Girl Unknown (11 page)

‘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?’

‘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.’

‘Good Lord,’ Alan said.

‘I wanted to let you know – let the department know. She’s my student, after all, and I didn’t want there to
be any …’ I hunted about for the right word ‘… any misunderstanding.’

‘Right,’ he said, sounding slightly fazed. His eyes darted over my face and I wondered if he was making some kind of mental reassessment of me, some private speculation as to my personal life. A bead of sweat rolled down my back.

‘Have you mentioned this to anyone else in the department?’

‘Not yet,’ I answered, wondering whether I should tell him what McCormack had said.

‘Because she’s one of your students, we’ll need to declare a conflict of interest when it comes to grading papers, assessments, exams … fulfil all the necessary protocols.’

‘Protocols?’

‘Inform the registrar, the ethics committee, and let me see who else …’

‘An ethics committee?’

‘It will only have to be noted. Nothing to worry about.’

‘What about confidentiality?’

‘It’s assumed.’

He picked up his notebook and pen and got to his feet. I understood the meeting was over. At the door to his office, he spoke a few words of reassurance, making me feel even more as if I’d done something wrong. In fact, the bureaucratic minefield I was walking into was tinged, the way Alan put it, with a moral code, which it appeared I had unwittingly broken.

I had confessed to Caroline, owned up to my kids,
revealed all to the university, but where was the expiation of whatever guilt I had felt? When would the burden of the past lift? My wife’s shock was one thing, my children’s surprise another. I could deal with those twin pressures, given time, but the university’s way of punishing me was soul-destroying – all the paperwork that would need to be filed, the ethics committee, the protocols and standards that were required to be met – like a figurative black mark against me, like ash on the forehead, or a scarlet letter.

That Sunday, there was the usual flurry of activity in the morning, but this time the day’s machinations held a certain edge, a serration to the light of early afternoon and the energy that went with it. Zoë had accepted my invitation to come for lunch and, with her arrival imminent, I felt an air of nervous anticipation hanging in the house.

The doorbell rang.

I called out that I would get it. Behind the frosted glass, there was the outline of a slight figure, hooded, waiting, expectant. I pulled open the door. She had been glancing back at the garden, surveying the clumped hydrangeas, the wine-red spread of acers, and as I said her name, she turned and her eyes met mine. An uncanny tremor of
déjà vu
passed through me, and with it a fleeting memory of Linda on my doorstep on one of those feckless nights in Belfast, her voice emerging from the past:
You said I could drop by.
The answering kick of my heart.

‘I hope I’m not late,’ Zoë said, smiling nervously. ‘I was in town and lost track of time.’

‘Not late at all.’ I stood back so she could enter.

I closed the door and turned to find her looking around
the hall, her eyes travelling upwards. She was a little flushed. She was holding a bottle of wine and a small bouquet of flowers. As if suddenly remembering them, she held both out to me. I took them from her and thanked her. For a moment we simply stood there.

‘Zoë, hello,’ Caroline said brightly, coming out of the kitchen and wiping her hands on a tea-towel.

They shook hands, exchanging some pleasantries I didn’t quite catch. I was still a little shaken from the
déjà vu
. I felt as if I had asked not just Zoë into our lives, but the shadowy aura of Linda, too.

‘I hope you’re hungry,’ Caroline said, hanging Zoë’s jacket in the hall, then ushering her into the kitchen. ‘David’s been toiling over a hot stove all day.’

‘She’s joking, by the way,’ I said, but the truth was I had gone to some lengths in preparing the dish, making extra effort. Earlier that morning, Holly had made a passing comment about how I was fussing. ‘It’s goulash.’

‘Something the soldiers ate in the trenches of one or other war, isn’t that right?’ Caroline jibed. She gestured for Zoë to sit on one of the barstools and started cutting the foil from the neck of a wine bottle. ‘Red or white?’ she asked Zoë.

‘I’d prefer white, please.’

If Caroline was feeling the strain, she hid it well. I noticed she had taken care with her appearance – she was wearing a smart fitted dress, high heels, and diamond earrings winked beneath her neatly curled hair. While there was no doubting her attractiveness, next to Zoë’s casual beauty there seemed something over-formal and made-up about her. She poured the wine into three glasses.

Jazz was playing on the stereo – easy listening, nothing to distract us from getting to know each other, but if everything did break down and go quiet we wouldn’t have to cringe in our own silence. Above the low melody, I could hear the rumble of feet on the stairs. Robbie came in.

‘Zoë, this is Robbie,’ I said. He held up his hand in a gesture only teenagers can pull off – a kind of salute.

All morning, the notes from his cello had filled the house. Not the beautiful sonorous sounds of performance, but the harsher false starts of practice. Still, there had been something familiar and reassuring about them.

‘Hi,’ Zoë said, a little apprehensively. She smiled and took a timid step back as if to fully observe her half-brother.

Holly followed, but positioned herself behind one of the kitchen chairs before saying hello. She had been unusually withdrawn in the days since I had broken the news about her half-sister, not her usual ebullient and confident self. I felt a jab of uncertainty. All of us seemed unsure how to negotiate the terms of these newly discovered relationships. In some respects, we reverted to the buttoned-up awkwardness of polite exchange that had marked the time after Caroline and I had patched things up post-affair, when we talked to each other in front of the kids with a forced civility, maintaining the pretence for their sakes that our marriage was solid. I imagined it to be how distant relations talked after having being introduced for the first time – awkward, circumspect and full of artifice.