Dinner for Two (12 page)

It was a scattergun approach to seduction: we indicated which girl we were attracted to and, after a decent interval, they indicated whether we were in with a chance. As it stood we’d got nearly everything wrong. It turned out that Sarah-Jane liked Nick, Brenda liked Ed, Colleen liked Jamie and Caitlin didn’t really like any of us, which left me as the odd one out. Within half an hour of the who-likes-whom information going public Brenda and Ed had left to go to another bar, Colleen’s tongue was lodged down Jamie’s throat, while Nick and Sarah-Jane had tucked themselves away in a corner of the bar, laughing and giggling.

The bar was filling up now, a DJ had begun to play a variety of chart hits and people were congregating on the dance floor. The entire world seemed to be having fun, apart from me and this fantastic-looking girl. Caitlin and I spent half an hour or so alternately staring emptily into our drinks and at each other. Then she shrugged, as if she’d come to a major conclusion. ‘I’ll dance with you,’ she said, in a lilting Irish accent I could’ve listened to all night, ‘
but that’s all
.’ Although her voice was soft it carried a hint of menace that unnerved me, but I followed her on to the dance floor.

The DJ was playing any old stuff to get people to dance – Madonna, Michael Jackson, Abba and some cheesy Italian house music – and Caitlin kept going all the way through it. I thought, as she seemed exceptionally cool, that she’d sit down when they played Abba but she carried on. A few times – even though it must have been clear to everyone in the bar that I was dancing with her – guys tried to edge their way in right in front of me and each time she manoeuvred herself deftly back to me.

At about eleven, I’d realised nothing was going to happen between us and was contemplating going back to the apartment to pack my bags in preparation for the flight home. ‘Listen, Caitlin, I’m off,’ I said. ‘It was nice to meet you.’

She smiled at me for the first time that evening, and said, ‘Don’t go.’

No explanation.

No additional information.

Just ‘don’t go.’

So I didn’t.

Soon after that we left the bar, headed down to the beach, sat on the sand and watched the tide come in. It was like she was a completely different person. She apologised for being offhand with me, and explained she’d only come on the holiday under pressure from her friends because she knew they’d spend the whole two weeks ‘chasing lads’ and she wasn’t ‘into all that’. I asked her what she was into and, without pausing for thought, she said, ‘Music.’ She named some bands she liked. I nodded and named some bands I liked. We passed each other’s first round of tests. I named some more bands I liked, more obscure ones, and she did likewise. We passed each other’s second round of tests. Finally I named some obscure tracks by the obscure bands I liked and she did likewise. We passed each other’s final round of tests. And everything changed.

When we got cold, we walked back to the apartment she and her friends were renting. None of the others was there, even though it was three o’clock in the morning. We talked more about highlights in our record collections and a little later we began to talk about ourselves. She told me she was seventeen and had lived her whole life in a place called Sutton on the outskirts of Dublin. Because of the way the education system worked in Ireland, even though she was a year younger than me she was going to university in Dublin that October. I told her about life in London and attempted to make Streatham sound marginally more interesting than it was. She was impressed that I was from London. She had relatives there, she told me, and she planned one day to spend a summer with them.

She made coffee and we sat on the balcony, which overlooked the swimming-pool. On a whim she picked up a camera and said she was going to take a photograph of me. I hated having my photograph taken so I suggested we take one of the two of us. We sat on her bed and I put one arm around her waist and held the camera as far away from us as I could. And with the lens pointing at our faces and laughing like idiots, I took the picture.

I can’t recall how we started kissing. One minute we were talking, the next kissing. Even that was different, though – it wasn’t frantic in the way I was used to, where my eagerness had less to do with passion and more to do with a suspicion that the girl might change her mind. We kissed as if we had all night – which we did.

The following morning when we woke up, we were awkward but comfortable at the same time. Neither of us talked about the night before. I think we both felt that we’d had a perfect night with a perfect person and that the time we’d spent together would lose its perfection if we tried to make any more of it. So we didn’t say anything about swapping addresses or telephone numbers or even that we were unlikely to see each other again. I remember feeling so grown-up as I got into the taxi that took me back to my hotel. Like I was a real man. Like I’d finally made it.

There’s a part of me that isn’t even bothering to question whether the girl who has written the letter is my daughter: that night with Caitlin had been the first time I’d played reproductive roulette but it wasn’t the last. The occasions (all before Izzy) were few and far between: a one-night stand with a girl I’d met at a party in Liverpool, a reunion with an ex-girlfriend in Glasgow, a girl from Austria when I was on holiday in Ibiza.

I wasn’t proud of them.

I knew my actions were stupid at the time.

But this knowledge hadn’t stopped me for a second until now.

I pick up the photograph of the girl who has written to me. Her dark brown corkscrew curls are held away from her face by a blue hairband, and she is wearing small gold hoop earrings, a dark blue hooded top, unzipped, and underneath it a light grey T-shirt. It’s her face, however, that holds my attention. She’s got beautiful light brown skin, but even more fascinating are her features. Initially I’m convinced that I can’t see myself in her but slowly, like a photograph developing in a darkroom, I see flashes I think I recognise: certain aspects of the shape of her face have echoes of my mum when she was younger and I notice her grin – broad-toothed – and I think if only for a moment that perhaps it’s mine.

I decide to keep a tight rein on my thoughts. Worst-case scenarios can wait. First of all I have to deal with the problem at hand: this girl wants to meet me, but do I want to meet her? I weigh up the pros and cons but I know the answer will be the same at the end as it was at the beginning.

Yes. I am curious.

But, no, I do not want to see her because I can’t afford the risks involved.

My main fear is of losing Izzy. After all our time together I know how she will react in any one of a million different situations except this one. I go through all the rational arguments several times. It happened a lifetime ago. I hadn’t known the child existed. No one tried to contact me until now.
It’s not like I can change history, is it?

No matter how I look at it, no matter how liberal, fair-minded or forgiving I think Izzy might be, there’s always the chance that she won’t accept this, that she’ll hate me, that somehow it will signal the end of us. Because after the miscarriage I can’t be sure how something like this might affect her. I tell myself that I’m doing the right thing. I tell myself that I’m protecting her from a truth that would hurt her more than anything in the world.

What I fail to consider is that I’m denying her the chance to make up her own mind. And if I can’t tell the person closest to me, who else can I talk to? I go through potential confidants one by one until the only person left on the list in my mind is the one who’s normally sitting right next to me.

‘So,’ says Fran, as we sit down, beers in hand, in our favourite seats in Hampton’s for an after-work drink, ‘what’s up with you?’

‘Nothing,’ I say.

‘Yeah, right. You’ve been acting strange ever since I came back from the reader make-over shoot. What’s up, Doctor Love?’

I look at Fran carefully, weighing up whether or not to trust her – and whether I have what it takes to betray Izzy like this. Izzy and I never talk about our relationship with anyone else. Never. And it’s not one of those cases where I think Izzy doesn’t gossip with her mates about me when secretly she really does. I know because she told me that sometimes she feels a bit left out when Stella’s telling her stuff about Lee, and Jenny’s going on about Trevor. I told her she could if she was desperate, but she said she didn’t want to. She said our relationship wasn’t like that and I understood what she meant because our relationship
isn’t
like that. I’m the only person in the world she needs to confide in about me and she is the only person in the world I need to confide in about her. Until now. Although it feels wrong wanting to confide in someone I barely know, I need the opinion of someone who doesn’t know me inside out, who doesn’t know me well enough to judge me, who won’t get upset and who will see the situation for what it was and not what it would mean to her. It might sound harsh but it’s true.

‘Listen,’ I begin, ‘it’s serious.’

‘How serious?’

‘You have to promise me that you won’t breathe a single word of this to anyone. And I do mean
anyone
and not just anyone I don’t know because you know how things work in this industry – even if you don’t know them directly you always know someone who knows someone else.’

‘Okay, okay. Anyone would think I’m the world’s biggest gossip when I’m not even
Teen Scene
’s worst gossip. That has to be Linda Bell, the freelance sub-editor, you know the girl with the bright red hair, she’s got a gob on her like no one else. There’s no way I’m that bad—’

‘Fran . . .’

‘Sorry. Go ahead with your secret. It’s safe with me. And don’t worry about how I’m going to react either because I’m pretty unshockable.’

‘This morning I got a letter in my Love Doctor postbag only it wasn’t that kind of letter.’ I hand it to Fran and watch her face as she reads it.

‘I don’t know what to say . . . I mean . . . do you think . . . Is it possible?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Does Izzy know?’

‘No.’

‘And the photos and the details all add up?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you haven’t met her – this girl, I mean?’

‘No.’

‘Are you going to?’

‘No,’ I pause. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’ I pause again. ‘Probably not.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know. Do you think if I knew I’d be telling you all this? It’s a big one, isn’t it? Do I meet this girl or do I try to forget all about her? Do I tell Izzy? If so, when? And how will she take it? I want to tell her, I really do, but I just can’t. I’ve gone over it a million times and the answer is always that she deserves to know but when and how?’

‘This might not be what you want to hear but I’d tell her right now. Believe me. I’m speaking as a woman and I know that if Linden had a kid and I didn’t know about it I’d have to kill him. On the other hand you must be feeling so confused. And who can blame you? It’s a lot to take in, and when you add on the whole thing about telling Izzy, well . . .’ She doesn’t finish her sentence. ‘I suppose it’s not like there’s anything you can do about it now.’ She pauses and picks up the photograph of me and Caitlin. ‘She’s very pretty,’ she says. Then she picks up the photo of Nicola. ‘And
she
is absolutely drop-dead gorgeous.’

I shrug, unsure whether to take credit for Nicola’s good looks. I opt for not. There’s a long and awkward pause.

‘I haven’t told anyone else,’ I say, after a few moments.

Fran smiles. ‘I don’t know whether I should be flattered or not. You’re the one who’s supposed to be the problem solver.’

‘Some agony uncle I’ve turned out to be.’

‘Do you want another drink?’ she says, pointing to my empty beer bottle.

I nod.

‘Same again?’

‘Yeah.’

She disappears to the bar and when she returns her face is animated. ‘I’ve got a question that might help sort things out a bit,’ she says, as she sets two bottles of beer on the table. ‘I know this might sound a bit obvious but are you one hundred per cent sure this girl’s your daughter?’

‘As sure as I can be. It’s too much of a coincidence for her not to be mine.’

‘
If
she’s telling the truth.’

‘Why would she lie?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Fran. ‘Teenage girls can be weird like that. They get things into their head and it’s hard to get them out. You just think of yourself as a jobbing journalist, but to
Teen Scene
readers you’re a celebrity. Your face is in the magazine they spend their pocket money on. You interview the bands they have plastered over their bedroom walls.’

‘She doesn’t seem like that.’

‘Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t. I don’t know her and neither do you. What do you know, though? That you’re the guy in the photograph and that you did sleep with the girl who’s also in it. Those are the facts, Dave. And none of them means for sure that you’re this girl’s dad. There are too many variables. You probably can’t see them because you’re too close.’

‘What about the fact that she looks a little like me?’

Fran picks up the girl’s photograph again and studies it. ‘It doesn’t prove a thing, Dave. If it did people wouldn’t have to go to court to prove paternity cases. They’d just look in the mirror, wouldn’t they?’

‘But how could a thirteen-year-old girl make up a story like this?’

‘Maybe she didn’t,’ says Fran. ‘Maybe it’s not her fault. Her mum might’ve made it up years ago and never bothered changing it. Imagine this: you’re a seventeen-year-old girl. You sleep with some guy and immediately you have regrets because he’s married, or he’s your best friend’s boyfriend or maybe he’s just plain stupid – I don’t know. Everyone wants to know who their father is and you don’t want to tell so what’s the easiest thing to do? Pull out a photograph of some random guy that you had a holiday fling with and have no way of contacting just to get everyone off your back.’