Girl Unknown Read Online Free PDF Page B

fluttered in the draught. I leaned down to pick it up, and read the words quickly.
    All my excitement vanished. The lead weight was back in my heart.
    It was a short note written in an elegant hand, signed with a flourish, her name a slash across the page.
Meet me this evening? Madigans, after work. Say 6.30 p.m.
Zoë
    I placed it carefully in my wallet.
    Friday evening, and there was a sense of expectancy in the air. The collective relief that the end of the week had arrived presented itself in a frenetic busyness on the roads and pavements. The wind had whipped up and I pedalled slowly to Donnybrook. Traffic was thick, people hurrying to get away from the working week, their desks, bosses and obligations.
    By the time I got there, the pub was heaving: office workers, students, mechanics from the nearby bus depot, their voices blending together in a dense cloud of talk. I found her sitting on her own at the back, a bottle of beer in front of her. One elbow on the table, her head was resting on her cupped hand, her face blank as she fiddled with her phone. For just a moment, before she saw me, she looked so young, so harmless, that I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.
    ‘You came.’ She smiled, getting to her feet.
    ‘Zoë,’ I said.
    ‘I saved you a seat.’ She gestured to a stool. ‘I’m so glad you’re here. I wasn’t sure you’d come. Let me get you a drink.’
    ‘No,’ I said.
    ‘Please. It’s the least I can do.’
    ‘I’ll get my own,’ I said, catching a barman’s attention. I ordered a pint and another bottle for Zoë.
    She leaned on the table, one hand wrapped around her beer, her face open and expectant. About us, voices rose. Laughter rang out, and brass instruments played boisterous ragtime through hidden speakers. We almost had to shout to be heard.
    ‘I had no idea this place would be so busy,’ she said. ‘I’d have picked somewhere quieter.’
    The truth was, I felt protected by the noise and the clamour of people. Somehow, I didn’t want to be cloistered in some quiet snug with a student, a stranger. I couldn’t tell who might be watching.
    ‘I just thought that, as it’s close to college, it would be convenient.’
    Our drinks arrived, and before the glass had reached my mouth, she was raising her bottle. ‘Cheers.’
    ‘ Sláinte ,’ I said, with a strange premonition of how I might have taken Robbie for his first drink, to a dark pub, where a father and son could bond. Instead, here I was with a girl I barely knew.
    ‘I wanted to apologize,’ she began, ‘for the other day. Taking you unawares like that. It was unfair. I’m really sorry,’ she said, small creases appearing at the sides of her eyes.
    She wore a plain red sweater, and I wondered brieflywhether those big army boots were still on her feet. ‘You’re not mocking me, Zoë, are you?’
    ‘God, no!’ Her eyes became round, but the anxious smile hovered at the corners of her mouth. ‘I just think we got off on the wrong footing.’
    ‘What you’re saying about me … about me being your father, it’s very serious.’
    ‘I know, I know.’ She looked down at the table, shaking her head.
    I drank deeply and waited. I had prepared something to say, but I wanted to get it right. However, she spoke next and what she said surprised me: ‘I want you to know that you don’t need to be afraid …’
    ‘Afraid?’ I said.
    ‘Of me,’ she said, in a small voice. ‘I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to get you into any trouble.’
    ‘What sort of trouble could you get me into? I haven’t done anything wrong.’
    ‘No, I know. I meant that I don’t want to make things difficult for you with the university, or with your wife.’
    ‘My wife?’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Have you told her about me?’
    It had been nearly a week. Not a long time in the scale of things, but it had been a painstaking week of concealment and circumspection. All that time I had been keeping it from Caroline, telling