Girl Unknown (38 page)

Authors: Karen Perry

The days pass and begin to form a pattern. They take turns visiting Robbie, in the same way they alternate the cooking. Rain lashes the island, keeping them indoors, and there is something comforting about being holed up with the fire lit, playing Scrabble, reading, talking. Slowly, a form of normality returns, and David feels himself relaxing into the company of his wife and daughter. In the months he was alone in this house he was often troubled by the notion that she was with him still – Zoë. In the hours of the night, when sleep failed to come, his thoughts would turn to her, remembering how she was on that last day. Sometimes, alone in the house, chopping onions in the kitchen, or perusing one of Alan’s books in the study, he thought he could hear the whisper of her voice or the pad of her footstep and would turn to survey the room, half expecting to see her standing there, her head to one side, biting down on a mischievous smile that kept surfacing, as if it has all been an elaborate joke. Zoë, his daughter. He is certain of it now. Samples taken at the autopsy, her DNA clearly matched to his. It is beyond doubt, and there is some comfort to be taken from that.

He grieves for her all the same – a deep, sonorous grief. She had been in his life for less than a year, yet his sorrow at her death is so much deeper – it’s like she was always there, part of the meat and bones of him.

Some good news. They learn that the judge presiding over Robbie’s case has given leave for him to be released temporarily for Christmas. David and Caroline must surrender their passports for the duration, and there are
various rules they must abide by. The mood in the house changes, becoming almost celebratory. Caroline is giddy with excitement, and channels it into preparations for Christmas, shopping and cooking with zeal, readying the house for her son’s return. Two days is all they will have with him but they are grateful for that.

The rain eases off, although a chill wind remains. It is the day before Robbie’s release, and David suggests to Holly that they take the bikes out and cycle towards Saint-Martin. He doubts that the oyster bar is still open, but he needs to get out into the fresh air, cooped up inside the house for too long. He senses the same claustrophobia in Holly. Caroline’s excitement is too large for the small rooms, making them feel cramped, and he has seen the tension in his daughter’s face, despite her own gladness at her brother’s homecoming. It crosses his mind that all this obvious fuss over Robbie might be making Holly feel she has become invisible to them.

The bikes feel stiff from lack of use, but still David and Holly are glad to be outdoors, cycling beyond the village, through the fields towards the harbour where they plan to take the coastal path that runs along the north-west of the island. In the summer, these paths are busy with cyclists, tourists with carriages behind their bicycles like chariots, small children peeping out. Today, the path is deserted – David and Holly are the only people present. They reach the harbour, the walls dulled now that the summer sun has deserted them, and continue on over the flooded plains, the reeds growing high around them. They hear the lonely call of an occasional corncrake and pass a flock of geese idling in the water where there had
once been a sailing school. The farms look deserted, the ground asleep. In winter the population of the island shrinks considerably, and David feels it now as they pedal past empty houses, closed shops. The wind is against them, and it is hard work pressing forward. In places the path is narrow with steep drops to the water on either side. A sudden gust makes his heart clench with fright as Holly wobbles on her bike. She puts out a foot to steady herself, then stops and turns to look at him.

‘Do you want to go back?’ he asks, and she nods, tiredness etched into her features.

They turn their bikes around, and walk back, side by side, the bicycles between them. David wonders whether Robbie might come for a cycle in the days that he’s home. He can’t imagine that his son gets much opportunity for exercise – certainly not vigorous outdoor exercise like this. He says as much to Holly and she agrees. Her tone is muted, but David feels his excitement at the prospect of Robbie’s imminent return and talks at length of his plans for those two days – what they might do. Holly listens without offering any opinions of her own.

They are nearing the harbour when a sudden movement in the water catches David’s eye. He stops.

‘Look,’ he says to Holly.

They stand together and watch the giant bird rise out of the reeds, its wings spreading as it takes to the air. The great blue heron – the one David has spotted on his walks a couple of times before. He watches it rise, beating hard against the biting wind. ‘Look at it,’ he says in admiration. ‘Isn’t it magnificent?’

For some reason, the bird rising like that, so proudly,
makes him think of Zoë. But Holly isn’t looking at the heron. She is looking at him, perfectly calm and yet there is a flash of alarm in her eye.

‘What is it?’ he asks.

Still she looks. He realizes her silence, which he had read as tension, is actually something else. He can see now that she has been building up to something – that she has been building up to it for months – waiting for the right moment to get him alone to tell him. And now here they are in this deserted place, nothing around them but land and water and the vast swathe of metallic grey sky.

‘I saw you,’ she says.

Her voice is low, calm. He hears the accusation in it.

‘What are you talking about, sweetheart?’

‘With her. With Zoë. After Chris left.’

Her eyes are dark and unblinking. He feels the hardness of her stare.

‘I saw you through the window. You were kissing her.’

Something is building inside him, the slow beat of the heron’s wings reverberating in his inner ear. He thinks again of the confusion on that night, the struggle within, how Linda came alive for him in that moment. The knowledge of what his daughter witnessed, brief as it was, fills him with shame. He offers no defence – and the reason he does this is the realization that he is nearing the truth. The hard kernel is within reach.

‘I told Robbie,’ she says. ‘I told him what I saw. What you did. How disgusting it was.’

Her words sear through him.

‘Holly …’

‘I told him …’

‘It’s not your fault,’ David says. He thinks of all the months she has carried the knowledge and guilt of what she had done. She seems so self-possessed, standing on the path, holding her bicycle steady at her side while the wind whips her hair around her head. But she is just a child, his child, and the need to protect her is strong.

‘What happened to Zoë – what Robbie did – you mustn’t blame yourself, sweetheart,’ he tells her. ‘You weren’t to know what would happen.’

He moves to embrace her, but something in the way she stiffens holds him back.

‘Holly,’ he says again, a pleading note entering his voice.

Such pain has come into their home. He cannot bear to think of his daughter witnessing the shameful thing he did. In the same way he can’t bear to think of her shouldering the blame for Zoë’s death.

Her gaze is utterly steady. ‘You don’t understand, do you?’ she says.

The wind is picking up now, and he has to strain to hear her.

‘I did it.’

‘What?’

‘Robbie didn’t push her. I did.’

His hands are on the handlebars and he feels the cold biting through his skin. ‘Holly – sweetheart – it was an accident. Whatever it is you think you’ve done … You’re just a child.’ An innocent, he wants to say. But the way she is looking at him, the coldness of her expression, the
pity in it, he realizes that he is the innocent. How blind he has been.

‘I told him about the letter I had found too,’ she says. ‘I told him she wasn’t our sister, and he believed that made it all right, the feelings he had for her. He thought he loved her. He didn’t understand how cruel she could be.’

‘Holly,’ he says hoarsely, the cold reaching up through his limbs, gripping his heart.

‘It was disgusting, wrong. He couldn’t see that. She had infected him. In the same way she had infected you.’

‘No,’ he says again, but his voice is barely audible. ‘It was an accident. You couldn’t mean to …’ The denial falters.

‘She was just standing there by the edge, the board right behind her. It seemed so easy. So simple. She didn’t even see me until the last minute. Didn’t even know I was there.’

The wind has calmed. On all sides they are surrounded by a flat calm greyness. He stares at her, and the strangest feeling comes over him: this girl, this daughter whom he has known from the moment she was born, this daughter whom he has loved, cherished, held close to his heart – he looks at her now as he would at a stranger. He realizes that he does not know her at all.

‘So simple,’ Holly says again. ‘One shove and back she went. She didn’t even scream.’

‘But Robbie … He confessed …’

This draws her attention and she looks at him sharply, consternation crossing her brow.

‘I did it for him. Don’t you see?’ she says, insistence
entering her tone. ‘The way she used him.’ Then, turning her gaze away, she continues in a quieter voice, as if her words are spoken not for David but for herself: ‘Robbie knows. He knows I did it for him. I put my arms around him and told him that everything would be all right now. That we’re safe. Nothing else matters now.’

He cannot think what to say. Even if he could, speaking is an impossibility: everything is plugged up inside him, held fast by the overwhelming sensation of fear. His whole world is contracting away from him. Everything is strange.

‘I know you think I should be sorry,’ she tells him. ‘But I’m not.’

Coldness goes straight to the marrow of his bones.

‘I’m glad she’s dead,’ his daughter tells him. Her eyes narrow and she pulls her bike close.

She turns from him then, his little girl, swings her leg over the saddle and steps on the pedal, pushing herself away.

He watches her cycling down the path. The words are beating about his head like wings. He looks up to the sky, scanning the horizon as if he might catch sight once more of that majestic bird, its wings spread wide, the proud angle of its head. The sky is empty. The ocean rumbles in the distance – waves beating on cliffs unseen. Here, where the land is flat, and the path twists and turns through marsh, all is quiet. He looks back towards the harbour, but Holly has rounded a bend and disappeared from view. He feels the weight of her words pressing down on him, feels the heaviness of this new unwanted knowledge. There is no one he can share it with.

The wings of his grief beat in his chest. He thinks again of Linda’s Angel of History, how he would like to awaken the dead and piece together what has been smashed. Above him, the wind stirs and he looks again to catch a glimpse of the bird in flight. But there is nothing there. No bird, and no angel. There is only him and the deep silence of the still water.

Acknowledgements

This book has been a team effort in many ways, and we are deeply grateful to the following: Jonathan Lloyd, and everyone at Curtis Brown, in particular Lucia Walker, Melissa Pimentel and Luke Speed; Kari Stuart and everyone at ICM Partners; Maxine Hitchcock, editor extraordinaire, and all the team at Penguin / Michael Joseph, in particular Clare Bowron and Eve Hall; Barbara Jones and everyone at Henry Holt; Hazel Orme for her sharp-eyed copy-edit; our dear friend Tana French for her advice and support; finally, Aoife Perry and Conor Sweeney whose patience, love and humour kept us going throughout the writing of this book.