Girl Unknown (31 page)

22. David

The evening began with a change of plan. Caroline, agitated from the moment she returned, complained that it was too hot to cook.

‘Let’s go out to eat instead,’ I suggested.

I was lying in the semi-darkness of our bedroom, waiting for the two Solpadeine I had taken to kick in. Caroline was hastily changing out of the clothes made grimy by the bicycle ride in the heat. ‘I can’t face going back to Saint-Martin,’ she said.

‘Did something happen?’ I asked, made curious by her agitation. Something was clearly bothering her.

‘Nothing happened. I’m just hot,’ she muttered. ‘That bloody fire. God knows what kind of toxins we’re inhaling.’

I got up slowly, heaviness sucking at the inside of my head like a wet cloth. ‘Have you got anything else I can take for a headache?’

She rummaged in her bag before handing me a sachet of white tablets. Normally I scoffed at her homeopathic remedies, but the headache had been building all day, blurring my thoughts and making me feel clammy. It had eased after the lunchtime wine, but now that it was wearing off, the pain had roared back to life.

‘I’ll ring the bistro in the village. I’m sure they’ll have
a table free,’ I told her, slipping two pills under my tongue, then went downstairs to make the call.

The house was quiet, but for the sounds of shuffling preparation coming from behind closed doors, the others having retreated to their rooms to dress for dinner. Passing Zoë and Chris’s room, I heard him say: ‘What about the little black number?’

Zoë’s reply sounded unhappy: ‘No. I don’t think so.’

I didn’t linger, still haunted by what I had overheard of their lovemaking earlier that day. In the kitchen, Caroline’s half-hearted start at dinner sat forlorn and abandoned on the table. I took my phone and went into the quiet of Alan’s study, rang the bistro and booked a table – indoors, because of the smoke still hanging in the air – then lay on the couch and closed my eyes.

Caroline’s remedy was stronger than I’d thought it might be, pulling me under into a troubled sleep. I was caught in the tangle of a strange dream when I heard someone say, ‘Dad?
Dad!
’ in an urgent tone, and felt a pulling at my sleeve. Opening my eyes I saw Holly, gazing anxiously at me from behind her glasses. In her hand was a piece of paper.

‘What is it?’ I asked, pulling myself into a sitting position, a groggy feeling in my head, like I was under water.

‘I found this.’ She held up the piece of paper, still watching me with those big worried eyes.

I saw the blue and white insignia of the letterhead, and recognized it immediately. Panic crawled into my throat. ‘Hang on, Holly. I can explain.’

‘It says, “Test results are inconclusive.” ’ She pronounced the words carefully, stressing each vowel, making it sound like a verdict of guilt or a fatal diagnosis of some sort.

My thoughts teemed with confusion. Where had she found it? I was sure I had left the letter, along with the other information on DNA testing, in my desk at the university.

‘Robbie and I were playing Scrabble. We needed a page to keep score. Mum said there was paper here on the desk.’

She pointed to the old mahogany bureau, a sheaf of my documents in a blue folder alongside some journals and books. The letter from the clinic must have been slipped in among them. Holly was rattled and upset. I knew I had to act quickly, and carefully. ‘Listen, sweetheart, it’s not what you think.’

‘It says she’s not our sister.’

‘No, that’s not what it says.’

‘It is.’

‘No.’ Her panic was winding me up when I needed to stay calm. ‘All it says is that the samples they were given proved insufficient to make a match.’

‘But she might not be our sister,’ Holly said, stubbornly holding her position.

‘Look, love, Zoë is your sister. I know that for sure.’

‘How?’

‘I just do,’ I said, my voice rising a little, tetchiness creeping into it. I was in no fit state for this conversation and wished I’d destroyed the damn letter instead of keeping it. ‘To be honest,’ I told her, ‘I don’t know why I even did the test. It was foolish of me.’

‘You mustn’t have believed her,’ Holly stated shrewdly.

‘It was a shock, when I found out. But once the shock wore off, I saw plainly that she was telling the truth.’

‘Does Mum know about this?’ she asked. She was still holding on to the letter. I wanted to take it back from her but the way she was clutching it told me she wouldn’t relinquish it easily.

‘She knows about the test,’ I said.

‘She does? That it was inconclusive?’ Holly sounded disbelieving, and rightly so. She knew her mother well.

‘I know it looks strange, sweetheart,’ I said, deflecting her question. ‘I know it’s a fright to come across a document like this, but what you’ve got to understand is that it is only one result.’

‘But it’s inconclusive, Dad. That means she could be anyone.’

‘It’s very common for these tests to come back inconclusive.’

‘She doesn’t feel like my sister,’ she told me. ‘She feels like a stranger. Like she doesn’t belong.’

Upstairs, I heard a door opening, a voice on the landing.

‘Listen, Holly, you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone else.’

‘Why not? Not telling anyone else makes it sound like a secret.’

‘You don’t have the full facts, Holly. If you’d let me explain –’

‘But why does it have to be a secret? That doesn’t seem right.’

‘Please stop calling it a secret,’ I said, as calmly as I could. She sounded a little frantic and my own mind was
racing. ‘It’s not a secret. It’s just that I don’t want everybody to know about this piece of paper because it’s meaningless in the great scheme of things.’

As if to prove my point, I took the document from her hands and scrunched it into a ball, tossing it into the grate. She followed it with her eyes, her brow creasing with thought.

‘Now listen, Holly. It’s really important that we don’t upset everyone else by bringing it up,’ I said, taking her shoulders and brushing the hair from her eyes. As reassuringly as I could, I said: ‘It’s not the time or place, okay, sweetheart?’

She didn’t say anything, but continued to gaze at the ball of paper in the grate.

‘You and I can sit down later and have a proper chat about it, I promise.’ Outside, I could hear Caroline calling to the others.

‘It’s our birthday, remember?’ I said, smiling, trying to chivvy her out of her mood.

‘Fine,’ she said, turning towards the door, but I felt her stubbornness nonetheless and knew she hadn’t given in. My heart was hammering from the encounter.

‘We’re all set,’ Caroline said, startling me. I was so lost in my own catapulting thoughts, I hadn’t noticed her head poking around the door. ‘Are you ready?’

‘Sure,’ I said, flustered but trying to mask it with busyness as I located my wallet and phone, and put them into my pockets. It was not until we were outside and halfway down the street that I remembered the letter pressed into a ball and left lying in the grate.

On the stroll down to the village square, our group separated, Holly and Caroline hanging back while the rest of us went on ahead. Zoë, wearing a blue dress and make-up, linked my arm as we walked. We talked about the day, the fire and the smoke, but my mind was elsewhere. I kept thinking about Holly, trailing behind with Caroline – of the new knowledge she possessed. Once or twice I glanced back at them, but the narrow streets were darker than usual, the shadow of smoke making the air gloomy. I couldn’t tell if they were talking, let alone make out their expressions.

At the bistro, the tables outside were empty. For once, all the diners were indoors, cocooned against whatever poisons infused the air. Our table was at the back, and we made our way through the crowded room. The noise level was high beneath the stringed bulbs that swung across the ceiling, the smell of smoke already fading in memory, replaced by the scent of garlic sautéed in butter. At the next table, a group of young men – all ripped jeans and messy hairstyles – were enjoying a raucous meal. They glanced up at us as we took our seats, Zoë and I sitting alongside each other, our backs to the wall, Robbie and Chris opposite.

Things began to go awry when the others arrived. Holly was staring at Zoë. ‘You can’t sit there,’ she said.

Zoë laughed, confused.

‘We sit together,’ Holly went on, ‘me and Dad, on our birthday.’ Her voice was cold.

‘Oh.’ Zoë began to get up.

I put a hand to her arm to stop her. ‘Stay where you are, Zoë. Hols, why don’t you sit here?’ I indicated the seat
next to me at the top of the table. ‘That way you’ll still be next to me.’

A frown came over Holly’s face.

‘It’s not the same,’ she said quietly.

‘Sorry, Zoë,’ Caroline intervened firmly. ‘A family tradition, you understand.’

‘Of course,’ she said, getting to her feet, a little flustered.

‘Here, come and sit by me,’ Chris offered, patting the seat at the bottom of the table but Caroline had already put her scarf on the back of it.

‘Caroline’s sitting there,’ Zoë said in a flat voice, and took the seat at the top of the table.

One of the guys beside us glanced over.

Holly sat in against me. Despite her small triumph, she did not look pleased.

‘How about some champagne?’ Chris suggested, seeking to lift the mood that had settled over the table. He ordered a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and I wondered, briefly, whether he was planning to pay for it. Diamond rings, a foreign holiday, eating out – did Susannah know about this, I wondered? And would she ultimately be footing the bill for Chris’s generosity? The champagne, however, was a welcome distraction, all that faffing with corks and glasses, drawing attention away from Holly’s brittle mood, Zoë’s obvious hurt.

‘Can I have some?’ Robbie asked me.

‘Go on then. Just this once.’

We raised our glasses to the birthdays, and turned our attention to the menu. There was some commotion as we gave our orders and baskets of bread arrived, a collective hunger voicing itself in the clatter of cutlery. I wish I
could say that I became relaxed, that my fear over Holly’s new knowledge subsided, that the evening passed off peacefully, but that was not the case. The first signal that Holly wouldn’t let the matter go came when Zoë presented her half-sister with a birthday gift.

‘I hope you like it,’ she said, handing her a small grey box wrapped in a pink diaphanous ribbon, a sprig of dried flowers caught in the bow.

‘Oh, thanks,’ Holly said stiffly.

Inside the box was a bracelet – little shards of coloured glass strung together, a delicate thing in shades of lilac and purple.

‘I found it in a little shop near the harbour in Saint-Martin, when you weren’t looking. Aren’t you going to try it on?’

‘Maybe later.’

An uncomfortable silence stretched across the table. I felt annoyed at Holly’s rudeness, even though I knew where it stemmed from.

‘Say thank you,’ I told her, in a forceful whisper.

Defiance in her eyes. For the briefest of moments, I wasn’t sure what she would say. ‘Thank you, Zoë,’ she said, glancing across at her. ‘You really shouldn’t have gone to the trouble.’

‘No trouble.’ Zoë’s voice had become small. After a moment, she drained her glass and sat back, casting her gaze around the restaurant. One of the guys at the next table – the same guy as before – looked over. The incident with the bracelet had disappointed her, I could see. The little box sat forlornly on its side, forgotten beneath the bread basket.

Our food arrived, and we began to eat, our conversation naturally turning to the events of the day Holly was born, reliving the details – reinforcing family mythology, I suppose. Chris, unaware of his fiancée’s growing sullenness, her attention drifting to the next table, was an eager listener.

‘So tell me, Caroline,’ he said, ‘this time twelve years ago, were you screaming your head off in the delivery ward?’

‘Not a bit,’ she answered, shooting Holly a smile. ‘Easiest birth ever.’

‘Bollox.’

‘I’m telling you, it’s true. Robbie, on the other hand, was a complete nightmare.’

I kicked him playfully under the table. ‘Difficult from the start, weren’t you, son?’

‘Ha-ha,’ he replied. Perhaps it was the champagne, but he seemed to have perked up a little, leaning into the table to be part of the conversation.

‘Holly came so quickly,’ Caroline went on, ‘I barely made it up on to the bed. I just breathed her out.’

Holly stirred with pleasure – she loved this story.

‘Tell them about the caul,’ I said.

‘Holly was born with the caul unbroken.’

‘What’s that?’ Chris asked.

‘It’s a membrane that covers the baby’s face and head in the womb. It tears during childbirth, except in rare instances, and in Holly’s case it was unbroken.’

‘They say it brings luck to the child,’ I said, putting my arm around Holly’s shoulders. ‘Isn’t that right, sweetheart? Or in some countries they believe the child has second sight.’

‘Do you, Holly?’ Chris screwed up his eyes and peered closely at her.

She blushed beneath his scrutiny, and shook her head.

‘One of the midwives told us that sailors often use a caul as a talisman against drowning,’ Caroline continued. ‘She asked us if we wanted to keep it or even sell it.’

‘Gross!’ Robbie cried.

‘It was David’s birthday and I’d left his present at home, so I turned to him and said, “There you go, love. That’s your present.” ’

‘Please, Mum. TMI,’ Robbie said.

‘My mother kept my umbilical cord,’ Chris volunteered, sending Robbie into fresh groans of revulsion. ‘I found it after she died, this dry, shrivelled thing in a box. It looked a bit like tripe.’

I placed my knife and fork on the empty plate and laughed. ‘Now that is gross,’ I said. My headache had lifted – the champagne, the wine that had followed, the food, they had all gone some way to relieving the pressure.

‘We kept the hospital bracelets the children wore, didn’t we, Caroline?’ I said. ‘Tiny little things – they barely fit around my finger. To think that they were once around your wrist, Robbie, and your ankle, Hols.’