Girl Unknown (26 page)

‘I’m telling you, David, I never signed for it.’

‘It was your signature,’ I insisted.

We rowed, and she accused me of not believing her, of not trusting her.

But I couldn’t let it go, my temper flaring. ‘Well, what did happen? If you didn’t sign for it, who did?’

I asked Robbie and Holly, who both denied any knowledge of the letter.

‘It must have been Zoë,’ Caroline said, and I turned away from her, enraged.

‘For God’s sake,’ I muttered. ‘Everything is her fault,
according to you. Why on earth would she sign your name?’

‘Because that’s what she’s like, David. You know it, and I do too. She’s capricious, destructive, cruel.’

We rowed some more, but it was pointless. Whoever’s fault it was, the damage had been done.

I waited for an email, a letter, a phone call, but there was nothing.

In the meantime, my mood plummeted. I felt loneliness come over me – as if, until then, I hadn’t realized how important my mother’s presence in my life had been. She had been taken from me, and so had Zoë. It was a desperate week, one in which the hope for promotion did not diminish but, if anything, heightened. As if the professional advancement could somehow counteract the losses I had suffered personally. To say I was unsettled when Alan finally called me into his office is probably something of an understatement.

‘I wanted to follow up with you on your interview,’ he said. ‘An official communiqué will follow, but I’m sorry to say that this time you have been unsuccessful.’

I sat down. The energy seeped out of me. The extra committee work, the substitute teaching, the journalism and research, all for naught. I couldn’t help thinking it had been a colossal waste of time.

For Alan to talk to me like that was professional courtesy. But, with the bitter taste of defeat in my mouth, I explained to him how surprised I was about the interview date change, and that I had not received official notice. He told me rather matter-of-factly that these
things happen all the time, that the letter had been sent, and that all of the other candidates had appeared, and, besides, he insisted firmly, I had not missed the interview.

I thought again of what might have happened to the letter, Caroline’s accusations creeping into my head. Had Zoë signed for it, then secreted it in her room, shredding it before she left? Laughing at me. Making a fool of me yet again. Her cruelty echoed and added to how Linda had left me in the dark all those years ago – some inexplicable disdain had been handed down from one generation to the next.

‘David, I know it has been a difficult time for you.’ The line between mentor and manager was sometimes a blurred one with Alan. He invited you into his confidence, but I was never sure whether it was for professional motives or personal altruism. It occurred to me that maybe he didn’t know the difference. ‘My condolences again for the passing of your mother.’

I thanked him.

‘This business with your new-found daughter, it must be taxing, not to mention distracting.’

‘It’s not entirely pertinent to whether I got the job or not. You know that,’ I said, noticing the deep grooves of age on his forehead.

‘The panel was very impressed with your showing.’

I felt like saying, ‘It doesn’t matter. I wasn’t good enough. No need to sugar-coat the truth.’

‘It’s also beholden on me to tell you that they have selected Dr McCormack for the position of professor.’

Anyone but him.

‘We realize that you’ll be disappointed, but for the moment, can I say that your research outputs are strong, teaching and learning are also strong …’

‘Why didn’t I get it?’ I asked, although I had a good idea of the answer – I was playing along with this charade of feedback. ‘You can be honest with me.’

Alan was back at the window. A flock of seagulls swooped by. Behind them, I could see the two red and white Pigeon House chimney stacks at Poolbeg.

‘We’re relying on anyone hoping to gain the professorial grade to secure a minimum of external funding each year …’

‘McCormack is bringing in more than I am?’

‘In a word, yes. I want this to be an ongoing conversation. We don’t have to hash out the whys and wherefores right now.’

‘How much?’

‘David, it’s not the time for those questions, or for disclosing actual figures.’

‘You know I’ve been in talks with the Royal Historical Society, who are in the process of securing commercial funding …’

‘How is Caroline? How are the kids?’ He hadn’t disguised his desire to sidetrack me.

I lied: ‘They’re all good, Alan. Tip-top.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he said, sounding utterly unconvinced. ‘Perhaps you should get away. Take a break.’

‘I took a week off after the radio interview.’

‘I mean a holiday,’ Alan said, trying to sound upbeat, the words scraping across his throat in a husky cough. ‘A proper one. Abroad.’

Was the department trying to sideline me, to get me out of the way? ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ I said.

‘I have a place in France,’ Alan said. ‘A villa on Île de Ré, not far from La Rochelle. Small but comfortable – a winding road that brings you down to a very quaint village. It’s a place of tranquillity.’

‘It sounds idyllic but –’

‘There’s enough room for you to bring the family … It’s really rather lovely.’

‘That’s very kind of you, Alan, really, but I couldn’t …’

He suggested July. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘just consider it.’

There was no point in returning to my office, no point even in remaining on campus. As I packed my bag and locked the door to my office, I thought that, for the first time in my life, the university seemed hostile to me. For years I had been stitched up in the cocoon of academic life, blanketed by the security of tenure, but now, as I walked through the corridors with their tiled floors and characterless breeze-block walls, I felt the hardness of every surface, the smugness of the cliques in their cosy coffee groups. It was like a giant country club that had just refused me membership. What had once seemed a friendly, liberal environment now seemed elitist, unforgiving, archaic.

I had no intention of going home. The thought of hanging around an empty house waiting for Caroline to get back so I could give her my bad news just filled me with despair. Instead I cycled into the Dublin Mountains and the Blue Light, where I sat with a pint of Guinness and gazed out over the city, bathed as it was in a great burst of sunshine that had arrived without warning on that May day.

I was exhausted, and on edge. I felt the torpor of my mother’s death in my limbs. Everything was falling apart. The university had rejected me. My wife was barely speaking to me. I had lost the knack of communicating with my children. And now there was that other daughter – a grandchild my mother had never known – who, despite my best efforts, I had somehow managed to push away.

I drank another pint, and decided about France. Alan was right. I needed to get away. I needed to sort things out, and gain some perspective. I finished my drink and free-wheeled home to tell Caroline, but as soon as I came into the hallway and rested my bike against the stairs, I knew all was not well. I heard her through the open kitchen door. She was crying.

‘What is it?’ I asked, and she looked up from where she sat at the counter, a glass of wine in front of her, tissues scattered on the counter.

The skin around her nose and upper lip was red, as if she had been crying for some time. A lurching feeling came over me.
The children
. She must have seen the panic in my eye: ‘No, it’s not that. They’re fine.’

My heartbeat calmed a little. I approached her nervously. Whatever it was, I wasn’t sure I had the energy for it. Already I was assailed by the feeling that I was somehow at the root of her misery.

‘It’s everything else,’ she said.

Just saying those three words seemed to threaten what little composure she had summoned. She took a deep sip of wine. ‘I’m forty-one years old,’ she said quietly, ‘and on the surface of it, my life is just fine. I’m married with two
wonderful children, a comfortable home, friends. So why do I feel utterly useless? Completely expendable?’

Her job, I thought. Of course: today was her last day. I heard the bitterness in her voice, as if she had been conducting a kind of accounting of her life, looking over her achievements with a critical eye, withdrawing from what she had seen.

‘I don’t seem qualified to do anything. I’m at the mercy of my husband, a kept woman.’ She enunciated the words in a way that brought home to me the dangerousness of her mood. ‘And my husband hardly speaks to me. Can barely stand to be in the same room with me, in fact.’

‘That’s not true, Caroline.’

‘Isn’t it? I can’t even remember the last time we made love.’

I sat down so that we were facing each other.

Her expression was flat and unreadable. She took me in as if I were a stranger. ‘I haven’t a clue what you’re thinking any more, David.’

It was not acrimonious, the way she said it. It was not an accusation. It was said more out of exhaustion than anything else – a last-straw relinquishment, a reluctant capitulation – and despite my earlier thoughts in the same direction, I felt a growing sense of panic. It felt as if she had almost surrendered, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t realized she had been fighting so strongly, or for so long, for herself and for us.

It might not have been the right time, but I told her then about being turned down for the professorship.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

I couldn’t help thinking that if I had received the
letter, with the revised date and time, it might have changed the outcome. I didn’t need to say as much to Caroline. It was as if she could read my mind: ‘We have to do something, David. She’s pulling us apart. Our family, our marriage.’

‘You mean Zoë?’

‘You don’t actually think I hurt her, pushed her against a wall, like she said?’

‘No,’ I answered truthfully.

‘She scares me.’ She took my hands.

‘Scares you?’

‘All the lies, all the deception … I really think she’s out to destroy us.’

I almost said that her words were too strong, but I didn’t: a part of me agreed with her.

‘We have to do something, David.’

‘We will,’ I said, trying to reassure her. I lifted my wife’s hands to my lips and told her everything was going to be okay. I told her about Alan’s offer of the villa in France: it would be a chance not only to get away from the disappointments and confusion of life at home, but an opportunity to address, without the obstacle of Zoë’s presence and probable intervention, all the marital difficulty we had found ourselves in. Caroline seemed genuinely relieved, and over the coming weeks, our discussions returned again and again to France, the tickets and travel, the villa and what would be, we hoped, time to reconcile our differences, a chance to heal, a holiday to remember.

And all the while we talked about it, I felt, beneath my excitement, an undercurrent of uncertainty. A month had passed since Zoë had left and in that time I hadn’t heard
a word from her – not a phone call or a text – let alone seen her. As the days slipped towards summer and our holiday grew close, I began to realize, with a sadness I had to keep hidden, that I had lost her. And whenever the realization crept over me, another thought would surface:
perhaps she isn’t my daughter.
I had kept the inconclusive test results to myself and even though I told myself they didn’t prove anything, secretly they bothered me. From time to time, I thought about telling Caroline. But as the days slipped towards summer and our holiday grew close, I kept the information to myself, protecting her, or so I believed. Reasoning with myself that it didn’t change anything and what harm could it possibly do to keep it from her?

Part Three

19. Caroline

The sun was beginning its splendid descent when we crossed the long stretch of bridge to Île de Ré. We had journeyed overnight by ferry to Cherbourg and spent the day in the car, making our way steadily south. By the time we reached the island and found the village of Loix, the air had grown cooler and the sky was starting to turn pink. The house lay on the outskirts of the village, tucked down a small alleyway too narrow for the car to navigate, so we parked by a square, each of us taking a piece of luggage, and walked the rest of the way.

The villa, like its neighbours, was low and squat, with whitewashed walls, a terracotta roof, and olive-green shutters closed over the windows. A six-foot-high perimeter wall masked it from view, but once through the wrought-iron gates, we found ourselves in a pretty courtyard lined with bursts of lavender. A heavy burden of tangled clematis hung low over the front door. The humble exterior masked a warren-like tumble of rooms, and narrow, twisting staircases rose to hidden bedrooms tucked away in the attic. The floors were covered with slate tiles and it was a relief to kick off my shoes and feel the coolness beneath the soles of my hot feet. Robbie and Holly, having dumped their bags at the door, had gone ahead of us, and I could hear the excitement in their voices at each new discovery.