Girl Unknown
Page 18
‘I’m very sorry about this, Alan,’ I said, when she had gone. ‘Is there no way of persuading her to stay?’
‘I tried. I explained the process, how it makes us look.’ He sat down heavily. ‘Of course we’ll have to carry out an internal investigation.’
‘Is that really necessary?’
‘She was the vice-chancellor’s fellow, for God’s sake!’ He spread his hands across the desk. ‘We’ll have to form a committee and formally sign off on her release from her research with us.’
‘I don’t know what to say … I can’t believe she didn’t come to me before.’
‘Apparently, she tried.’
‘I can check my emails but, really, I don’t think I missed anything.’
‘It’s disappointing,’ Alan said. ‘I just hope we can make up for her departure in some way.’
‘We’ll certainly try,’ I said, in an effort to sound positive.
He appeared distracted, and I took it as my cue to leave.
‘One other thing,’ he said, as I got to my feet. ‘The radio interview this morning …’
‘You heard?’
‘I’m afraid I did. What on earth came over you?’
‘I’m sorry, Alan. I was very tired. I slept badly last night …’
My voice petered out, silenced by the weight of concern in his stare.
‘The timing couldn’t have been worse.’
I apologized again.
‘I’ll have to speak on your behalf to the dean. I’ll explain the pressure you’re under at home.’
I dropped my eyes, uncomfortable at the unspoken assertion that I had allowed problems in my personal life to pollute the working environment of the department.
‘How are things at home, David?’ he asked, his tone changing, becoming avuncular. ‘How’s your mother doing?’
In one of our informal chats over coffee, I’d told him that she had moved into a nursing home for palliative care. ‘She’s not so good. It’s only a matter of time now.’
‘Time is precious. I often think time is the commodity we deal in, as historians. An examination of its passage …’
Alan’s patter began to sound perfunctory, and I lost focus on what he was saying.
He must have noticed my wavering attention, my despair: ‘What about taking a break?’ he asked.
I protested, but only mildly.
‘Take a few days,’ he said. ‘Spend them with your mother. With Caroline and the kids. A break will help you get your affairs in order, and let matters blow over here.’
‘What about my lectures? My seminars?’ I asked.
‘Don’t worry about any of it. I’ll ask John McCormack to cover for you.’
Great, I thought, as I left his office. McCormack to the rescue.
17. Caroline
April started out as a difficult month. After a bruising client meeting one afternoon, in which I presented with incorrect data, Peter called me into his office and informed me that, once the maternity leave I was covering was over, my employment with the firm would end.
‘It’s not just today,’ he said, in response to my craven apology, my pathetic attempts to explain myself. ‘You’ve been distracted for a while now – missing appointments, turning up unprepared.’
Like an idiot, I began rattling on about another client, a proposal I was putting together, plans I wanted to run past him. I felt like a child again, needing him to be pleased with me. He held up his hand. ‘I’m very sorry, Caroline,’ he said with cold civility. ‘We have limited resources, and I need someone who is at the top of her game, not distracted by her domestic situation. I’m happy to write you a good reference, but that’s the best I can do.’
He meant well, but I left his office ungraciously, barely making it to my car before the tears came.
Whatever disappointment I felt had to be put on hold once the news we had been waiting for came. On 14 April, a week shy of her seventy-fifth birthday, Ellen passed away. David, who has always had a knack for compartmentalizing, held himself together well in the days before the funeral, making the arrangements, taking calls of condolence, dealing with the nursing home and the undertakers. Even on the day of the funeral, he managed to control his emotions, appearing sombre but composed, his voice only cracking once during the address.
Outward displays of grief are not part of his make-up but in the days that followed he seemed to turn in on himself. He became enervated, his sadness surfacing in a kind of lassitude. He moped around the house, saying little to anyone, while the rest of us tiptoed around him.
A week or so later, I suggested we take a hike in the Wicklow hills – all of us. All this hanging around the house in gloomy silence wasn’t doing us any good. It had been a long time since we had undertaken a family outing, and a trek over muddy terrain in the fresh spring air was just what David needed to blow away the cobwebs of his depression.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Why not?’
It was a sharp, clear day, the air crisp with new life pushing up through cold ground. We took the car as far as Tibradden, then got out, lacing up our hiking boots, a brisk breeze whipping at our anoraks as we pulled rucksacks on to our backs. There were five of us that day as Zoë had chosen to come with us. The bruising on her face had faded, and in the days since Ellen’s death, she had seemed calmer, more acquiescent. Her manner had changed: the threat seemed to have left her. Or maybe the change had occurred within me. I was tired of feeling suspicious and angry. I was sick of myself and the constant negativity Zoë inspired. All of a sudden, it didn’t matter to me – her insidious presence, her lies, the self-inflicted wounds. She was a silly little girl with her own problems, none of which seemed important after Ellen’s death.
We set out, David taking charge of the map, pointing out the route we would take. He went ahead, Holly at his side, while Zoë and Robbie trudged through the mud together. I was happy to take up the rear. It felt good to be silent in the great vastness of the Wicklow hills. We splashed through water and trudged through gorse and heather, floundering occasionally in unexpected boggy dips.
‘You okay back there?’ David called to me.
‘I’m great!’
And I was. Seeing him smiling down at me, his face ruddy, I felt hopeful that the last few months were behind us. My failure at work, the struggle over Zoë, none of it seemed to matter, such was my optimism that day. No harm could come to us in that beautiful place.
After an hour, the climb steepened, and we found ourselves scrambling up a craggy path, slippery with scattered rocks and gravel. Trees grew tall on one side – Norwegian spruces, pines – and the shadowy ground was soft with layers of brown needles.
‘Will we stop soon?’ I called, and David pointed to a clearing on one side a little higher up. A space cut into the rock-face, shelter from the wind that had whipped up as we made our ascent.
We reached it and set about emptying our backpacks of provisions. My hands and feet were cold. The temperature was lower up there than it had been when we set out.
‘What about a campfire?’ David asked.
‘Is that allowed?’ I asked, thinking of gorse fires spreading rapidly over the county.
‘Don’t be such a wimp,’ he said, teasing me.
Robbie was eager to help and they set off in search of firewood, with Zoë. Holly clambered up over the hill to explore and I was left alone.
For a while, I just sat there, kneading warmth back into my fingers. The others had disappeared. It was very quiet and the rock beneath me felt hard and cold. Clouds scudded across the grey sky, and the outline of the trees along the horizon was jagged and harsh. I wanted the others to come back and break the silence, which seemed vast and watchful, like a presence. But no one was there – only the rocks and thicket growing over the windblown hill.
Impatient, I decided to set off after Holly, up over the hump of gorse, the scrabble of a rutted mud path. It was hard going and I was beginning to sweat under my clothes, my legs tired from
the strain of the climb. A copse of trees lay ahead, the ground between thick with nettles and briars. I scaled the perimeter until I rounded the corner and found myself almost at the brink of a sheer drop into a quarry, yellow machinery far below lying idle and unmanned. I peered over the edge, birds wheeling above, and felt my heart pound at the plunging depth. It must have been a drop of ten metres or more. My fear was chased by indignation – how dangerous! No fencing, no warning signs – if you were to stumble up there in poor light or a heavy fog, you could easily fall to your death.
I stepped back and looked to my left, my eyes caught by the bright colours of Holly’s anorak. Her feet were placed almost at the lip of the drop, wind whipping her hair out from her hood as she peered over. She hadn’t seen me, her body inclined slightly away from me.
That was when I saw Zoë edging through the periphery of my vision. She seemed to be stepping carefully, stealthily. Her jacket was grey, camouflage against the craggy stones of the quarry. A wave of nausea came up suddenly from my stomach and I opened my mouth to shout a warning but fear gripped my throat and no sound came out. I watched her creeping up, Holly oblivious to the approaching threat. I watched as she put out a hand, and all the danger in the world seemed to come alive in that moment. Maternal empathy meant that I saw the push before it happened, felt the hands as if they were to my own back, the sickening shove, the terrifying moment as the ground falls away and there’s nothing but the air around you and the bone-breaking impact of the ground – no escape. I watched that hand reach out, and forced the word up the blind tunnel of my throat: ‘No!’
A shot to my heart, Holly turning, my eyes all the while fixed on Zoë’s hand as it gripped Holly’s shoulder and pulled her back.
Even now, after everything that has happened, and with all I know, I still look back to that moment with uncertainty. If I hadn’t followed Holly up there and shouted out, would Zoë have pushed her? Or was that my feverish imagination, powered and warped by my intense distrust of the girl? But that is the rational thought of hindsight again. For at that moment it was pure instinct. I had seen the violence Zoë had done to herself; I had recognized her ruthlessness in getting what she wanted. The truth is, I was afraid of her.
Holly stepped back from the edge, came towards me and I wrapped my arm around her, shooting Zoë a look.
‘What?’ Zoë shouted after us, because I had already turned away, ushering Holly down the hill, away from her half-sister and the danger she represented. ‘I was just trying to help her!’
That night, going up the stairs to bed, I passed Holly’s door and heard crying. I found her lying in the darkness, hugging a tatty old bunny that had been consigned to the bottom of her wardrobe for the last couple of years. Seeing her clutching it to her chest – an old talisman against night-terrors – set off an alarm bell in my head. ‘What is it, sweetheart?’ I asked, sitting on the bed next to her, my weight on the mattress drawing her towards me.
‘Oh, Mum,’ she said, reaching up and throwing her arms around my neck.
That physical demonstration was so unlike Holly. She was normally self-contained, eschewing outpourings of affection. I could feel her thin body against me, shaking.
‘I was so scared,’ she whispered, her mouth close to my ear.
I knew she was talking about Zoë and something hardened inside me – a resolve forming. ‘It’s all right,’ I told her gently, trying to sound calm and firm. Drawing back so I could look into her eyes, I said: ‘I would never let anyone hurt you – you know that, don’t you?’
‘But you’re not always there, Mum. You don’t see what she’s like – the things she says to me …’
‘What things?’
‘When there are other people around, she’s nice and sweet to me, but it’s all an act! When we’re alone, just the two of us, she’s horrible!’
‘Why? What does she say to you?’
‘She says I’m nothing.’
‘What?’
‘That I don’t matter. That no one will miss me when I’m not around.’
‘Holly, that’s not true. You know it’s not.’
‘Dad wouldn’t notice,’ she said, her voice dropping a little.
‘Of course he would! Your father loves you and Robbie more than anything.’
‘More than Zoë?’ Her eyes, still wet with tears, held mine.
‘He’s known you your whole life, sweetheart. Since before you were even born. That makes things different. Special.’
‘It doesn’t feel that way,’ she said. ‘It feels like she’s all that matters to him now.’
She ran her fingers along the battered ear of her bunny and I remembered a time when she couldn’t sleep without him, how loved he was, and felt a twinge of sadness that she had outgrown him. Tonight was just a blip. Very soon, that bunny would be consigned to a box in the attic along with the other relics of her childhood, and somehow, I didn’t feel ready for that.
‘I’ll talk to Dad,’ I told her.
She lay back, turning away from me, but she was not comforted. ‘It won’t make a difference,’ she said, resignation – not reassurance – in her tone.
I think that was when I decided to take matters into my own hands. I couldn’t rely on David for help, so I resorted to a deception of my own. The danger was alive and living in my house. Necessary evils were called for.
I bided my time, remaining watchful, until early one morning when Zoë was in the shower, the others downstairs having breakfast. I moved quickly and quietly up the steps to her room, finding her mobile phone lying on her bureau. My heart beating wildly, I scrolled through her list of contacts before finding what I needed: Mam Mobile. I scribbled the number on a Post-it, and fled before I could be caught, the hiss of the shower jets coming from the bathroom as I hurried downstairs, my pulse beginning to slow.
My motives for meeting Celine Harte were unclear. I wasn’t so naïve as to think she could solve my problem by whipping her daughter out of my house and dragging her back to Belfast. I suppose I was seeking evidence of sorts, some confirmation of the fear I felt. Part of me was afraid that I was obsessed with the girl, and maybe losing perspective. Was I right to suspect her of meaning harm towards me and my daughter? Or was she just a mixed-up kid, meddlesome but benign, who would, with time and support, settle down and find her place within the family? Either way, some poor unfortunate had been landed with Zoë as their kid, and I wanted to meet them to find out what exactly I was dealing with.
We met in AppleGreen – a service station on the M1 between Dublin and Newry. Sitting at a plastic table, the coffee cooling, Celine Harte, bundled up in a quilted jacket even though the day was warm, looked at me flatly, her eyes like two inky-black pebbles. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you want?’
Her candour took me aback. The world-weariness of her demeanour gave me the impression that this was not the first time she had been called to such a meeting. I answered with candour of my own. ‘It’s Zoë,’ I said. ‘I want her out of my home.’
If she was surprised by that, she didn’t show it.
‘She’s come between me and my husband,’ I went on. ‘She has some sort of vendetta against me, like she wants to get rid of me. I’m worried about the influence she’s having on my children, my son in particular. I’m afraid she’s a threat to my daughter.’
Celine took it all in, her expression unchanging, then looked down at her cup, a pale skin forming on the surface of the coffee.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to shock you.’
‘I’m not shocked.’ She brought her eyes up to meet mine, tiredness in the heavy lids. ‘It’s what she does.’
The dryness of her tone bordered on cynicism. I expected her to go on – it was a shocking thing to say of your own daughter – but rather than qualifying her statements, she just stared at me in stony silence.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I admitted. ‘Am I imagining it, or does she want to tear us apart? So much has happened.’
I told her everything, about Zoë’s behaviour when alone with me and how markedly different it became when David was around. I told her about the lies, the deception, the inflicting of damage on her face, then blaming me. She listened to it all without betraying any emotion, except when I told her about Zoë’s suicide attempt. Briefly, she closed her eyes, then was back with me, having pushed down whatever pain had surfaced at the catalogue of trouble Zoë had brought upon my family. I told her everything, except the part about Holly – the incident at the quarry. For some reason I was reluctant to discuss it – to suggest her daughter was capable of a cold-blooded killing might overstep the mark – and I wanted Celine Harte to share with me what she knew and understood of Zoë. I didn’t want to risk her growing defensive.
She finished her coffee, pushed the mug to one side, then leaned her clasped hands on the table in front of her, as if she were about to pray. The words she spoke to me then had the rehearsed quality of a prayer, or perhaps a parable, the telling of a story, one she had told herself or others many times over. There was no pleasure in the telling, no spark in the tale. Rather, a kind of bleakness, as if she had learned long ago that, no matter how she told it, the outcome would always remain the same.
She began by telling me about a family whom Zoë used to babysit for while she was still at school. ‘Every Saturday night, religiously, for over a year. Then it just stopped. I asked her about it, but she said it was nothing, told me to mind my own business. I let it go. But then,’ she continued, ‘one afternoon, the mother comes down the road to me all distressed. She tells me that Zoë has been pestering her husband, hanging around his workplace, calling him at all hours of the day and night. The wife had found out about it – she’d looked at his mobile phone, seen the lewd texts Zoë’d been sending him. She showed me some – disgusting things – not to mention all the poison written about his wife. Zoë believed this man was in love with her, you see, that he was going to leave his wife for her. The way she got between them …’ She leaned forward. ‘She was fourteen years old.’