Girl Unknown (29 page)

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.

‘Hey there, Birthday Buddy,’ I said, smiling down at her.

‘Hi, Dad.’

She made no move to get out, just stayed there swishing around.

‘What’s it feel like to be twelve?’

‘It’s okay,’ she said, impervious to my attempts at good humour. ‘Did Mum tell you about the bridge?’

‘She did.’

‘It means we can’t go to La Rochelle.’

‘I know, sweetheart. We’ll do something else instead.’

‘Okay.’

Her heart had been set on a day in the city. Caroline had promised to take her shopping and we were going to have lunch, the four of us, in a swanky restaurant. In the wake of such disappointment, Holly was entitled to have a little sulk, I supposed.

‘Your mum’s been to the market. She’s bought all manner of things. We’re going to have quite the birthday feast.’

Taking her glasses from her towel, she put them on and said: ‘I suppose
she
’ll be there.’

She, meaning Zoë.

‘I expect she will be,’ I said gently, ‘and Chris.’ I wanted to be sensitive to her mood but had to be firm too. It wasn’t as if I was thrilled at the prospect either.

‘Mum hates her,’ she told me.

The word struck me like a physical object. ‘That’s a bit strong, Holly.’

‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘I do too.’

The blankness of her voice, the way she said the words so tonelessly, with such sincerity, was chilling.

I didn’t say anything, just watched as she put her palms down on the poolside terrace and pulled herself out of the water. She reached for her towel and shook it out. She was still my little girl. I opened out my arms to her. ‘Birthday hug?’

‘I’m all wet, Dad,’ she told me, turning away so she could dry herself.

The sun was hitting the water behind her, the shimmering light blinding. Her body was silhouetted against it and I saw, with sad surprise, the buds of new breasts beneath her swimsuit that I hadn’t noticed until now. This change in her, coupled with her dismissal of my embrace, tugged sharply at my emotions, and I felt the shock of imminent tears. This was my first birthday without my mother. Somehow Holly’s coldness and the understanding that she was shutting down the physical affection between us – a natural side-effect of adolescence, I knew, but still – drew out my grief in a new and unexpected way. The light bouncing off the pool made my head hurt. The heaviness I had felt in the air when I first awoke no longer seemed atmospheric. Rather, it had
moved inside my head – an inner pressure pushing outward against the boundary of my skull.

Holly went inside, and I stood there, feeling wobbly, an unbidden thought entering my brain:
What if Linda had told me?
A dangerous thought. It conjured up images of a different life, a different holiday, a different wife – Linda in the kitchen now chopping fruit, rather than Caroline. A blonde version of Holly going indoors to dry off, a different son lounging upstairs in bed. And Zoë – how differently might she have turned out had her natural parents stayed together? Physically the same, but might she have been less mercurial, more grounded and together? In that scenario, I had no doubt that the insides of her arms would be free of scars, and there would be no middle-aged man sharing her bed.

And what about me? How different might I have been? I shied away from the thought, uncomfortable with the gnawing doubt it brought on. I slipped back inside, past the kitchen where Caroline was rinsing a salad. Her back was to me and I noticed the tension in her shoulders, a tightness that had come on overnight. Holly and Chris had disappeared, and as I climbed the stairs, I felt the quietness of the house all around me.

The children’s door was closed. I had the impression that the room was empty. Walking past Chris and Zoë’s, I heard low whispering. At least, I’d thought it was whispering. But as I lingered I realized that what I was hearing was not language but the fluency of movement. A subdued grappling, the tangle of sliding limbs, a moan so hushed I hardly heard it.

Recoiling, I hurried down the corridor to my bedroom,
the heaviness bursting in my head. I closed the shutters and lay down for a long time. But even though my body was present in the room, my mind was elsewhere. It was back down the corridor, hiding in a corner, scared and watchful in the darkness as they twisted and writhed together.

21. Caroline

Because of the fire we couldn’t leave. Even though we couldn’t see leaping flames or billowing plumes of smoke, the air above us became infused with the smell of it, as the day progressed and news reports told of a growing inferno. As our planned day-trip to La Rochelle was cancelled, I suggested we take the bikes and cycle along the paths that crisscrossed the salt flats leading to Saint-Martin-de-Ré. There were plenty of shops, though mainly of the tourist variety, but still, I was hopeful of finding something to please Holly. It bothered me when the others pounced on my suggestion, Chris and Zoë making a quick run to the marketplace to rent bikes. But it was part of the weirdness of the day, brought on by the haze of smoke, the heavy heat pressing down on us, so it didn’t matter. Torpor suppressed my fear, making me disinterested. It was just one day, I told myself. We could get through it.

We were sitting around on the sun-loungers, waiting for David to come downstairs so we could leave, when Chris said: ‘So, July, the eighth. What does that make you, Holly – Cancer or Leo?’

‘Cancer,’ she answered quietly.

The sun was rising high in the sky and I wanted David to hurry, the boundless heat making me restless.

‘What about you, Robbie?’ Chris asked, striving against the collective silence.

Robbie didn’t answer. He didn’t have it in him to be conversational that day. He was sitting halfway along the diving board, his feet dangling into the water. Since the lovers’ arrival the night before, he had grown sullen, hardly speaking apart from the odd grudging reply when a question was put to him. If either Zoë or Chris was aware of his unhappiness, they hid it well, the two of them perched on the sun-lounger opposite me, Chris’s hand resting on her thigh.

‘Robbie’s a Leo,’ I answered in his stead.

‘Like myself,’ Chris said. ‘Not that I believe in any of that astrology stuff.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘There are personality traits common to David and Holly.’

‘That’s because they’re father and daughter, not because they have the same star-sign.’

‘What about you, Zoë?’

‘I’m Pisces.’

‘What’re they like?’ I asked, keeping up the veneer of civility. I already knew what she was like.

‘Spiritual, intuitive. The chameleons of the Zodiac.’

‘Chameleons?’

‘Yes, we’re very adaptable. And our inner lives are important to us. Our secrets and dreams.’

Her expression was masked by large sunglasses; she might have been staring at me mockingly or with an empty gaze.

‘In other words,’ said Chris, winking at me, ‘they have a hard time distinguishing fact from fiction.’

‘We’re watery types too,’ she continued, ignoring the jibe. ‘Just like Cancerians. Which makes us excellent swimmers.’

Robbie shot her a sidelong glance. ‘You can’t be a good
swimmer just because of your birthday.’ His expression, though guarded, seemed quietly furious.

‘Our sign is symbolized by fish,’ she answered coolly.

‘So what? You’re a better swimmer than me just because you’re a Pisces?’

Unfazed, she smiled sweetly: ‘One way to find out.’

Instantly rising to the challenge, Robbie got to his feet.

‘No, Robbie,’ I said. ‘We need to go.’

He ignored me, pulling the T-shirt over his head as he padded back along the board to the pool’s edge. Zoë looked on with amusement although there was something mean about her smile, the corners of her mouth turning up in hard edges.

‘Well?’ he demanded of her. Then, without waiting, he marched to the far end of the pool.

She rose slowly from the sun-lounger, removing her sunglasses with a deliberate air and placing them carefully on the table. In a single movement, she reached down for the hem of her dress and pulled it up over her head, revealing a small mint-green bikini with orange laces tied at the back of her neck and below each hip.

Chris grinned. ‘Here she goes!’ he said, watching as she stepped to the water’s edge. It was not pride or amusement I heard in his voice, but nerves.

I took in the curve of her hip, the crevice running the length of her spine. Shoulder-blades pronounced like wings, she was so thin. Her breasts were small but shapely, neatly cupped by the bikini. Narrow thighs, rounded calves tapering to narrow ankles. Her skin was smooth and lightly tanned, unblemished apart from a large mole the size of a one-euro coin just above her knee.

I was transfixed by her body and held by Robbie’s expression as she took her place beside him. Bare-chested, his shoulders wide and square, his waist and legs skinny, there was something fierce about him, as if the challenge thrown down was far more than just a race. They stood at the lip of the pool, the sparkling water a backdrop to their lithe youthful bodies, and I felt a tug of sadness I couldn’t explain or understand.

Robbie was first to break the water. Harnessing the power in those newly widened shoulders, he charged ahead, Zoë’s strokes even and patient as she glided in the wake of all that froth and foam. They reached the end, tipped the side and turned back. The heat had sucked the life from my own limbs and I could see that once the first burst of his energy had been used up, Robbie was flagging, his strokes becoming more erratic, while Zoë continued calmly. When he reached the end first, he drew himself up, ready to express his triumph, but instead, as she caught up, she simply tipped the lip of the pool, then swerved in the water, kicking off for another lap. The race was not done yet.

He shouted: ‘Hey!’ then plunged after her, messy strokes, like an excited puppy, but she had found her groove, strong and steady. She swam with confidence, never looking back to check his progress, her face turning in the water, her mouth an O taking in air, clearly in control as she tipped the end and turned back for the final lap.

Reaching the finish, she didn’t pause to raise her arms in triumph, or look back at her opponent. Instead, she pulled herself out of the pool, wringing out her hair, her face expressionless.

‘Not fair!’ Robbie shouted, when he reached the end. Standing in the water, he thrashed the surface with his hands in frustration. ‘You never said two laps! I won that!’

She paused, and I saw the way she turned back to the edge of the pool, gazing down at him, towering and imperious. I watched my son looking up at her, the wet bikini gripping her breasts, the outline of two sharp nipples, water dripping from the ends of her hair and between her legs. There was another challenge in the way she stood looking down at him, this one different from the last. Her face was lost from view, but I saw his – the expression changing from outrage to something softer, more secret. He kept looking up at her. I watched as his hand emerged from the water and realized he was reaching out to clasp her ankle.

I don’t know what he had in mind, but something within me reared up against it, seized by a cold revulsion. Don’t touch her, I thought. Please don’t.

She took a step backwards and his hand fell down into the water. Turning from us, she stalked towards the house. Robbie launched himself back into the water, swimming away from us and from his own humiliation. David emerged on to the terrace.