Her name is Zoë. She’s eighteen.’
‘What the fuck?’ he had exclaimed, laughing to cover his shock.
‘Robbie,’ Caroline said in partial admonishment, but mostly to steady him.
‘How come you never told us about her?’ he asked me.
‘Because I didn’t know about her myself until a couple of weeks ago.’
‘You didn’t know?’
‘Her mother and I had lost touch.’
‘Who was her mother?’ he asked.
‘That doesn’t matter,’ I replied quickly, unhappy with where his line of questioning was going. ‘She was someone I went out with for a little while. It’s not important.’
Immediately I regretted that statement. For one thing, it seemed to imply that I had been the type of person in my youth who slept around without any thought to the consequences – not the message I wanted to send my children. Also, I couldn’t escape the feeling that Linda was somehow watching me, her spirit present in the room, witnessing my offhand dismissal of a love affair that had been both powerful and precious.
Caroline glanced out of the window. Holly shifted a little on the couch.
‘So what?’ Robbie asked. ‘Is she going to move in with us?’
‘No, no,’ I assured him. ‘But I would like you to meet her. I was thinking of inviting her over for lunch one Sunday. How would you feel about that?’<
br />
‘Yeah, okay.’
‘And you, Hols?’ I asked.
She said nothing, gave a noncommittal shrug. The whole time I was talking, she had sat there quietly, watchful, absorbing everything I was telling them. But now I saw her eyes flicker over me briefly in an assessing glance, the kind I had never received from her before. I saw at once that Caroline was right. This revelation I wanted so desperately to make normal had already altered our family bonds. Beneath my little girl’s gaze, I felt myself changing, becoming a different kind of father from the one she had known and relied upon until then.
Later that week, I was mulling all of this over in a meeting with Alan. We were discussing a funding bid to a government scheme attached to the Peace and Reconciliation Committee. Alan was supportive of the concept, agreeing to add his name to the proposal. ‘Even if I won’t be here to see it through,’ he said, referring to his intended retirement. I made no reply. He was in good form that day, brisk and cheery, and once our business had been concluded, he capped his pen and flipped his notebook closed, expecting me to do the same.
‘Actually, there’s something else I wanted to speak to you about,’ I told him.
‘Yes?’
‘It concerns a student. One of my first-years. Her name is Zoë Barry.’
I felt nervous about telling him. It was as if I were readying myself to own up to a transgression that had only just happened, rather than something that had occurred almost twenty years ago.
‘The thing is, Alan, it turns out that I’m her father.’
He put down the pen he was still holding, realizing that our conversation was going to last longer than he had planned.
‘It was when I was at Queens – I had a relationship with the girl’s mother. I never knew she had a child. This all happened before I was married … I’ve only just discovered.’
