Girl Unknown

by Karen Perry

  ‘Sssh,’ I whispered. ‘You don’t need to apologize. I’m just glad you’re all right.’

  She continued to cry but the sobbing had lost some of its raw edge, and while she was still upset, I could see she was calming. Passing my eyes over her, I noticed how pale and gaunt she was, skeletal under that harsh lighting. All the colour had drained from her – even her hair looked drab and lifeless. She was wearing a hospital gown, her bare arms emerging from the printed cotton. I was so used to seeing her swathed in baggy jumpers, or long-sleeved T-shirts, the cuffs tugged down over her wrists and hands. With a shock, I saw the markings on the inside of her arms – a series of vicious little cuts, as if a cat had clawed her, over and over. Some were fairly new, the scabs still present, while others had healed into fine pink lines, and a few had faded almost completely. I saw those lines and felt emotion inflate within me, tears of shock and pity coming unexpectedly. I swallowed them, taking her hand.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked gently. ‘You can tell me.’

  ‘You must wish you’d never met me,’ she said hoarsely.

  ‘Not at all. In fact, quite the opposite.’ It surprised me how much I meant those words. ‘Please tell me, Zoë. I promise I won’t judge. I just want to understand.’

  She turned over so that she was lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling. Her face looked flatter, her eyes dulled. She had let go of my hand but still I sat close, leaning towards her, waiting.

  ‘It just got too much,’ she began. ‘Everything got on top of me. I felt like I was drowning.’

  I nodded encouragement. When she didn’t go on, I prompted her: ‘Was it your studies? A lot of students struggle in the first year. It’s very common.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, but I could sense the tug of reluctance within her and knew there was something more.

  ‘There’s still plenty of time to catch up,’ I offered. ‘It’s only the end of Semester One.’

  ‘Time,’ she said drily. The tears were gone now, and what remained was dry deflation. ‘That’s part of the problem. I have no time.’

  I knew that she had a part-time job to help pay her rent, but as she detailed the jobs she had and the hours she needed to work to pay her bills, it became clear to me the burden under which she was struggling, and how little time remained for her studies.

  ‘What about Gary?’ I asked, feeling somewhat awkward at mentioning his name. ‘I had the impression that he was helping you financially, paying your fees at least?’

  Even as I said the words, I felt fraudulent. I was Zoë’s father, not Gary. Why did I expect a man I had never met to pay for my daughter’s education?

  ‘Gary has made it obvious that he wants nothing more to do with me.’

  She enunciated the words clearly, hardness entering her tone. There was a warning there to keep away, not to prod the sore too deeply. For now, I resolved to leave it be.

  ‘How do you manage?’ I asked. ‘With all these part-time jobs, you must barely have time to go to class, let alone study.’

  In a voice still scratched from the recent tubes down her throat, she described to me the various uppers and downers she took to get the work done, how she used medications to keep her awake through half the night when she needed to study, and then to induce rapid sleep. It was depressing listening to it, hearing the dry clack of her tongue against the roof of her mouth, her tiny frame dwarfed by the bed, the hospital cubicle, the austere reek of disinfectant in my nose.

  ‘Well, that has to stop,’ I said, a fatherly, instructive tone creeping into my voice. ‘You can’t keep that up. Look at what it’s doing to your body.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Zoë, something must have prompted you to do this now,’ I said, as calmly as I could. ‘What was it?’

  She tried to prop herself up, but had hardly the strength to do so. Reaching for a bottle of water on the side table, she took a sip, then settled back against the pillow. She appeared sullen, a little ashamed, perhaps. ‘It’s stupid,’ she admitted. ‘I’m such a cliché. Trying to kill myself on Christmas Day. The psych nurse they sent around to talk to me told me they get more suicide attempts at Christmas than any other time of the year.’

  ‘I suppose that makes sense. A lot of people find Christmas hard.’

  ‘Yeah. And without Mam, it’s just …’ Her voice died away.

  ‘What about us, Zoë? We wanted you to have Christmas at the house. We were all expecting you. Robbie was really disappointed –’

  ‘You won’t tell him, will you?’ she asked quickly, panic in her eyes.

  ‘Zoë –’

  ‘Please? I couldn’t bear it.’ She started to cry again, and I put my hand on her arm to reassure her.

  ‘It’s okay, sweetheart,’ I said, the endearment slipping out as easily as it would were Holly lying in the bed needing comfort.

  She settled back, the fright going out of her eyes, but she remained uneasy. ‘I’ve let you down,’ she stated.

  ‘No, you haven’t.’

  ‘It was kind of you to invite me for Christmas. But as the time drew near, I just knew I couldn’t come. You were only inviting me because you felt sorry for me.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ I argued, feeling a warm breath of anger. ‘The only person feeling sorry for you was you. I asked you because I wanted you to be there. Because you’re my daughter and that makes you part of my family.’

  ‘David, you don’t even know me. There are things I’ve done …’

  Her voice trailed off and she turned her face away. The words spoken, she seemed more lucid than she had since I’d sat down. It chilled me to hear them.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘As soon as you’re discharged, I want you to come and stay with us. There’s a spare room in the attic. You’d be comfortable. Safe.’

  She didn’t answer. Already her eyes were closing, as if she were locking me out, wanting to be alone again with her troubled thoughts, her guilty secrets.

  ‘Live with us? Isn’t that a bit rash?’ Caroline said.

  ‘She tried to kill herself. I’m her father – it’s the very least I can do.’

  She was preparing dinner and I watched as she sliced an aubergine, placing each sliver carefully in a colander and sprinkling it with salt. ‘I know,’ she said softly. ‘It’s hard to take in, that’s all. What she did. It seems unbelievable.’

  ‘I just think if we can get her back here, provide her with some stability and support, help her get back on her feet again, it will be better for everyone.’

  Caroline turned on the tap and rinsed her hands. ‘What should we tell the children?’

  ‘Zoë doesn’t want them to know what she did.’

  ‘David –’

  ‘Please. She’s ashamed.’

  ‘Are we to lie to them about it?’

  I shrugged, a mean thought entering my head: You’ve lied to them before. You’ve lied to all of us.

  ‘I feel very uneasy about this – all of it,’ she said, wiping her hands on the towel. ‘She’s clearly unstable and vulnerable, and I’m not sure she’s a good influence on Robbie and Holly. I mean, what if she tries to do it again?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s going to happen.’

  ‘But what if it does?’

  ‘You know what, Caroline? If it were anyone else – the child of a friend of ours, one of Robbie’s pals – you’d be flinging wide the doors, laying down the red carpet for them.’

  She turned away and hung the tea-towel over the rail of the cooker. Her back still to me, I heard her say: ‘She makes me uneasy.’

  With her admission, the air between us seemed to deflate, the tension easing.

  I went to stand behind her, put my hands on her shoulders and leaned in so the side of my face was close to hers. ‘She needs us, love,’ I said gently. ‘She has nothing, no one. Only us.’

  A brief hesitation, and then her hand reached up to cover mine.

  ‘I’ll go and make up her room,’ she said.

&n
bsp; I stood in the corridor by the lifts, waiting for Zoë. There was a window looking on to the tops of the trees, the rooftops of Merrion and Ballsbridge. Outside, the evening was cold and still. I felt a stirring of nerves in my chest. The sky was a bright blue, so clear I could see as far as Howth Head beyond the bay. Seagulls called loud and clear. My fingers tapped impatiently on the sill.

  It was back with me again, the déjà vu – the nervous energy in my body fizzing. Something had changed between us, and even though I felt as if I were carrying all the giddy expectancy of a younger man, the solid mass of our bond lay underneath. The hours I had spent with her at the hospital over the past few days, holding her hand, listening to her, comforting her, I had felt it announce itself so strongly that I wondered how I had ever questioned it. I thought of the DNA test I had ordered, the deceitful manner of it, and felt ashamed.

  A door opened and I turned to see her carrying her bag, shoulders slumped forward in her grey hoodie, but she gave a half-smile when she saw me and I felt a bloom of hope.

  ‘Hey,’ she said shyly, and I took the bag from her.

  ‘Plenty of rest, the doctor said,’ I told her, as I pressed the button to call the lift.

  I put my arm about her shoulders. She felt so slight against me, enclosed within my embrace as the lift doors opened, but I could see our reflections in the mirror and she was smiling. For the time being at least, she was safe.

  13. Caroline

  That first night, David spent a long time up in her room, his low, sonorous tones coming down the narrow stairs as I stood on the landing, looking up at the closed door. I kept thinking of the dark shadows around her eyes and mouth, lending an austere grace to her beauty. The tragic princess. Afterwards, when he came downstairs, he said little of what they had talked about.

  ‘She’s calm,’ was all he said, as if that was his primary concern.

  One by one we went to bed.

  I lay awake staring at the ceiling, thinking of her in the room above us. I couldn’t tell if David was asleep beside me. Perhaps he, too, was listening for noises overhead, light footsteps across the floorboards, the gentle creaking of the bed as she turned over. I was listening attentively, every nerve alive to the sensation of this stranger in my home.

  Some time before midnight, I heard her voice, words muffled by their passage through floor and ceiling. She was alone up there and I pictured her sitting on the bed, knees drawn up to her chin, talking on her phone to a friend or a boyfriend, filling them in on the new turn her life had taken. I thought of the room surrounding her – the pitched ceiling under the eaves, the paint still fresh and gleaming from the attic conversion completed in the last year. I thought of the striped bedding, the lamp plugged in on the floor, the wall of plastic storage boxes containing some of the children’s old toys and clothes that I couldn’t bring myself to throw out. Boxes of nostalgia, things that were precious to me, now a part of her domain. I tried to tell myself that this was just a temporary arrangement, a fleeting stay until she had recovered. But as I listened to her voice, the high, light note of her laughter coming from up there under the roof, I felt a trickle of doubt. She didn’t sound to me like a girl who wanted to end it all. She sounded relaxed, as if she were settling in. ‘Make yourself at home,’ I had told her, when really I meant nothing of the sort.

  I woke up early on the first morning of the new term, and was out of bed, showered and dressed before anyone else had stirred. David came down some time afterwards, his eyes still puffy, wordlessly fixing a pot of coffee while I sat at the counter, eating toast and making a list on my iPhone.

  ‘Are the kids getting up?’ I asked, after he had taken his first sip.

  ‘There’s movement. Robbie’s in the bathroom. Zoë’s not going into college so I don’t expect we’ll see her until this evening.’

  It was disconcerting – already he was including her in the collective ‘kids’.

  Holly came downstairs, followed by her brother, the volume of noise in the kitchen rising with their presence – the clatter of spoons and bowls, the low-key grumbling – and soon enough it was half past eight and we were gathering in the hall, packing lunches into school bags and pulling on coats.

  ‘Should we check on her?’ I asked David, as he came downstairs with his bag, taking his cycling helmet from the coat-stand.

  ‘She needs to rest, Caroline, after what she’s been through.’

  The kids were piling out of the door now, getting into the car, and David was wheeling his bike down the path. I stood there, looking up the stairs, feeling uneasy. I didn’t like the thought of her being alone in my house. I imagined her tiptoeing down from the attic as soon as we’d driven off, nosing around our bedroom, picking over my things.

  I ran up the stairs, making sure my footfall was audible. Knocking sharply on the door, I heard her call, ‘Come in,’ and pushed the door open.

  She was lying on her side, propped on one elbow, her head resting on her hand, reading Madame Bovary.

  ‘Did you sleep well?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, as she glanced up from her book, a hazy look on her face as if her attention was still with the novel, ‘I just wanted to let you know that we’re going now.’

  ‘Right.’

  She appeared pale and slight, the long sleeves of her nightdress pulled down over her wrists. I hesitated a moment, my eye caught by the coverlet over the bed. It took me a moment to recognize it – a patchwork bedspread, triangles of blue and grey cotton stitched together into geometrical patterns. I had bought it in Thailand years before when I was not long out of college. Zoë must have found it among the storage boxes up there, which meant she had been snooping through our things. It wasn’t as if there was anything secret or valuable hidden away, but I still felt angry and disheartened. It was another incursion by her into our lives, another presumption on her part that she was entitled to take possession of whatever she found. I considered saying something, but instinct told me it wasn’t worth it.

  ‘How’re you feeling?’ I asked.

  She didn’t answer, just shrugged, her attention on the book again.

  ‘You know, if ever you want to talk,’ I began, ‘about what happened … about what led you to …’

  She looked up sharply.

  ‘… I’d be happy to listen,’ I finished.

  ‘Right,’ she said, bemused, before she returned to her novel and lazily turned a page.

  I backed out, stung by her dismissal of me. It wasn’t that I expected her to accept my offer, but a small show of appreciation would have been nice. It occurred to me that, by attempting suicide, she had got exactly what she wanted – her foot in the door – which made me doubt whether she had ever intended killing herself at all. By the time I got downstairs, David was already gone, so I left a key on the hall table, took one last look back up the stairs, and closed the door behind me.

  The rain started that morning and continued all week – heavy, blistering downpours, monsoon-like in their unrelenting ferocity. The air in the hallway was heavy with the odour of damp clothes. Condensation on windows, heavy traffic, leaves clogged in drains pooling with water.

  Every day, when we left the house, she was up there in her room. When I came home in the evening, I’d find her curled up on the sofa with her book, eating a carrot, or watching TV with the others. She’d look up briefly when I came through the door, greet me with a wan smile, then return her attention to whatever she was absorbed in at the time. She wasn’t hostile, or even cold, but there was a mildness to her, a lack of engagement, that I found maddening. From what I could tell, she had reasonably recovered from her blip at Christmas. There was no evidence of lingering depression, no black moods. She seemed so docile, so willing to fade into the background, that it made me wonder had she any desire or intention to find an alternative place to live. Not that I mentioned it. Even after she had returned to college, David made it clear that she remained too fragile to live alone.

&nb
sp; The month passed in a flurry of storms interspersed with unseasonably warm weather. It was as if the meteorological elements were somehow mirroring the uncertain climate within our home. As the weeks progressed, I felt Zoë’s position solidifying in the house, growing unquestionable. She was making more of an effort to help out and was, I suppose, largely unobtrusive. Tidy, hers was a quiet presence, but a presence nonetheless. And when the others were not around – when it was just me and her – she allowed the mask to slip, her polite charm vanishing, replaced by cool remoteness.

  The precariousness of our situation was made clear to me one weekday evening – the occasion of our first serious argument about her. We were clearing away the dishes after dinner, David scraping plates into the bin and handing them to Holly, when Zoë stood up and, without a word to any of us, left the room. In her wake, I heard the dull thud of the salad bowl being brought down hard on the counter. ‘Why is she allowed to get out of the dishes?’ Holly demanded.

  ‘Until she’s well –’ David began, but Holly cut him off.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with her! Why do you keep tiptoeing around her?’

  David put down the plate he was holding.

  From upstairs came the jagged strains of Robbie’s cello. He, too, had been excused household chores but Holly wasn’t interested in that. ‘How much longer is she going to be here?’ she asked, her whole body stiff with tension. I could see how frustrated she was.

  ‘Sweetheart –’ I began, trying to calm her.

  ‘I’m sick of her!’ she declared, her voice rising to a screech.

  ‘Holly!’ David said sharply, but she was already turning from him. Seconds later we heard feet thundering up the stairs, the slam of her bedroom door. We looked at each other.

  ‘Well?’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She has a point.’

  He turned from me, picked up another plate and continued scraping, but with a more committed air.

  ‘Can’t we talk about this?’ I asked. ‘Holly’s not happy.’

  ‘Holly’s behaving like a spoilt brat.’

  ‘I think you’re being unfair, David. This is her home and she’s feeling marginalized.’