by Karen Perry
‘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.
‘Caroline –’
‘Please, David. It’s just one afternoon.’
‘It’s not that. You know it’s not.’
I could feel the colour coming to my cheeks. I picked up the other plates and waited for him to let me pass.
‘It’s been a year,’ he said, his voice soft but firm. ‘You can’t keep doing this. You can’t stay away from there for ever.’
On the radio, the presenter was affecting a heavy sigh, the one she used to signal the end of an interview. The kitchen door opened.
‘Please don’t make me,’ I said, as I stepped past him. I put the plates down hard on the table.
Over dinner, Holly talked about a school trip to the Burren that was planned for the end of October. Cheerfully animated, she spoke of caves and calcium deposits, bog-land and its varying plant-life. Robbie lolled in his chair, one elbow on the table, picking at his food. David was quiet. The children, no doubt, put it down to work. We used to joke about it, the kids and I. ‘Dad’s gone over to the dark side,’ we would say, whenever he became distracted and vague. His silence that evening seemed heavier than usual and I attributed it to the parent-teacher meeting. I knew he was thinking of what had happened the year before, the whole awkward business at the school rearing its ugly head again. To combat it, I recounted the drama of my afternoon, the phone call at work, the confused state I’d found Ellen in.
‘First thing tomorrow, I’m calling Dr Burke,’ I announced.
‘Poor Nan,’ Holly said, drinking her water, her eyes behind her glasses perplexed.
‘She’ll be fine,’ David told her, the firmness in his voice a kind of warning.
He was put out over the school thing, and I suppose he was entitled to feel resentful, but still. I had spent all afternoon taking care of his mother and I had yet to hear a word of thanks. ‘Are you going to eat any of that?’ I asked Robbie.
He seemed tired, pressing his fork against the raft of pasta hardening on his plate. ‘I’m not hungry.’
David dropped his cutlery on to his plate with a clatter, making us all look up. ‘Maybe if you hadn’t shoved a whole bag of fucking Doritos down your throat you’d be able to eat,’ he snapped.
Robbie’s mouth opened, as if he were about to say something, but no words came out.
‘David, please,’ I said sharply.
He stared at me across the table.
My husband is a sulker, not an exploder. He wears me down with his stubborn silences. We made a point of not arguing in front of the children – even when our marriage was under strain. The fights had all been held in private, and we maintained a strained civility whenever the kids were around. The quality of his discomfort this time was different from before. I realized that it wasn’t about the school at all.
‘Let’s just eat,’ he said.
Addressing his plate again, he speared some pasta with his fork. We had forgotten about the salad, still sitting next to the sink, but neither of us made a move towards it. The jingle of the drive-time show was playing on the radio, its cheerful beat pounding through the speakers while we sat together without talking until the meal was done.
Whenever I try to remember how it all started, I don’t think of the morning I found out, or the first time I saw the haze of yellow hair, the feline stare. I think of David that evening, the coiled rope of tension within him, the shiftiness of his irritation. I didn’t know it was because of her – Zoë. I didn’t even know she existed. But that was when I first felt her shadow fall over me. The first time I felt the ripples of a new presence within my home, like a dye entering water, already changing its chemistry.
4. David
I woke up the next morning to the thought She is dead. Linda is dead.
It wasn’t grief I felt. How could it be? She had not been in my life for a long time. But, still, there was sadness, and the shock left me feeling out of sorts, on edge. I got up, threw water on to my face, shaved, showered and pulled myself together as best I could. Over breakfast, my world solidified around me. Robbie and Holly were absorbed in their cereal while Caroline got their lunches ready. I finished breakfast quickly, leaned in to Caroline to say goodbye and felt the warmth of her kiss on my mouth. I told myself, Everything is going to be all right.
I pedalled away from the house, my lungs filling with air, and flew past the traffic while trying to convince myself that, even if Linda had passed away, what this girl had told me was some kind of joke, an elaborate student prank. A student’s life is full of mad-cap behaviour, full of stunts and dares. That was why there was no reason to tell my wife what she had said. Maybe somebody had put the girl up to it. Maybe I wasn’t her father.
On campus, I spent the first hour going through my inbox. What struck me initially was the amount of non-college work I had taken on: media commitments, interviews, op-ed pieces, book reviews, as well as board and committee duty. I replied to as many emails as I could before I rushed to a tutorial with my third-years, followed by coffee, then seminars until one. My first-year lecture was after lunch, and as the time approached, I grew twitchy. My palms became sweaty, my stomach churned. I told myself to stop being paranoid and walked into the theatre, down the steps, swung my bag on to the bench and hooked my laptop to the projector. When I raised my face to the students, my heart was beating hard. A hush came over the auditorium. As I talked, I scanned the room for her, but drew a blank. Twice, late-comers interrupted. I looked to the swinging door only to find it wasn’t her. During the last few minutes, I opened up the lecture to questions: it was another chance to search for her among the sea of faces. By the time it ended I was sure of it: she wasn’t there.
Throughout that day and the next, I couldn’t help thinking about her, despite my best efforts. Caroline’s new job, and the discussion that had started between us over what we should do about my mum – home-help or sheltered accommodation – acted as something of a distraction. But the girl was there, in my thoughts, the entire time.
I didn’t do anything about it, about her, until Friday. I was in a meeting with my most promising PhD student, Niki Agsten, and her co-supervisor, Dr Anne Burke. Niki’s subject was the role of women during the First World War, and she was telling us about something she had stumbled on during her recent research. ‘It was in the court records,’ she said. ‘I was going through the year 1918 when I came across this.’
Anne and I listened while she read out a statement from a witness detailing an account of a woman giving birth and subsequently taking the life of her newborn baby. ‘It’s strange,’ Niki said, ‘but since I read the account in the court files I can’t stop thinking about her. She tried to strangle her own baby with a sock. When that didn’t work she crushed it beneath the weight of a window frame. What made her believe that letting her baby live would be so much worse than having its death on her conscience?’
Anne made some answer but I was lost to the conversation, my mind tumbling back through my own history. An image came to me of Linda sitting hunched in a bathroom, her cheeks flushed with heat, the test in her hand, a line on a stick. My imagination ran riot. I thought about the panic she might have felt, the loneliness. I wondered again why she had never told me. That was, if what the girl had
said to me was true, which I still didn’t know. And if it was true what it might mean to my relationship with Caroline, and the challenges that already faced our marriage, not to mention how it might affect our children. Too many what-ifs crowded my mind, and too many unanswerables made it impossible for me to concentrate.
‘David?’ Anne was waiting for an answer.
What would she think if I told her about Linda, about Zoë?
‘Sorry?’
‘Next Thursday – are we agreed?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, of course.’
They left. I stood and thought of how I had buried the girl’s words, transformed them into a joke, reduced what she had said into a student spoof or the workings of an unsound mind. It occurred to me that there was something desperate in the way I was trying to blot out those words. Blot her out.
I went to my desk, stirred my computer to life and clicked on to the internet. It didn’t take long to find it. Still, I was surprised. DNA testing seemed so foreign, a product of a more litigious society than Ireland’s, but there it was in black and white: a company in Dublin that carried out paternity tests with a 99 per cent accuracy assurance, discretion guaranteed.
What did I need? A swab from the inner cheek was best, but there were other sources: a hair (with follicle, preferably), a toothbrush. I must have spent twenty minutes working out all the ways I could capture her DNA without her knowledge.
While I trawled through the DNA sites I was all the time weighing up whether or not to discuss the paternity test with Zoë. I thought about asking her permission, telling her I needed to get the test done – but every time I included her in the conversation my imagination tangled the possible outcomes into something messy and complicated. The minutes ticked past. My thoughts grew more confused: a sudden flash of how crazy this situation was made me close down the DNA page I was on. I told myself to get a grip. When Alan put his head around the door and asked if I’d join him in the common room for coffee, I was more than relieved.
Alan has been my friend and mentor since I was an undergraduate. A wise soul, with a gruff exterior, he had offered me my first post-doctoral post after Queens. I owe him a lot, and have a firm affection for him, despite our differences. He’s an old-school historian, and is baffled sometimes by my approach to history. My adventures in the media irk him in particular. That afternoon, as we strolled to the common room, he took a pop at my latest article.
‘The sports supplement!’ he said. ‘What are you doing writing about sports?’
I laughed. ‘You don’t think sport is relevant to history? What about the 1933 Olympics?’
‘Come on. He’s hardly Jesse Owens, is he?’
‘Can you think of a more controversial figure in Irish sport?’
‘I just don’t see why you’re wasting your time mixing it with the polemicists and writing such –’
‘Go on, say it. You think it’s drivel.’
‘I was going to say journalism.’
‘You were not.’
He laughed.
‘Sport, the arts, popular culture, all of it informs the national consciousness,’ I said. ‘It makes us who we are as a nation. All of it is history in the making.’
We picked up our coffee and sat. Alan was smiling at what I had said. I could tell he was not in the mood for argumentative banter today. ‘I’m supposed to go to this conference in East Anglia next month,’ he said, leaning forward and examining his cup. ‘To give a talk … I was wondering if you would go in my stead.’
‘Really?’
‘It would be good for you,’ he replied. ‘And your CV.’
How often had it been said to me that if I did a favour for someone it would advance my career at a later date? I didn’t mind standing in for Alan, but it wasn’t like him to duck out of a commitment. ‘Sure, Alan. Is everything all right?’
‘I’ve been doing some thinking,’ he said seriously. ‘My health is not good – a problem with my heart. They tell me I should have surgery, but I don’t know if I want that. At my age …’
‘You’re only sixty-two.’
‘Well, exactly. That’s my point. I want to live a little while I still have time. So I’ve decided to take early retirement.’
‘Early retirement?’
‘What? Did you think I’d be here for ever, David?’
‘Yes,’ I said. A kind of sadness was pulling at me. I’ve never been very good at endings or goodbyes.
‘This time I really do mean it,’ he said.
He didn’t need to spell it out for me. There was an unspoken understanding. If Alan left, there would be a position for a new professor. This was my chance. I couldn’t help feeling a spark of excitement. The way he suggested it, it almost felt like favouritism. His kindness had always, it seemed, extended itself beyond a professional duty of care.
The possibility of the professorship stayed with me all the way back to the office, my mind brimming with ideas, rushing a few months ahead, to the interview board, the presentations. I began making a mental tally of the papers I hoped to publish that year, including the book I was finishing, wondering how my research output would compare to the other candidates’. The idea was so consuming that I almost didn’t notice the slip of paper on the floor as I opened the door to my office. As I shut it behind me, the paper fluttered in the draught. I leaned down to pick it up, and read the words quickly.
All my excitement vanished. The lead weight was back in my heart.
It was a short note written in an elegant hand, signed with a flourish, her name a slash across the page.
Meet me this evening? Madigans, after work. Say 6.30 p.m.
Zoë
I placed it carefully in my wallet.
Friday evening, and there was a sense of expectancy in the air. The collective relief that the end of the week had arrived presented itself in a frenetic busyness on the roads and pavements. The wind had whipped up and I pedalled slowly to Donnybrook. Traffic was thick, people hurrying to get away from the working week, their desks, bosses and obligations.
By the time I got there, the pub was heaving: office workers, students, mechanics from the nearby bus depot, their voices blending together in a dense cloud of talk. I found her sitting on her own at the back, a bottle of beer in front of her. One elbow on the table, her head was resting on her cupped hand, her face blank as she fiddled with her phone. For just a moment, before she saw me, she looked so young, so harmless, that I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.
‘You came.’ She smiled, getting to her feet.
‘Zoë,’ I said.
‘I saved you a seat.’ She gestured to a stool. ‘I’m so glad you’re here. I wasn’t sure you’d come. Let me get you a drink.’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Please. It’s the least I can do.’
‘I’ll get my own,’ I said, catching a barman’s attention. I ordered a pint and another bottle for Zoë.
She leaned on the table, one hand wrapped around her beer, her face open and expectant. About us, voices rose. Laughter rang out, and brass instruments played boisterous ragtime through hidden speakers. We almost had to shout to be heard.
‘I had no idea this place would be so busy,’ she said. ‘I’d have picked somewhere quieter.’
The truth was, I felt protected by the noise and the clamour of people. Somehow, I didn’t want to be cloistered in some quiet snug with a student, a stranger. I couldn’t tell who might be watching.
‘I just thought that, as it’s close to college, it would be convenient.’
Our drinks arrived, and before the glass had reached my mouth, she was raising her bottle. ‘Cheers.’
‘Sláinte,’ I said, with a strange premonition of how I might have taken Robbie for his first drink, to a dark pub, where a father and son could bond. Instead, here I was with a girl I barely knew.
‘I wanted to apologize,’ she began, ‘for the other day. Taking you unawares like that. It was unfair. I’m really sorry,’ sh
e said, small creases appearing at the sides of her eyes.
She wore a plain red sweater, and I wondered briefly whether those big army boots were still on her feet. ‘You’re not mocking me, Zoë, are you?’
‘God, no!’ Her eyes became round, but the anxious smile hovered at the corners of her mouth. ‘I just think we got off on the wrong footing.’
‘What you’re saying about me … about me being your father, it’s very serious.’
‘I know, I know.’ She looked down at the table, shaking her head.
I drank deeply and waited. I had prepared something to say, but I wanted to get it right. However, she spoke next and what she said surprised me: ‘I want you to know that you don’t need to be afraid …’
‘Afraid?’ I said.
‘Of me,’ she said, in a small voice. ‘I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to get you into any trouble.’
‘What sort of trouble could you get me into? I haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘No, I know. I meant that I don’t want to make things difficult for you with the university, or with your wife.’
‘My wife?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Have you told her about me?’
It had been nearly a week. Not a long time in the scale of things, but it had been a painstaking week of concealment and circumspection. All that time I had been keeping it from Caroline, telling myself I was protecting her, but what I was really doing was protecting myself. I hated keeping secrets. In fact, as a couple, I’d thought we were done with all that. The past had already taught me one thing: secrets will out, and by keeping them, there are always repercussions, but I had ignored my own hard-learned lesson. Right then, not telling Caroline seemed like a big mistake.
‘I haven’t told her about you, no,’ I admitted. ‘Not yet. Not until I’m sure …’
‘Until you’re sure?’ she queried. ‘That I’m not making the whole thing up?’