Girl Unknown

by Karen Perry

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Wait and see. By the time we get home to Dublin, it will probably be over between them.’

  A chill had entered the air as we stepped away from the square, David’s arm around me as we walked together. Buildings appeared chalky blue in the moonlight. We talked a little of our plans for the next few days. David wanted to visit some of the beaches on the south of the island where bunkers built by the Germans in the Second World War still existed. I had promised Holly a shopping trip to La Rochelle. Tired but content, we returned to the house, closing the gate behind us and crossing the courtyard.

  As soon as I opened the front door, I felt a change. The house seemed alive in a different way – the air spiked with a new presence. David behind me, I pushed open the door to the living room and saw Robbie sitting with his arms crossed over his chest, his face dark and unreadable. Movement in the kitchen caught the corner of my eye, but before I could turn to look there, Chris was getting out of the other armchair, his face a mixture of hope and apology.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked. He had been crossing the room to greet me, but the abruptness of my question made him stop.

  ‘Caroline, Dave,’ he said. ‘I know this is a surprise, calling on you unannounced …’

  He had a glass of wine, which he was passing from one hand to the other, as if unsure of what to do with it. He put it down on the coffee-table. Then, straightening up, he addressed us with a smile: ‘We wanted to surprise you, didn’t we, babe?’

  She was almost at my elbow by the time I realized she was there. Wearing a sleeveless short blue dress and orange flip-flops on her lightly tanned feet, I was struck all over again by how slight she was. Without the boots, her winter armour, she seemed wispy and insubstantial, like a twig that might snap in a brisk breeze.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ she said, the corner of her mouth pulling into a smile but her eyes were watchful, moving from me to David. ‘We were in Paris, you see, when it happened, and I knew you guys were here. Chris said we should ring but I preferred to tell you in person.’

  She stepped past me towards Chris. I felt David close behind me, but couldn’t see his face. I was too caught up with these new arrivals. Her new way of dressing made her look younger rather than older. Next to her, Chris was like some trendy uncle. He was sporting new clothes too, clearly aiming for a look that was youthful and flashy. He’d had his hair cut differently – there was a sort of mussed artfulness about it.

  ‘Are you sure it’s all right?’ Zoë asked, assuming a worried expression. ‘It’s a bit cheeky, I know, turning up out of the blue. It seemed like such a good idea at the time, but then, when we were driving over the bridge, it suddenly felt like a mistake. That you might not be happy to see us.’

  ‘You’re very welcome, Zoë,’ I told her, thinking of the times before when I had uttered the same hollow statements. Gestures of hospitality, but they were empty of any truth. David said nothing.

  ‘You see?’ Chris told her, putting his arm around her, smiling with reassurance. ‘Didn’t I tell you it’d be okay?’ Then to me: ‘She worries about everything.’

  Oh, please, I thought. Give me a break.

  It was nauseating to watch him clutch her to his side, beaming down at her. How could she stand it? The suffocating benevolence. I had a glimpse of what it was like between them – the way he lavished her with attention, his cloying affection, Zoë enduring it with a patient smile. She looked up at him then and her expression changed, the two of them giggling. There was something shifty about it, as if they were sharing a joke that I wasn’t in on. I knew this visit wasn’t the whimsical decision they had made it out to be.

  ‘What?’ I asked. ‘What’s happened?’

  They exchanged a look, then Zoë reached for a bag on the table and pulled out a bottle of champagne. ‘We brought this,’ she said, and offered it to me.

  I can still remember it, his hand on her shoulder, her almond-coloured skin beneath the reddened tips of his fingers, my eyes travelling the length of her arm to the orange label on the green bottle, the stones in her ring catching the light.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ I said.

  I didn’t turn to David, not wanting to see the slow shock that was surely coming over his face. Instead I kept my eyes fixed on hers. Brackish green eyes, gleaming now with excitement. Excitement, not nerves, for while Chris was sweating a little under the low ceiling of the room, she betrayed no anxiety. I thought again of when I had first met her – how nerveless she had seemed. She held out her hand to us – a queenly gesture – presenting us with her ring as if inviting us to come forward and kiss it.

  Robbie shifted on the couch.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ I said.

  ‘It’s true,’ Chris said, pulling her close to him, the two of them laughing as he kissed the side of her face.

  It was only then that I looked at David.

  I suppose there is a latent violence in all of us. It lies in the dark folds inside us waiting for the conditions outside and beyond to draw it out into the light. David is a man who goes quiet when enraged, his mood darkening. His anger internalized, he silently broods.

  But when I turned to him that night, when I saw him take a step forward, I was sure – for that brief moment – that there was violence in his mind. It was in his hands, clenched at his sides, in the wild light in his eyes. The room had grown hot, but still I felt coldness passing over my neck and shoulders, like a sudden chill breeze. Even now, after all that’s happened, I can’t forget it. A memory that refuses to be erased. The weight and coldness of that bottle of champagne in my hand, and the look on David’s face as if he wants to kill them. And in that sharp instant, I see that he could.

  20. David

  My working life has been the study of days – days and events. The marking of Time. But here’s the thing: I have never really felt what it must be like to wake on the morning of one of these historic events, either big or small. I’ve paused to consider the leaders of the Easter Rising sitting in their cells as dawn broke on the day of their executions, but I’ve never felt it. In the same way I’ve never experienced the stomach-clenching fear of the trenches in the First World War or the sickening shock of a pilot knowing his plane has been hit. I’ve read about these emotions in the dry pages of books without ever having to experience them. Perhaps that is what I have been lacking all along – the peculiar empathy required to truly understand the past.

  But I felt it that day – the last day. The portent of something in the atmosphere. I felt it from the moment I woke.

  It announced itself as a heaviness in the air, like oppressive heat before a storm. When I flung wide the shutters, though, the sky was a brilliant blue, not a cloud in sight. There was a smell like smoke mingled with petrol – it was distant but I could catch it, the acrid tinge in my nostrils. The bed was empty, Caroline having left it hours before, but I had lain there, trapped within this uneasy heat. Something felt wrong. Sure, I was a little hung-over, still fuming from the night before, but this was something else. I’m not a superstitious man. I don’t believe in signs or foreshadowing, none of that predestination claptrap. But when I consider all that happened that day, and remember how I felt upon waking, it makes me stop to wonder.

  I threw on some clothes, my mouth tacky and dry, and stepped into the hallway. It was quiet, heat lurking in the darkened corners of the house, a murmur of unease running through my thoughts, like a whispered complaint I couldn’t shake. The door to the kids’ bedroom was ajar. I pushed it open and stuck my head inside. Holly’s bed was empty, but Robbie was sprawled on his, forearms flung over his head against the pillow.

  ‘Morning, son,’ I said, and his eyes, which were open, flicked in my direction.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Sleep okay?’

  ‘No,’ he said pointedly.

  This was a reference to his indignation the night before at having to vacate his room and bunk in with his sister to provide our unexpected gue
sts with a bed for the night. His reaction when the arrangements were being hastily made had been incandescent fury and I could see that his anger still burned, albeit at a lesser flame.

  ‘Thanks, Robbie. For giving up your room.’

  ‘It’s not like I had a choice.’

  ‘Well, none of us knew they were coming.’

  ‘It’s a joke,’ he said, one that he clearly didn’t find funny.

  ‘I agree.’

  Propping himself up on his elbows, his brow darkening, he went on: ‘I can’t believe she’s engaged to that twat! I know he’s your friend and all, but come on, Dad, he’s ancient!’

  I rubbed my eye, felt some crust lodged in the corner and wiped it away.

  ‘It’s bullshit,’ he added and I agreed. It was.

  ‘Can’t you talk to them?’ he asked. ‘Make them call it off?’

  ‘I can’t make them do anything,’ I said, laughing a little. There was something childlike and innocent in the way he still thought I had the power to effect that kind of change. I wondered, too, why he was so upset about it.

  I muttered something about needing a coffee and turned away. Briefly, he called me back: ‘Happy birthday, by the way,’ he said.

  July 8th – the day of the birthdays. It was something that marked us out as unique, I always thought, this shared event. What are the odds of a daughter being born on her father’s birthday? In the twelve years I had shared the date with Holly, certain traditions had sprung up around it. One of them – perhaps my favourite – was the birthday hug, a long, squeezing clench like a physical acknowledgement of our special bond. With this in mind, I went downstairs in search of her.

  As I reached the bottom step, I heard voices in the kitchen, and lingered for a moment, listening.

  ‘I think it’s ridiculous, Chris, to be honest,’ I heard Caroline say.

  She was clattering around in there, busying herself with some kitchen task, and I heard the lightness of Chris’s laughter above her industry.

  ‘I’m in love, Caroline! Aren’t I allowed to behave foolishly?’

  ‘You’re in love,’ she muttered, a little exasperated. ‘And it’s not the age-gap that bothers me, you know that, right?’

  ‘What is it, then? Is it David?’

  ‘It’s Zoë. Have you seen her arms, Chris?’

  He made a kind of tutting sound, clearly unimpressed, but Caroline was not to be silenced.

  ‘And you know she tried to kill herself at Christmas.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ he replied, his voice dipping. ‘We’ve talked about that. I believe I can help her. I’m good for her –’

  ‘For God’s sake, Chris, you’re only out of a marriage about five minutes! Now you want to nosedive into another – with her?’

  ‘You don’t like her,’ he said, with the smugness of his own certainty. ‘That’s what’s really the issue.’

  I heard the dull slap of something flung on to the counter.

  ‘I’m not sure you’ve really thought about what you’re taking on. She’s mixed up – vulnerable.’

  Her tone had changed, caution tempering her forthright words.

  I was still standing in the narrow hallway, my eye caught by the flash of movement beyond the French windows leading on to the patio. I saw the splash of water, an arm raised and then disappearing again, as Holly did her laps of the pool. I could have gone outside, joined her, turned my back on the low-grade argument rumbling in the kitchen. But I didn’t.

  Chris was sitting at the table, his iPad in front of him. ‘Here he is,’ he said. ‘The birthday boy.’ There was forced jolliness in his tone.

  ‘Happy birthday, love,’ Caroline said, with warm affection, briefly forgetting her annoyance with Chris as she came and put her hands on my chest, reaching up to kiss me.

  ‘Thanks. Any coffee going?’

  ‘I was going to bring you breakfast in bed.’

  It was clear she had been to the market already, the counters and table littered with her purchases. I picked up a croissant from the plate and Caroline poured me some coffee while I took a seat opposite Chris. He eyed me warily. My mood the night before, my reaction to his preposterous announcement, made him unsure of me. No doubt he was thinking that, having slept on it, I’d have mellowed. He thought wrong.

  ‘So how old are you now, Dave? Forty-two, forty-three?’

  ‘Forty-four.’

  He whistled.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re so smug. You’re only a few weeks shy of it yourself.’

  He grinned, determined to be sunny in the face of my terseness. ‘Forty is the new thirty,’ he declared.

  ‘Does that make nineteen the new nine?’ Caroline asked.

  ‘Touché,’ he replied, but his smirk seemed to sag a little. I had a sudden urge to lean across the table and slap it off his face.

  ‘When are you leaving?’ I asked, not caring that it was rude. I wanted him gone, even if that meant Zoë leaving too, and I didn’t care that he was stung. In truth, I wanted to hurt him.

  ‘Actually,’ Caroline said, pausing in her slicing of melon, ‘there’s a bit of a problem.’

  ‘What?’ Her eyes were fixed on me and I sensed she was reluctant to break the news.

  ‘There’s been an accident on the bridge.’

  ‘What sort of accident?’

  She put down the knife, wiping her hands on a tea-towel. ‘An oil tanker crashed into the toll booths early this morning.’

  ‘What?’ I could hardly believe it, yet I had smelt the smoke when I’d woken up, even from where we were, on the far side of the island from the bridge.

  ‘They told me when I was at the market. There’s a massive fire. No cars can come on to or get off the island.’

  ‘Here,’ Chris said, offering me his iPad, which was opened on a French news page. ‘My French is shit but from what I can gather they’ve sent in fire brigades from La Rochelle to try to tackle the blaze.’

  I scrolled through the images of smoke billowing from the inferno, the long bridge snaking across to the mainland. ‘How the hell did it happen?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Caroline said, returning to her task.

  ‘Maybe the brakes failed,’ Chris offered. ‘Or it could have been a terrorist attack.’

  ‘On Île de Ré? Hardly an obvious target for ISIS or Al-Qaeda.’ The notion was absurd.

  ‘Whatever,’ Caroline said, setting the bowl on the table with a sharp clink. ‘There’s no way off the island. Not today, at any rate. Maybe not for a few days.’ She didn’t sound happy.

  ‘I know it’s not ideal,’ Chris said, coming over all reasonable, ‘but let’s try to make the best of it, hmm? Can’t we use the time to try to reconcile our differences?’ Caroline cast him a doubtful look but he went on: ‘Zoë so badly wanted to come here, to tell you our news in person. If you’d seen how excited she was, how insistent on sharing this with you … Can’t you please try to be happy for us? For her, if not for me?’

  He went on a bit about how much we all meant to him and Zoë, but I had no interest in listening to the fairytale he was peddling – about how we were family, about mending the wounds – so I cut across him: ‘What about Susannah?’ I asked.

  That took the wind out of his sails. He selected a strawberry from the bowl and popped it into his mouth. ‘What about her?’

  ‘Does she know about your engagement?’

  ‘I haven’t told her yet …’

  ‘Chris,’ Caroline interjected.

  ‘And I’d thank you not to tell her either,’ he added.

  She was nonplussed. ‘I don’t get it,’ she said. ‘On the one hand, you’re all lovey-dovey, buying rings, making your big announcement, and yet you’re trying to hush it up.’

  ‘I want to tell Susannah to her face, not over the phone.’

  It was a cop-out and he knew it. I said: ‘Your divorce could take years to come through. Why couldn’t you have waited? Getting engaged while you are still married, it’s not right.’
>
  Before he could answer, Caroline said: ‘She’s not pregnant, is she?’

  It hadn’t occurred to me, but now that she said it, it seemed so startling and obvious, I was almost breathless.

  Chris stared at her, injury settling on his face. ‘No, Caroline, she’s not.’

  She put a hand to her chest, her relief instantaneous, then reached out to touch his shoulder. ‘Sorry. No, really, I am sorry – that was crass. I don’t know why I said it.’

  ‘Is that really what you think? That the only possible reason Zoë and I might want to marry each other is because of an unplanned pregnancy?’

  Neither of us said anything. The truth was that their relationship confounded us both. For my part, I believed he was in the throes of a midlife crisis. There was something sordid and desperate about the way he had latched on to Zoë. Caroline’s thoughts, when she voiced them, tended towards conspiracy theory. She believed Zoë was using Chris as part of some game she was playing, that the girl was getting her tentacles into every area of our lives and that not even our friends are safe from her. I dismissed her theory, but I knew she hadn’t let it go. The suspicion was written all over her face. If Chris saw it too, he didn’t say.

  ‘For years I’ve been sleepwalking through my life,’ he told us. ‘But with Zoë I can feel the blood rushing through my veins. The divorce might take a while. It’s Ireland after all, but once it’s done, Zoë has agreed to marry me.’

  I couldn’t listen to any more of it. Standing up, I announced I was going to find Holly. As I left the kitchen, passing through the hall towards the patio doors, I heard Caroline say in a low voice: ‘You see how upset he is? You guys being here is the last thing he needs. His mother just died, for God’s sake.’

  I don’t know how Chris responded, whether he nodded sheepishly or mumbled a reply. All I heard was Caroline’s voice, her instructional no-nonsense tone: ‘As soon as the bridge reopens, both of you need to leave.’

  It was mid-morning and sunlight was making progress across the back wall of the garden, throwing long shadows from the yew tree on to the terrace below. The pool was half in shade. I stood at one end where Holly’s towel was neatly folded on the ground, her glasses sitting on top, and waited for her to finish her lap. She stroked evenly through the water, touching the end and squinting up at me.