Girl Unknown

by Karen Perry

  Karen Perry

  * * *

  GIRL UNKNOWN

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One

  1. David

  2. David

  3. Caroline

  4. David

  5. Caroline

  6. David

  7. Caroline

  8. David

  9. Caroline

  Part Two

  10. David

  11. Caroline

  12. David

  13. Caroline

  14. David

  15. Caroline

  16. David

  17. Caroline

  18. David

  Part Three

  19. Caroline

  20. David

  21. Caroline

  22. David

  23. Caroline

  24. David

  Part Four

  25. Robbie

  26. Girl Unknown

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  GIRL UNKNOWN

  Karen Perry lives in Ireland. Girl Unknown is her third novel and follows The Boy That Never Was, which was selected for the Simon Mayo Radio 2 Book Club, and Only We Know, both of which were Sunday Times bestsellers.

  By the same author

  The Boy That Never Was

  Only We Know

  Prologue

  The water is cold but there is a promise of heat in the air as the dawn begins to break. It will not be long before sunlight reaches the garden. Insects buzz and rustle in the undergrowth, the scent of lavender drifts from pots on the terrace. Drips roll from the edge of the diving board, making lazy plopping sounds as they meet the rocking surface of the pool.

  A seagull landing on the wall casts a beady eye downward into the water, scouting for food, or maybe just curious. The drips from the diving board slow.

  The bird surveys the garden – the squat silent house beyond, shadows on the terrace. It raises a wing and with its yellow beak jabs at its feathers, rearranging them. It straightens up, folds back its wing and looks down again.

  Something in the water rolls – or rather someone. The watchful seagull blinks. The water darkens. A face tilted, a figure submerged. The mouth is open but there is no shining thread of bubbles, no silvery breath escaping.

  The only sound – the drip-drip of blood hitting the slick surface of the pool before moving slowly through the blue-green water, mingling until it disappears.

  Part One

  * * *

  1. David

  I should, I suppose, go back to the beginning, to the first time we met. The first time she spoke to me, to be precise, for I had seen her before – spotted her among the first-year faces staring out at me from the lecture theatre. It was hard not to notice her, with that hair. A great glow of it, radiantly blonde in long loose curls, like a soft release of breath. In the dimness of Theatre L, it caught the light and reflected it back, golden and iridescent. I noticed the hair and the bright round face beneath and thought: New penny. Then my mind turned back to my slides and I moved on.

  There is an energy on campus during the first weeks of the new semester that is like nothing else. The air is charged with the frisson of possibility. A cheerful vigour takes hold, giving a new life and sheen to every faded surface, every jaded room. Even the most hardened staff veterans have a spring in their step during the first month, and there is an infectious sense of hopefulness. Once the madness of Freshers’ Week has worn off, and the pace of lectures and tutorials has been set, an industriousness falls over the campus, like a flurry of autumn leaves. It zips through the corridors and stairwells, hurries across the wide open spaces where the students gather to talk and drink coffee. I felt it too – the beat of possibility, the urge to get a head start on the year. After seventeen years at the university, I was still not immune to the buoyant lift of first-term energy.

  It was a couple of weeks into the semester when she approached me. I had just given my Thursday morning lecture on Modern Irish History and the students were filing out, a buzz of conversation rising as they climbed the steps to the exit. I was closing my laptop and putting away my notes, silently calculating whether I had enough time to nip to the common room for a coffee, when I felt someone’s presence and looked up. She was standing across from me, holding her folder against her chest, her face half hidden behind the long golden strands of her hair.

  ‘Dr Connolly,’ she said, and immediately I caught the hint of a Belfast accent.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I was wondering if I could talk to you.’

  I slid the laptop into my bag, fixed the strap over my shoulder, and noticed a kind of wariness hovering behind the big round eyes. She was fair-skinned, and had a scrubbed-clean look about her; many female students come to class in layers of make-up, a miasma of chemical smells surrounding them. This girl was different: a freshness and simplicity about her appearance set her apart, and made her appear terribly young.

  ‘Of course,’ I said briskly. ‘I have a meeting in a few minutes, but you can walk with me, if you like.’

  ‘Oh. No, that’s okay.’

  Disappointment, a faltering expression that piqued my interest.

  ‘Perhaps some other time,’ she said.

  ‘My office hours are on Fridays between three and five. You’re welcome to drop in. If that doesn’t suit, you can always email to arrange an appointment.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said politely. ‘I’ll do that.’

  We walked together up the steps to the exit, not speaking, an awkwardness between us.

  ‘Well, goodbye then,’ I said, checking my watch and ducking into the drift of students heading towards the stairs.

  By the time I reached my meeting, I had forgotten her. Funny, recalling it now. Such a momentous thing, our first meeting. Since then, I’ve come to look at that moment as the point at which my life split – like a page folded over and creased down the middle so that everything fell into before or after.

  My office is on the third floor of the Arts building. It’s covered with book-filled shelves and framed prints: the 1916 Proclamation, prints of two William Orpen sketches from the trenches in the First World War, a framed and faded photograph of my grandfather with others from the Royal Dragoon Guards, and finally a cartoon from the New Yorker featuring two academics squabbling, the last a gift from my wife. There’s also a family photograph of the four of us hiking to the Hell Fire Club in the Dublin Mountains, which I had taken with my phone the previous summer: Holly’s hair is wind-tossed, Robbie is grinning and Caroline’s eyes watering – we look happy, individually and as a family, my arms circling us all in a messy embrace; the city and suburbs, this campus and office are a distant blur in the background.

  The closest thing I can see of that outside world and the most appealing feature of the office is the window that takes up the entire southern wall and looks out on to the courtyard at the heart of the building. A small copse of birch trees grows there, and throughout the year I like to observe the changing colours of the leaves and watch the passage of the seasons.

  I’ve spent my entire adult life – apart from three years working for my PhD at Queens – on this campus. I’ve loved every minute of it and consider myself lucky to be here, gradually moving up the ranks from Adjunct to Associate Professor, and I love the interaction with students at lecture and seminar level. I love the enquiring minds I meet – the irascible and sometimes irreverent arrogance of a student’s interrogations of the past. I’ll admit I was ambitious, and I’ve had to work hard. It’s not like things came easy for me – not as they have for others who seem to have a natural flair for reading the past. My work was painstaking, but it brought its pleasures.

  Even so, she arrived at
a special moment of opportunity in my career. My old teacher and the head of our department, Professor Alan Longley, was due for retirement in two years’ time. He had hinted strongly, on more than one occasion, that his position could be mine if I played my cards right, so to speak. Of course, Head of Department would mean more work, but I was ready for the extra responsibility and willing to accept the challenge. Such was my life: the happy construction of work I had built around me – until last autumn, that is.

  Back then, during those weeks in September, as the light changed and the air took on the first chill, I knew next to nothing about her. Not even her name. I don’t think I thought about her again until that Friday afternoon when I held my student hours. The first of them began trickling in shortly after three – a second-year wanting to discuss his essay, a final-year already nervous about the prospects of graduation, another considering a master’s. One by one they came, and I found I began to search for her among them, each time expecting to see her bright face appearing around my door.

  In my office, there were two small armchairs and a low coffee-table I’d brought from home where I conducted my meetings with students. I don’t like the power imbalance when I sit and stare at them from behind the desk. I kept the door open throughout these meetings, with both male and female students alike. You see, years ago, when I was a junior lecturer, a colleague was badly stung by an accusation from a female undergraduate who claimed he had molested her in his office. I remember at the time being shocked: he was such a weedy guy, with an unattractive habit of sniffing continuously while concentrating on a point.

  Strange though it may sound, I couldn’t imagine him having any sexual desires. Most academics are normal people, leading their lives in the manner of any professional person. Some, however, are cloistered, ill-equipped to cope beyond the protective confines of the university. That was Bill – a hard-working historian, but naïve, it has to be said. Not an unkind man, and quite gentle, really, the accusation hit him like a rocket. Overnight, he became a wild-eyed loon, determined to proclaim his innocence, often at the most inopportune moments – in school meetings, in the staff room over coffee, once at an open day. The claims were investigated by the disciplinary board and deemed to be unfounded. Bill was exonerated. The student graduated and left. Bill continued with his work, but a change had come over him. He no longer came for coffee with the rest of us, and avoided all social interaction with students. It was no surprise when, a year later, he announced he had taken up a post at a university abroad. I’ve no idea where he is now, though I think of him from time to time, whenever some other scandal erupts on campus, or when I feel the weight of a female student’s gaze a little too heavily upon me.

  Something about the way she had looked at me that day, the way her voice had faltered, made me think of Bill. I was curious, but wary too. The doe-eyed ones, who seem young and innocent, they are the ones you have to be careful with. Not the savvy girls with their Ugg boots and fake tans – they can hold their own, and have little interest in pursuing a man like me. I’m forty-four, the father of two children. I eat well and I exercise regularly. Most days I cycle to work; three times a week I swim. I try to take care of myself, you could say. Now, I’m not the best-looking man in the world, but I’m not the worst. I’m just shy of six foot with dark hair, brown eyes and sallow skin. My dad said we had Spanish blood in our veins: ‘From the sailors on the Armada, shipwrecked off the West of Ireland all those years ago.’ I don’t know if that’s true or not. But after what happened to Bill, I have to presume it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that an impressionable young student might develop a crush. But at that stage I’d been married for seventeen years, and I was aware of how costly a stupid mistake could be. Besides, I had too much to lose.

  I suppose that was what flickered across my mind the first time we spoke. Her reluctance to walk and talk with me – as if the weight of whatever she wanted to discuss required privacy, silence, the full focus of my attention.

  That Friday, I fully expected her to come to my office. She didn’t. I have to admit I was disappointed. There was no explanation – not that I needed or expected one. Neither was there an email seeking an appointment. The following week, I saw her again in my lectures, her eyes fixed on the notebook in front of her, but when the hour was up, she filed out of the theatre with the other students.

  The matter went clean out of my head, and I’m sure I would have forgotten about it completely in time. I was busier than ever, juggling my lectures and research along with various other work commitments, not to mention all the administration I had to do. I would also be talking to various media outlets about the 1916 centenary celebrations in the coming months. Caroline had started a new job. Between us we shared the school drop-offs as well as the kids’ after-school activities. Life was full. I was busier than ever. I was happy. I know that now.

  Then one afternoon, in October, returning to my office from a school meeting, I found her sitting on the floor next to my door. Knees drawn up, hands clutching her ankles. As soon as she saw me, she got to her feet, and pulled at her clothing.

  ‘Can I help you?’ I asked, my hand searching in my pocket for the key.

  ‘Sorry. I should have made an appointment.’

  ‘You’re here now.’ I opened the door. ‘Come in.’

  I went to my desk, placed my bag on it. The room was chilly. I walked to the radiator and ran my fingers along its top. The girl went to close the door.

  ‘No, you can leave it open,’ I said.

  She gave me a slightly startled glance, as if she wished she’d never come.

  ‘Let’s sit, and you can tell me what’s on your mind.’

  I took one of the armchairs, but she just stood, fiddling with the zip on her sweater. She was small and thin, bony wrists emerging from her cuffs, which had been picked at and unravelled. Nervous fingers constantly moving.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Zoë,’ she said quietly. ‘Zoë Barry.’

  ‘Well, Zoë. How can I help you?’ I asked, tidying a bunch of journals at my desk.

  Her hands became still, and in a voice that came out as clear as a bell, she said: ‘I think you might be my father.’

  2. David

  Students come through my door every day of the working week. Some have ordinary questions, course-related queries. Others are in trouble. They want my help. They may not even know what’s wrong. And then again, others are trouble. Over the years, I’ve had my fair share of problem cases. They have ranged from benign to complex. But none was like this. None spelled trouble so clearly and lucidly, or announced the problem with such candid, if sheepish, clarity.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

  ‘Can I close the door?’

  ‘No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ I gestured for her to sit down in the chair opposite.

  ‘I know it’s probably a shock,’ she said, taking a seat and putting her bag down by her feet.

  ‘A shock?’ I said. More of an intrusion, or a preposterous allegation, than anything else. I inspected my itinerary for the day. It was full: one meeting chased by another. The module review committee was going to be particularly taxing. I also needed to get to the library to talk to Laurence about the oral histories he was sourcing for me from the British Library.

  ‘Well, yes … I’ve come in here out of the blue and revealed to you that I am your daughter.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m still struggling to follow. Why is it you think I might be your father?’ I said.

  Her expression didn’t change. Shy, meek even, as if she were there against her will. ‘I’ve been thinking about how to put it so it wouldn’t come out as bluntly,’ she said, leaning forward slightly. ‘It doesn’t seem to matter which way I turn the phrases over. You are my father.’ She coughed awkwardly into her sleeve. ‘I thought it would be better to tell you straight rather than dancing around it, if that makes sense?’

  The planes of her face were smooth. It w
as an open face, an honest one. Her eyes were green, wide and bright. Her hair fell over her face occasionally and she had to push it back – a kind of tic, I supposed.

  ‘Actually, it’s a relief to tell you,’ she said, giving me a watery smile. ‘I’ve tossed this around for ages, sitting in your lectures, knowing all the time you’re my father and that you had no idea. It got so I couldn’t bear it. I felt like I had to tell you.’

  Her voice, though tentative and soft, had the earthy guttural of the North in it. Because of all the reading and research I’d been doing recently, it made me think about those American soldiers during the Second World War stationed in the various towns of Northern Ireland – Coleraine, Ballycastle, Portstewart – and their unwritten legacy: the ones who left behind sons and daughters they might never have known about, while others were sought out later in life by their offspring. I had always thought this a joyful, if complicated, legacy – an ancillary tributary to the river of the past – an enriching one, even.

  Still, I became annoyed at the vagaries of my own mind and the distraction the girl had brought to my day: her prank, the articulations of an unsound mind, whatever it was.

  I picked up my notebook, drew myself up from the chair, and walked to my desk. I felt the short fuse of my temper fizzle. ‘Again, what makes you think I’m your father?’

  The smile fell from her face. She reached into her bag for a tissue. I could tell she was struggling to maintain her composure. Perhaps I had been too curt. I had, after all, a duty of care to her as a student. She was young, lost; it must have been very difficult for her to pluck up the courage, however misguided, to come in to talk to me.