Girl Unknown (19 page)

An icy dread flowed through me: had she been doing the same with Caroline and me, playing one off against the other, working at pulling us apart?

‘There wasn’t much I could do about it,’ Gary went on, ‘not without upsetting Linda. So I put it on the back-burner, said I’d take things in hand once Linda got the all-clear. But she kept getting sicker, and the situation at home was growing worse. I mean, on the one hand, I felt sorry for Zoë. She was this messed-up kid who just wanted to get to know her mother. On the other hand, I felt she was trying to shut me out so that she could have Linda to herself.’

He leaned forward and returned his coffee cup to the tray. ‘Even saying that now sounds ridiculous – like I’m jealous of her, this school kid.’ His voice hardened again. ‘Still, it’s difficult to accept what she did. Those last few months with Linda – she poisoned them.’

Poisoned them? Was this the same girl whose hand I had held while she lay in a hospital bed, the life-blood drained from her? What was it she had said to me?
You don’t really know me. There are things that I’ve done
… While the girl who was living under my roof might be my daughter that didn’t mean I had any real idea who she was.

After that, the conversation dwindled. I could hardly remember the purpose of my visit, let alone try to question him further. He, too, grew taciturn, perhaps regretting
how much he had admitted, and after I’d thanked him for the coffee, we both stood up and he led me to the door.

It was only when I had stepped outside, and was turning to say goodbye, that I felt the push of the question that was lodged inside me. ‘Why did she never tell me?’ I asked him. ‘Linda. About the baby. Why didn’t she get in touch?’

He looked beyond me to the rough green grass covering hillocky ground, bald in places, growing long and clumpy in others. ‘Leave sleeping dogs lie,’ he said, returning his gaze to my face and I saw that, behind the flatness of his features, judgement lay.

Dissatisfied with his answer, but knowing I would get no more from him, I turned to go.

‘Watch yourself,’ he said after me.

It was a colloquial goodbye I remembered from my Belfast days, one I had heard many times. Yet when I walked away from him that day, the words remained stuck in my head in a way that felt uncomfortable. Perhaps it was the shock of what I had learned or the cold manner of our parting, but the words and the way he had said them kept repeating inside my head:
Watch yourself, watch yourself
. As I raised my hand to hail a taxi, it occurred to me what was so troubling about them. I felt as if, far from saying goodbye, they had been intended instead as a kind of warning.

15. Caroline

David was gone for two nights, and for the duration of his absence, we didn’t communicate. Not in any way. From the distance of a hundred miles, I could feel him sulking.

There wasn’t time to dwell on it. Life was busy with school runs and extra-curricular activities, not to mention work. There was a trade fair running all that week, hosted in City West Hotel, where our firm had a stand, hoping to attract new business. I was pencilled in to attend with a couple of colleagues. It was a frenetic few days, the throng of the crowd ringing in my ears long after I’d left the building, my feet aching from standing for hours. Occasionally there were lulls in the day, and I would find myself at the stand, my eyes glazing over, thoughts turning inevitably to the uncertain atmosphere at home. I thought about Robbie’s sullenness, his trouble at school and his refusal to discuss it with me afterwards; about Holly and her obvious unhappiness at how things had changed. I thought of David and how every conversation between us lately had seemed loaded and dangerous, as if a wrong word spoken would tilt us into argument. And all the while Zoë retained her occupancy at the top of our house.

Her presence was constant – at the dinner table, in the evenings when we were watching TV. In the mornings when we were rushing about she’d sit there calmly, eating yoghurt. Even when the house was empty, I could find
traces of her recent presence – the bathroom steamy and warm from her shower; a coffee cup cooling on the draining-board. Occasionally, I would pass the stairway to the attic and catch the faint scent of cigarettes wafting down. Our home had been invaded by her presence, and despite my unease, I couldn’t think how to change it.

‘Caroline?’

A voice drew me out of my reverie, the din of the crowd coming back at me suddenly. I turned, my gaze clearing, and as soon as I saw him, the blood came rushing to my cheeks.

‘Aidan,’ I said, as he leaned forward with a half-smile and gave me a chaste kiss on the cheek. ‘This is a surprise.’

Over a year had passed since we had seen each other, the last occasion that excruciating meeting in Mrs Campbell’s office. The memory of it flitted through my mind and that alone was enough to stir up feelings of humiliation. We talked for a moment about the trade show, the company I was working for, and then he asked if I wanted to grab a coffee. We were two adults no longer involved with each other. It seemed churlish to say no.

Standing together at a tall table in the hospitality tent, two lattes between us, I told him about my return to work, the pressures and challenges as well as the rewards. He filled me in on his recent promotion. It was strange, being there with him, carefully restricting our conversation to safe topics while the commerce continued around us. We had to raise our voices to be heard and lean in to listen, and while we talked I was taking in the changes that had occurred in him. His hair seemed thinner under the bright spotlights, and there were crows’ feet shooting
out from the sides of his eyes that I hadn’t noticed before. He was wearing a suit – his tie was fractionally askew and the jacket a little crumpled beneath the pockets. Small things, but they added up to give the impression of tiredness, sadness perhaps, which made me wonder about the health of his marriage.

I enquired how his son was doing; he asked after Robbie. My automatic reply was that Robbie was doing well, but after a moment’s hesitation, I added: ‘There was an incident at the school recently. Some trouble with a teacher.’ I explained what had happened, about the intimidation, the bullying, the assault. It was only when I revealed Robbie’s motivation that his eyes widened.

‘The French teacher? It was her?’ Then he grinned. ‘What the hell was she doing in Conways? It’s such a dive!’

‘I know!’ It felt good to be able to talk like that with the benefit of distance from the event itself.

He was still smiling at me, a note of fond recollection coming into his voice, saying, ‘When I think of some of the places we used to meet. I mean – the Three Sisters? Jesus! You must have thought I had no class at all.’

I laughed, and his eyes seemed to flicker over me, the smile dying on his face. ‘You have a lovely laugh, Caroline,’ he said, more serious now. ‘I always thought that.’

The moment had passed, and I felt the creep of shame again.

‘I’ve missed it,’ he added.

‘How have things been with you?’ I asked, uncomfortable beneath the weight of his stare. ‘With your wife, I mean?’

He rotated his coffee cup a fraction, his weight shifting to his other foot. ‘Okay. These things take time, I guess.’

I wondered had she told him about the incident in Ikea. I had a sudden recollection of the ferocity of her trolley bashing into mine, her face stripped of everything except the purest anger. I almost said it to him, then changed my mind. Instead, I told him about Zoë.

‘A daughter?’ he asked, interested. ‘From another relationship?’

‘One that predated our marriage. She’s eighteen, almost nineteen.’

His eyes opened wider in disbelief, and he exhaled out of the side of his mouth. ‘That must have been a shock to the system.’

It occurred to me that I hadn’t told a soul of Zoë’s existence – not a friend or a family member, not even a colleague. It was as though I had been trying to contain it, hoping it would somehow go away. Talking to him about it was a relief, and once I’d started, it was hard to stop. Aidan listened carefully, interjecting with questions and opinions of his own.

‘Does she look like David?’ he asked.

‘Not that I can see. A little like his mother, perhaps, but no, not really.’

‘What do the kids make of her?’

‘Holly can’t stand her. She almost comes out in a rash whenever Zoë’s in the room.’

‘And Robbie?’

‘They’re closer in age, and they’ve more in common. I can tell that he likes having her around. It’s just …’

‘Just what?’

‘I’m worried about him. He’s been acting up lately – and I know he’s a teenager and that’s what they do, but the
way he’s been behaving seems out of character. They spend so much time together, him and Zoë. In the evenings, at weekends. Sometimes I find them talking in his room late into the night. I’m worried about the influence she has over him.’

‘She’s living in your home?’ he asked incredulously. ‘Whose idea was that?’

‘David’s. There was an incident over Christmas. It seems she tried to kill herself –’

‘It seems? Do you not believe her?’

‘I don’t know what to believe, Aidan. She can be two-faced. After the overdose, David wanted her to move in with us and I felt I couldn’t say no.’

‘Why not? She’s not your responsibility.’

‘Not mine, perhaps, but David feels responsible. He is her father, after all.’

His expression was sceptical.

‘Listen, he gave her his DNA, that’s all. And in the great big scheme of parenting, that doesn’t amount to much. Where’s the mother in all this?’

‘She’s dead.’

‘Any other family?’

I shook my head. ‘A stepfather, but he doesn’t seem involved.’

‘So you’re left with a cuckoo in your nest.’

There was dry humour in those words but his gaze was serious. I felt a chill cross the back of my neck, like some unseen person had just breathed across it.

I picked up the sugar sachet next to my cup, turned it over. ‘I don’t trust her,’ I said quietly.

‘How come?’

‘She’s always perfectly polite to me, but for David’s benefit. There’s no real connection between us. It’s like she doesn’t want it. Every effort I make in that direction just seems to wash over her.’

‘She’s freezing you out.’

‘That’s what it feels like. David thinks she’s great. He doesn’t see what I see.’

There had been incidents over the past few weeks – nothing major, but enough to stir up trouble. Once, returning laundry to her room, my hand had accidentally brushed against her laptop, awakening the screen. At that particular moment, Zoë had walked in. Later, she told David she had caught me snooping through her emails. Another time, she had come down to breakfast wearing a blouse that was mine – grey silk, scoop-necked. It had been hanging at the back of my wardrobe. I hadn’t worn it in months.

‘You’re wearing my top,’ I had said, surprise in my voice.

‘Am I?’

She had looked down at it, pulling it between fingers and thumbs to examine it in a pantomime way. ‘So it is,’ she replied, laughing. ‘It must have got mixed up with my clothes in the wash. I thought it was mine!’

She was all charm and politeness, David in the background observing. She had offered to run upstairs and change, but somehow that made things worse. I tried to feign a casualness I didn’t feel, told her to put it into the wash at the end of the day when she had finished with it. I wasn’t as good an actress as she was, and despite my efforts, suspicion leaked into my tone. I couldn’t prove it, but I knew she had been going through my things.

‘Thanks, Caroline,’ she said, those shallow green eyes of hers briefly finding mine.

I recounted the incident for Aidan, but what I didn’t tell him was that when I looked at the grey silk skimming her slender curves, I realized, with a pinch of envy, that it looked far better on her youthful frame than it did on me. I knew that I would never wear it again.

‘Have you spoken to David about your misgivings?’ Aidan asked, regaining my attention.

‘Any time I do, we just end up arguing.’

Sympathy entered the look he was giving me, and when he spoke again, his voice was softer but firm. ‘You need to think about what it is you want, Caroline. It’s all very well flinging wide the doors and welcoming her in, very noble, but it shouldn’t be at any cost. You’re not the girl’s mother. Have you thought about what kind of relationship you want to have with her? What you expect from her in return for welcoming her into your family?’

‘Not really.’

‘Take my advice and think it through properly. Work out exactly what you’re prepared to live with and what you absolutely cannot accept.’

He drained his coffee and returned the cup to the table with an air of finality. ‘Work it out and then stand your ground. You can’t let this interloper walk all over you with her poor-little-orphan side-show.’

I checked my watch and said I’d better get back to my colleagues. He came around the table and we hugged awkwardly, each of us feeling the strangeness of contact after all that had passed.

It was the final day of the trade show and, once the doors of the great halls closed, I stayed behind with the others, tidying away our brochures, samples and posters, folding up the stand and loading it all into the backs of our cars. By the time I got home, it was after eight. Coming through the front door, I saw David’s bags by the stairs, and Robbie sitting on the bottom step, his arms folded, his face drawn and anxious.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

‘In there,’ he said, nodding in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Dad and Zoë.’

I could hear the rumble of an argument from behind the closed door, the words indistinct. My pulse quickened. What had happened?

‘Stay here,’ I told Robbie, taking off my coat and pushing through the door.

‘That’s not true! I never meant it like that!’ Zoë was saying, as I came into the room.

She had her back to me and it was only when she turned to see who was coming through the door that I saw her face was streaked and ruddy with tears. Beyond her, David was leaning back against the counter, his arms folded, a grave look on his face. He barely acknowledged my presence, continuing the conversation with his daughter.