Girl Unknown (3 page)

With a slim frame, all wrists and knees, jeans clinging to thin legs, heavy oxblood-red boots, there was something vulnerable about her – even if she had just lobbed her grenade and set me reeling. ‘A lot to take in? Yes, you could say that.’

‘I know,’ she said, an uneasy smile spreading across her face. ‘But you have to know that I don’t want anything from you.’

‘You don’t?’

‘Nothing!’ she said, laughing nervously. ‘It’s just I thought you should know.’

‘And that’s all? There’s nothing else?’ I asked.

She shrugged, and started to pick again at her frayed cuffs. ‘Just to talk, I suppose.’

‘To talk?’

She squirmed, grew sullen. The shield of hair had fallen over her face again. She made no effort to push it back. Quietly, from behind it, she said: ‘I just wanted to get to know you a little.’

It was a reasonable request, I supposed, but I resisted. ‘Did Linda put you up to this?’ I asked. ‘Does she know you’ve come to see me? Did she tell you to come?’

In retrospect, I see how foolish I was – how ridiculous I must have sounded – to think an old girlfriend had
spent the last eighteen years hatching a plan to bring about my undoing.

‘My mother’s dead.’

Dead? Said so matter-of-factly, and with such certainty that there was no room for doubt. Still my initial and irrational response was to contradict her, even though I had had not one scintilla of contact with Linda since I had seen her last. Linda, my old flame, dead. I couldn’t quite believe it. Briefly, I remembered, without wanting to, the first time I had kissed her: she had dared me to. ‘Go on,’ she had said that night, as I walked her home from an evening guest lecture. ‘You know you want to.’

I had played dumb, but all the time, I was stepping closer to her, and she was stepping closer to me, until her hands gripped the pockets of my coat and my hands found their way to her waist. It had not been a lingering kiss. She had pulled away quickly, and I followed her, feeling I had been on the brink of making a terrible mistake but not knowing if the mistake was to follow her or to let her slip away.

And now she’s dead? I was stunned by the revelation, numbed. How strange and unreal it is to hear of an old lover who has passed away. To think that the time you shared is no longer a common memory between you, no longer a testimony subject to agreement and dissent, no longer a space of contested but cherished moments already gone – like the rising smoke from a bonfire on a Hallowe’en night that we’d stood beside in Belfast. Gone – like the fading autumn light at sunset. It’s like a sudden pull in the heart, a brief awakening, and the realization
that their life has continued all the time you were apart, all the time they were forgotten; still they remained, creating their own history. A sudden burst of memory, the brush of old and tender feelings, then it fades.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I told her. ‘What happened?’

‘Ovarian cancer. It’s just coming up to a year.’

Now it made some sort of sense to me: a young woman whose mother has just died seeks some kind of replacement to make up for her loss. It’s possible. Psychologists might call it transference, and stranger things have been known to happen, certainly, on this campus. But I was curious. ‘And when did Linda tell you about me?’ I asked.

She pushed back her hair. ‘It was towards the end.’

‘Is that why you came to this university?’

She blushed, shifted in her chair. ‘I dunno. Maybe. I’ve always liked history and, with Mam gone, I just wanted to get away, you know. Start again somewhere new.’

Whatever the truth of her claim, I couldn’t help but admire her a little, the curious tilt of her chin, the bravery in her optimism.

A sudden rap on the open door startled her. She stood up quickly. Another student appeared. ‘Dr Connolly.’

‘Just a moment,’ I said.

The girl was already fixing the strap of her satchel over one shoulder. ‘I should go,’ she said.

Awkwardly, beneath the gaze of the other student, we said goodbye to one another. I turned back into the room, went to the window and waited for the young man to sit. Below in the courtyard, staff and students sat at tables among the birch trees; the sound of their conversation rose in a barely audible hum. Shadows moved overhead,
the day darkened. The student behind me cleared his throat.

‘Would you mind waiting?’ I said, making for the door. ‘I’ll just be a moment.’

She was at the stairwell by the time I caught up. Hair falling over her shoulders, strolling away. I called to her and she turned. A door opened and a flurry of students drifted out, passing us in a noisy group.

‘I wanted to ask you,’ I said, ‘have you told anyone else? Any of your friends? Anyone in the class?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Can I ask that you don’t? Please. Not yet, not until I’ve had some time to take it in.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said, her voice flat and unreadable. In her eyes, there was a flash of pity. I felt a nudge of something, too: shame, perhaps. However foolish, I still believed I could contain whatever it was that had been released.

‘I won’t say a thing,’ she said, slipping into the stream of students passing, leaving me there, sweat on my palms, holding on to the rail, conscious that I was about to be swept up by something more powerful than I understood, something dangerous and beyond my control.

3. Caroline

I can remember when it began.

One afternoon in early autumn, I had been called away from the office unexpectedly because of David’s mother, Ellen. There had been an incident.

I was just settling her with her tea-tray, the telly on, when my mobile rang, David’s number appearing on the screen.

‘Caroline?’

‘I was just going to call you.’

‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Has something happened?’

Something in his voice: a scratch of irritation or a wrinkle of concern.

‘Who is it?’ Ellen asked, her voice still quavering with nerves.

‘It’s David.’ I turned up the volume of the telly, then closed the door gently behind me. In the hallway, I sat down on the stairs and felt the carpet rough at the back of my legs, a musty smell rising from it. ‘Your mum,’ I told him. ‘She went wandering again.’

‘Oh, Christ.’

‘She’s fine –’

‘What happened?’

I told him about the phone call I’d received – Ellen’s neighbour Marion, sounding breathy and rushed:
You told me to call if ever something happened
. I listened as she told
me how she had found Ellen in Tesco, crying in the frozen-food section, not knowing where she was or how she would get home. It was not the first such occurrence. ‘I’ve settled her now,’ I said. ‘I gave her some beans on toast.’

‘Should I come over?’

Ellen was just beginning to get over her shakiness. The last thing she needed was to relive it for her son. ‘Leave it until the weekend, David. Give her a chance to recover.’

‘Okay,’ he agreed. Then he said: ‘Caroline?’

‘Yes?’

He hesitated. ‘Nothing. It can wait.’

But it was there in his voice – a note I couldn’t identify.

I knew it at once: something had happened.

She came into our lives, into our home, at an awkward time for me, a time I think of now as being filled with nerves and self-doubt. I had, after a fifteen-year hiatus, returned to work at the advertising agency I had left when Robbie was born. Everything felt changed, like foreign territory I had visited once but of which I retained no memory. Nothing was familiar.

The decision to give up my career to raise my children was not something I regretted, even though it had been a strain at times: the boredom, the loneliness. There was a deep need within me to create for my children a warm and loving environment where there would always be someone making sure they did their homework, putting dinner on the table, checking on them when they were in
bed at night. I did it gladly. My only continuing contact with the agency was a calendar arriving every year at Christmas, each month headed with a sleek image of a car or an alcoholic drink or whatever product they were being paid to push. When the calendar arrived and I read all the names signed on the inside flap, I confess I felt a pang, a twinge of something close to envy. Fleeting, but I was aware of it nonetheless – a seam of uncertainty or regret that could be tapped into whenever I was reminded of what I had given up. When I met Peter by chance and he mentioned that one of the girls in the office was taking ten months’ maternity leave, the idea took hold. My children were old enough. I had time on my hands. Although I had been out of the game for so long, I felt the pull of it, the undertow of a distant longing. I hadn’t counted on Zoë. I hadn’t even known she existed.

That evening, after I’d left Ellen, I drove home through heavy traffic, the image of my elderly mother-in-law crying next to cabinets full of fish fingers and frozen peas still alive in my mind. Opening my front door, I heard noise from the sitting room, movement upstairs. I kicked off my shoes in the hall, pausing briefly to enjoy the relief. Having hung my coat over the newel post, I went into the sitting room.

Robbie was sitting on the couch with his legs tucked up under him. On the telly a woman was sobbing in front of a studio audience, the man beside her mortified.

‘Hello, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘Sorry I’m so late.’

‘Hey, Mum,’ he answered.

‘I was at Nan’s,’ I told him, although he hadn’t sought an explanation for my absence. ‘Where’s your dad?’

‘Upstairs.’

He was still wearing his school uniform and, after shooting a quick smile in my direction, went back to staring avidly at the screen, the room dark apart from the light cast by the flickering images. The studio audience were hissing and booing, the presenter advancing through them. Robbie shifted under my gaze and I caught a glimpse of an empty crisps packet stuffed down the side of the couch beside him.

‘You didn’t eat a whole bag, did you?’

He smiled again and pulled a face. ‘Sorry, I was hungry.’

‘Robbie …’

‘Sorry!’ he said again, still smiling. At fifteen, he was at an awkward transitional stage, trapped in the hormonal no man’s land between child and adult. At moments like this, when his roguish grin surfaced, he was my little boy again. I let it go.

Climbing the stairs, I could hear music coming from Holly’s room – some tinny pop – and beneath it, the sweet, faltering accompaniment of my daughter’s voice. I stepped past her door, opened ours softly and saw David stretched out on the bed, eyes closed, a glass of wine in one hand resting on his chest. I stood over him watching, his handsome face serious, even in repose, lines from laughter and concentration hardening now into permanence. He stirred a little.

‘You’ll spill that.’

His eyes shot open and he sat up quickly. I reached forward and rescued the glass, put it to my lips and drank.

‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ he said, blinking and running a hand across his face.

The wine warmed the back of my throat. I set the glass on the nightstand, and sat down on the bed beside him. He lay back, locking his hands behind his neck and I felt a brief, surprising nudge of desire. I could lie down on the bed next to him and, with the dinner drying out in the oven, we could slip off our clothes and forget the troubles of the day for a while. It seemed so risqué, the thought of sex at this hour of the evening with the children in the house, the telly on downstairs. I put my hand on his shirt-front, traced a line down to his belt. This kind of spontaneity still felt unnatural in the wake of what had happened between us. His eyes closed and he shifted under my touch, tacitly agreeing to my unspoken suggestion.

Holly’s bedroom door opened, her footfall in the hall outside. My hand paused and David opened his eyes.

‘What do you think?’ I asked.

He sat up and swung his feet to the floor. The moment had passed. He reached for his wine glass on the nightstand, and said: ‘Come on. Let’s go and eat.’

In the kitchen, he flicked on the radio while I got the lettuce from the fridge. A drive-time show was on, the presenter’s voice, her forensic questioning, filling the space between us as she took some politician to task over the failed attempt to legislate for abortion in the case of fatal foetal abnormality. A year or so before, we had undertaken a major renovation of our home. Besides an attic conversion, a large extension had been built on to the kitchen, the additional space allowing room for a sofa and a stove as well as a large dining table and a kitchen
island. The work had been costly and we couldn’t have afforded it were it not for a small inheritence from my parents, who had passed away some years before. A loan from the credit union topped up the funds needed.

It was David’s habit on evenings when he was tired after work to throw himself on the sofa, the two of us chatting while I prepared the dinner. On this particular evening, however, he leaned against the counter while I rinsed the salad leaves in the sink, and asked me about Ellen. I was tired but answered his questions, and he took it all in, his arms folded. Something needed to be done about her deteriorating state of mind, and we batted ideas back and forth, although we were reluctant to get into it.

There was something else I needed to tell him. I was weighing up whether to say it now or wait until the kids had gone to bed. David seemed distracted and I had the beginnings of a headache. I asked him to pour me a glass of wine while I spun the salad. When he went to call the others for dinner I decided just to say it, to get it over with quickly before the kids came into the room.

‘There was an email from the school,’ I said, taking down the plates and spreading them along the worktop. ‘Robbie’s parent-teacher meeting is next Tuesday. Are you free?’

He put the empty bottle into the crate by the door. ‘Next Tuesday?’

‘Yes, in the afternoon.’

I took the lasagne from the oven, placed it on the trivet and began separating it into segments. He was standing next to me, waiting to take the plates to the table. ‘Can’t you go?’ he asked.

‘It won’t last long. Just an hour or so. You can take those ones.’ I nodded at the first two plates, and he picked them up but didn’t move away. I could feel him waiting for something more from me. I put food on the other plates, then opened the oven and returned the dish to keep it warm.