Girl Unknown

by Karen Perry

  ‘Who saw me?’

  ‘It’s not important who saw you, David, it’s that you were seen.’

  I lowered my voice. ‘It’s not what you think.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I think.’

  ‘She only wanted some advice.’

  He smiled as if to say: That’s what your office is for, not the pub. ‘I suppose one needs to be careful these days,’ he said.

  I felt my temper simmering.

  ‘It’s best I told you. You know these things can spread if allowed to … escalate.’ He stood up and tapped his newspaper on the table. ‘I’d better go.’

  I tried not to let what McCormack had said bother me, but as I got up and left the common room without the coffee I had come in for, I wondered which colleague had seen me and Zoë. Did people have to worry about this kind of thing in other jobs? The thought made me ponder my life in academia: how might I have fared in what people call the real world? I used to balk at the description of the university as an ivory tower. The older I got, though, the more I wondered. I once heard a visiting poet say hello to Alan as we met in one of the warren-like corridors in the Arts building. ‘You’re still here?’ the poet said to Alan warmly.

  ‘Me? I’m a lifer,’ he replied, with a broad smile directed at me as if to say, And so are you.

  The thought of being institutionalized, even by a university, genuinely frightened me. It seemed to me that I spent more and more time in meetings rather than researching my own books or, God forbid, teaching the students.

  When I got to my postbox, I was glad to see it was there – a discreet letter, unassuming, aside from ‘PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL’ printed on the envelope, which was nestled next to the UCD magazine and other anonymous-looking material. I swept up the lot, lodging the letter in my jacket pocket, and walked back towards my office, a shot of panic pulsing through my veins. I hurried along, imagining the possible content of the letter, playing a variety of scenarios in my head. As I pushed through the swinging doors and around the corner on the second floor, there she was, waiting for me, leaning against the wall, the cords of her pink earphones trailing over her shoulders and into the phone she was holding, one foot tapping to whatever she was listening to.

  ‘Hello,’ she said too loudly, struggling to remove the earphones. ‘I wanted to ask you about the essay.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, unlocking my office door. She followed me inside, and I asked her to sit. As she put her bag down and took a seat, it became apparent to me that Linda was her mother. They were so alike – the hair, the eyes. I thought of the letter with the DNA results in my jacket pocket and felt a pang of regret, as if having the test done were an act of betrayal to Linda and the love we had once shared. Linda had clearly believed I was the father, so why should I doubt her?

  ‘What in particular did you want to discuss?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I didn’t submit it in time. The essay.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, a little annoyed. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I wasn’t feeling well,’ she answered shyly. ‘And then the book I needed wasn’t in the library. It wasn’t on the shelves and it hadn’t been checked out. The staff had to put a search on it,’ she ended, rather hopelessly.

  ‘You should have come to me before the deadline.’

  ‘But I was ill …’

  ‘Too ill to pick up the phone?’

  She started to justify her non-submission, but I stopped her. ‘It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do. I’m telling you what you should have done.’

  She looked at the floor. I had upset her by being too brusque. I felt bad, tried a softer tack: ‘There are procedures. A form to fill out for mitigating circumstances.’

  ‘Mitigating circumstances?’

  ‘This is far from ideal, but we’ll try to come up with a solution.’

  My peace-offering was met with a timid shake of the head. Something of me within it, a hint or trace of who I was, my parentage, my lineage. I feared she was on the brink of tears. ‘It’s not the end of the world,’ I said.

  ‘It’s just that I found it so hard to concentrate.’

  ‘These things happen. You mustn’t take it to heart.’

  She looked so crestfallen, so fragile, that I wondered if something else was going on. ‘Is anything else wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s just … It’s nothing.’

  ‘Zoë,’ I said, as reassuringly as possible. If she needed to confide in me, I wanted her to feel comfortable enough to do that. ‘You can tell me.’

  ‘It’s Caroline,’ she said.

  ‘Caroline? My wife?’

  ‘She came looking for me …’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘On campus …’

  ‘Caroline was on campus? But when?’ I asked.

  ‘On Tuesday. She said you knew.’

  I closed my eyes, rubbed them with my thumb and forefinger, and steadied myself.

  ‘You didn’t know?’ she asked innocently.

  ‘No,’ I admitted. Caroline had never said anything to me about coming to campus. But why wouldn’t she? We had seen each other every day – it’s not like we were ships in the night. What had she to hide?

  I have to be careful, I thought. I didn’t know this girl at all, couldn’t be sure whether she was telling the truth about Caroline, or about anything else, for that matter. There was still the possibility that what she was saying was part of some elaborate mischief.

  ‘Oh,’ Zoë said, still upset.

  I needed to calm her. I definitely did not want her leaving my office angry and upset, especially after McCormack’s comment. I couldn’t afford to have people talking. ‘It’s been very busy at home,’ I said. I thought about Robbie’s cello vibrating through the house, Holly’s studious introversion – the busy activity of family life. ‘Perhaps it slipped Caroline’s mind.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Zoë said, a little forlornly.

  Outside, the sound of a drill rose and fell in intensity. Its bright hum seemed to fill the room. I wasn’t sure yet about who Zoë really was. I might have been talking to my daughter or to a perfect stranger, but right then, I didn’t know, which made me circumspect and hesitant. I thought about the sample of hair I had sent off to the DNA lab without her knowledge and, of course, the letter in my pocket. ‘I don’t understand why she would have felt the need to come here to talk to you,’ I said, betraying my confusion.

  ‘Maybe she was trying to warn me.’

  ‘Warn you?’

  ‘I was sitting on a bench by the pond outside the Engineering building and she just came up to me. At first, I didn’t even know who she was. It freaked me out, the way she confronted me.’

  ‘Confronted you?’

  I could tell she was trying to remain calm in her account, but still her voice trembled. I wasn’t sure whether I should apologize or question the veracity of her claim. Either way, I was dumbfounded by the idea of Caroline acting surreptitiously behind my back, sneaking about campus without my knowing. I thought about the conversation I would have with her later. Losing my temper wouldn’t achieve anything, but I had to let her know that her behaviour was unacceptable. If she wanted to meet Zoë, she should have asked me: that would have been the mature and responsible thing to do.

  ‘It’s just that I thought I had done everything … correctly,’ Zoë said. ‘I thought I had approached the matter in the right way.’

  ‘Did she tell you why she wanted to speak to you?’

  ‘She asked what I wanted, and how long I was going to chase after you, and when I would leave you alone. And had I thought about the effect I had exerted on your other children, and on her.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘And she wanted to know if I’d considered the consequences of my actions and what I was going to demand.’

  ‘Demand?’

  ‘Those were her words. I don’t want anything, David. I’m not demanding anything. I never wanted to upset anyone, you or your wife, or your
two children.’ She spoke clearly and calmly, but I could tell it was an effort for her. ‘She said she had come with your express agreement and …’

  ‘And what, Zoë?’

  ‘And didn’t want to see you hurt … as if I … as if I …’

  The tears came. I was torn between sympathy and suspicion. Here we were again, thrown together – not in the crush of a pub but alone and, more worryingly, in my office.

  ‘I know you don’t want to hurt me,’ I said.

  There was a swift and sudden knock. I looked up and noticed, too late, that I had accidentally closed the door shut behind us; in so doing, I had broken one of the cardinal rules. McCormack’s face appeared around the door.

  ‘Sorry, I can see you’re busy,’ he said, gazing at Zoë and raising an eyebrow in surprise. ‘Perhaps you can ring me when you get a chance. Nothing urgent … A departmental matter, that’s all.’

  He smiled, and left the door pointedly ajar. Zoë wiped her tears, blew her nose and picked up her bag. ‘I should go,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to have sprung this on you. It didn’t occur to me that you might not have known.’

  She walked out, and I was left again with the uncomfortable sense of being on the receiving end of another awkward revelation, something to remind me yet again of how life could be so unpredictable and perplexing.

  This time, I didn’t run after her. Instead I went to pick up the phone to ring McCormack, but stopped. He could wait. I pulled the envelope out of my jacket and cut it open with a paperknife, which was lying on the corner of my desk. I scanned the document and found the results printed in bold capitals at the bottom of the page. My heart sank. It was the worst possible outcome. Neither one thing nor the other. It didn’t tell me whether I was or was not Zoë’s father. Above a blizzard of qualifiers and small print, the word ‘INCONCLUSIVE’ glared back at me.

  Another test would be necessary, the report said. That, and a ream of information on why the results had come back as they had. The strand of hair had not been enough for definitive confirmation.

  What to do now?

  I folded the report, put it back into the envelope and stuck it in my desk. Already, I was thinking about what I would tell Caroline when she asked. I would not show her the actual report. That was one thing I had decided quite quickly. I could tell her it had been delayed. Or, and this was how I discovered that one deception breeds another, I could tell her what she didn’t want to hear, but what I suspected by then to be the truth: that, whether she liked it or not, Zoë was my daughter. Even if my latest deceit felt like kind of a punishment to Caroline, well, I thought fleetingly, after her intimidation of Zoë, after her affair with Aidan, maybe she deserved it.

  9. Caroline

  Take the time back, and I wouldn’t approach her again. Had I known the heart beating in her chest was cold, I would have left her sitting alone at the pond, the sun warming her face. If I had known what was to come, the violence it would lead to, I wouldn’t have said a word. Curiosity led me to it. Curiosity over a dead woman. Linda. A woman I had never met. I would be lying if I claimed I’d never thought of her, though. Throughout the years of our marriage, she was alive in some part of my imagination. The truth is, she was there from the very start.

  David never liked talking about Linda. Whenever I probed him about her, he grew sullen. He didn’t love her, he said, when I pressed him. It was never love, he maintained, and for a long time I believed him.

  It was a lie, though. He did love her. I found that out in the end, on my fortieth birthday. A weekend away at a farmhouse in Crookhaven, stunning views of the west Cork coastline – it should have been perfect. David and I, Chris and Susannah. ‘It’s like Russian roulette, going away with those two,’ David had remarked, on the way down, but he’d said it good-naturedly. We were both in high spirits, looking forward to the break, some time away from the kids.

  It happened on the second night. Dinner in a lavish country house, a lot of wine, and one too many suggestive comments from Chris about the attractive young waitress – and Susannah snapped. They were off in their own whirl and tumble of conjugal battle, passion and principle tangling together in a barbed and nasty way. David and I glanced at each other across the swathe of white tablecloth, unwilling to intervene, but not wishing to bear witness either. The taxi journey back to our accommodation was icy and silent. Susannah went straight to bed, and I followed suit, leaving the two men downstairs with an open bottle of whiskey.

  Some time in the night, I heard their voices. The drink, rather than mellowing them, had made them garrulous – confessional. I got out of bed to use the bathroom and at the top of the stairs I stopped to listen.

  ‘I don’t know how you do it,’ David said, his voice sluggish and heavy with booze. ‘The constant bickering. The full-scale rows. Doesn’t it exhaust you?’

  ‘Completely.’

  ‘I don’t get it. How do you put up with it?’

  ‘Because I love her.’

  ‘Is that enough?’ Disbelief crept into David’s voice.

  ‘Honestly, Dave, sometimes I think it’s over between us – that I’ve had enough. God knows how many times I’ve resolved to leave her. But,’ Chris’s voice softened, ‘it’s always been Susannah. From the first time I set eyes on her. I can’t not be married to her. She’s the love of my life.’

  ‘Maybe sometimes you’re better off not marrying the love of your life.’

  The way he said it, thoughtful and quiet, I knew it was deeply personal to him, something he’d given thought to.

  ‘Are you telling me you regret marrying Caroline?’

  ‘I’m not talking about Caroline,’ he answered quickly, and I felt myself stiffen.

  ‘Ah,’ Chris said, as the penny dropped. ‘Linda.’

  Her name seemed to bloom in the air before me – a sudden burst of red – and I felt my hands grow cold. Understanding came quickly: David must have talked of her to Chris, confided in him in a way he had never confided in me. What intimacies had he spoken of? What admissions of love and regret had he made? That he had done this without my knowledge, behind my back, seemed to me a marked failure in our marriage. But worse than that – far, far worse – was the realization of how deeply lodged she was inside him. The love of his life.

  ‘Do you ever hear from her?’ Chris asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ever wonder where she is? Who she’s with?’

  ‘Sometimes. The odd time I’m reminded of her.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Chris went on, his voice more incisive, ‘do you ever wonder how things might have turned out if you’d stayed together?’

  The question chilled me. I found myself turning away from the possible answer.

  David gave a hollow laugh. ‘We’d be like you and Susannah – an endless series of fights and reconciliations. I wouldn’t have the energy for it.’

  ‘But you’d have passion,’ Chris countered.

  ‘Yes,’ David said, in a tone of wistfulness. ‘We certainly had that.’

  ‘More than you have with Caroline?’

  ‘Yes.’ The answer was immediate. He didn’t even need to think about it. ‘Caroline is different. She’s dependable, safe.’

  I’d heard enough. Sickened by this new knowledge, I had turned away, returned to the bedroom, wishing I had never left it. I slipped away to bed, and when David came up later, I held my body still, feigning sleep. He didn’t try to touch me.

  How to explain the quiet devastation caused by those words? Every time I remembered the wistfulness in his voice when he recalled his lost passion, something dark opened inside me. Like the unfurling of a shadowy new fern, I felt the opening out of doubt within me. Had it all been a mistake? Our marriage, the life we had built together, our children? Everything I valued and loved, everything I had worked so hard for, I saw now it had been built on a foundation of regret. He had given up his great love. With the cool detachment I knew him to be capable of, he had weighed up his options: passion and instability v
ersus the safe warmth of marriage to me. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t escape from the knowledge that I was not the love of his life. That title was claimed by a woman I had never met, a woman whose face I had seen once in a photograph I’d found hidden among his possessions.

  I think that night in the cold darkness at the top of the stairs, overhearing the conversation, was when it started for me. The moment when things began to unravel. Unhappiness swept in like the arrival of autumn on a September day. I tried to rationalize it, telling myself David had been drunk when he’d said those words, he hadn’t really meant them. But the truth of it continued to niggle at me. I told myself to be satisfied with what I had: a good husband, wonderful children, a comfortable home. It was more than a lot of people had – an enviable life. But the rot had set in. My husband had no passion for me. In marrying me he had chosen to settle. A pinched, mean voice inside me whispered: If you’re not the love of his life, what makes you so sure he’s yours? I’d never thought of myself as a woman who would have an affair. But by the time I met Aidan something had changed within me. Like a stone dislodged deep inside me, I felt the structure of my being start to crumble.

  After my affair ended, David and I went through a difficult patch. Our bedroom, once a place of refuge and comfort – of love – became the arena for our hissed arguments, the to-ing and fro-ing of whispered accusations, of denial and blame. We tried to keep it from the children, remaining civil in front of them, a tight cordiality that seemed stilted and formal. Slowly, things got better. The atmosphere lightened. I still felt obliged to explain my absences, however innocent they were. I was careful of my behaviour in front of David. I found that I censored my comments when speaking of other men – friends, colleagues. I tried to find happiness again within my marriage, within my home. The stone inside me that had been dislodged slipped back into place. I was returning to myself. Normality resumed. But then Zoë had come along.

  I thought about her constantly. At work, at home, in the evenings when I went out running, she was always with me, shadowing my thoughts, clouding my emotions. I considered telling someone about her – confiding in a friend – but the only person I might have told was Susannah and she was locked inside her own conjugal disaster. Any time I spoke to her on the phone, she sounded on the brink of tears. It was disconcerting, given how commanding she normally was. She had separated from Chris, finally moving out, and under the circumstances I felt I couldn’t burden her with my own domestic turmoil. Instead, I kept it to myself.