by Claire Allan
‘I was going to take him out for a pint, if he was well enough,’ Alex offers.
Heidi stays silent.
It’s all pretty mundane as far as a bucket list goes, but at least it feels doable, and without too much effort or time spent with him.
‘Those are all great ideas,’ Kathleen says, nodding a little too enthusiastically given the dull nature of our suggestions. ‘I think it’s worth really focusing on the fact that the thing he needs most of all right now is all of us pulling together to support him. I know you girls are young and have enough going on in your lives, but in the great grand scheme of things it really doesn’t amount to an awful lot of time. Then he’ll be gone and you’ll never have to think of him again.’ Her voice cracks as she looks at us all.
Auntie Kathleen induces guilt well, raised as she was in the thrall of Irish Catholicism. But for the same reasons she will be crippled by her own guilt, too. She hasn’t been a frequent visitor over the years, leaving for England some sixteen or seventeen years ago and rarely making the journey back, even when a flight could be bought for less than a bus fare.
‘We should probably help him get his affairs in order,’ a quiet voice from the other side of the room speaks up. ‘I’m sure there are lots of things he needs to tie up. Financial matters. His belongings. If he has a will …’
I stiffen, looking at Heidi, who stares right back at me.
‘I don’t know if we have to worry about that just yet,’ I say, even though a part of me is impressed that little mouse Heidi can squeak, after all.
‘Well, I think we do. We can dance around it all we want,’ Heidi says, ‘but we know there will be upset when he’s gone. I’d rather we’re all prepared for it. I’ll be hoping to get this house on the market as soon as possible.’
I hear Kathleen gasp. Even Alex can’t hide his shock at the manner in which his wife has spoken. I’m shocked myself. Simpering Heidi who has been at his beck and call all these years. It strikes me for a second that this is actually how she has been since I first visited. Restrained. Cold. No hint of personal grief.
‘I don’t think that this is the time or the place for this discussion, sweetheart,’ Alex says, looking at her, a confused expression on his face.
‘This is exactly the time and place for it,’ she says, her voice growing in confidence. ‘I want everyone to be very clear about what will happen after. This is my house, as outlined in my mother’s will, and when Joe is dead, I will be selling it. As soon as possible. I’ll do my bit by him while he is alive, but that’s it.’
I feel Stella reach out and take my hand, but my fist is clenched tight.
‘I’m sorry if anyone finds that upsetting, but that is the way of it. And it’s better to be honest and prepared than to deal with more upset after his death. The lines are very clearly drawn.’
‘Heidi.’ Alex puts his hand on her knee as if to quiet her.
She pushes it away.
‘No, Alex, I’m not being insensitive. I’m being honest. Someone has to be honest about this all. We’re all dancing around, afraid to say what needs to be said. Joe is not a nice man. He’s not a good man. He has been a cuckoo in this nest for too long.’
Kathleen looks as if she has been slapped squarely around the face. I watch as she stands up and walks out of the room. I can hear the sound of her crying just as I hear her climb the stairs.
I can hear Stella asking if I’m okay, but it’s almost as if I can’t quite understand what I’m feeling any more.
Heidi gets up and storms out of the room, Alex following her. I hear the back door open and I just sit and try to process everything that has just been said.
But I can’t escape the truth. I might be shocked at Heidi’s outburst, but she is only speaking the truth. My father is not, and never could be, a good man.
The only person I’m truly angry at is him.
Chapter Sixteen
Heidi
Now
I have stopped, dead in my tracks, at the edge of the lawn in the back garden. I swallow a lungful of the damp night air, shuddering as I exhale. I’ve not realised until now that I am shaking. The sound of heavy footsteps on the gravel behind me makes me jump. I brace for impact. For a clip to the back of the head. For admonishment that I had run away and good girls don’t run away.
Good girls show gratitude.
Good girls behave.
‘Your mother would have wanted you to behave, that’s what would have made her happy.’
My breathing changes, becomes shallow, short gasps at the air that feels moist and heavy and cold. It’s as if I am consuming coldness and it is filling my veins until my shaking becomes more violent.
Maybe Alex is right. Maybe this isn’t the right time or place, but I’m struggling to hold this all in now. I’m struggling with the weight of keeping quiet, of talking about bucket lists and making him happy.
Joe McKee does not deserve to be happy.
He does not deserve to leave this world peacefully, thinking he is absolved of all of his sins.
The steps grow closer. Heavy breathing. I sense anger. I feel it grip me.
‘Heidi.’ Alex’s voice is hard and cold.
I turn to look at him – see disappointment and anger in his eyes.
‘Was there really a need for that?’ he asks.
I blink back at him. My usual reaction is to say no. To apologise. To push down at the feelings and all the memories that weigh heavy on my chest every single day. But it feels different now and I want to tell him. I want to tell him everything – even though it will change our lives. I want to be brave.
‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘There was a need for it. All this, what we’re doing, Alex. It’s all bullshit. While he lies up there, being waited on hand and foot. The people he hurt are running themselves into the ground trying to make his last few months bearable.’
‘You keep saying that,’ Alex says. ‘That he hurt people. That he is a bad man. But why, Heidi? He’s a bore, for sure. He takes advantage of your good nature. He holds political and religious beliefs that I don’t agree with it. But a bad man? He raised you for years. He didn’t have to.’
I open my mouth to tell him. Know it would shut him up. But then, what if it changed how he thinks of me? Would he be angry that I’ve kept it from him? And all those people, Kathleen included, who thought I was mad, that I was a naughty little girl who told lies for attention, would they tell him all about the girl I was? The trouble I caused?
The fire I started. If I close my eyes I can still taste the acrid smoke as it started to choke me. Still remember heavy hands, pulling me away. Still remember kicking out at them. I just wanted it all, myself included, to burn.
How could he look at me the same if he knew it all? At best, he’d see me as a victim. At worst, he would see someone who had been driven to madness. Would he ever be able to trust me to be alone with Lily? I know I had struggled while pregnant with those same fears – fears that were allayed for me the moment she was placed on my chest and I knew I’d do everything to protect her. To protect my family.
I feel a bubble of shame and grief and anxiety rise up. I see Alex search my face for an answer, but it’s not one I can give right now. Not without ruining everything.
‘You’re right,’ I say, and I know my voice sounds funny. Angry. Frustrated. ‘You’re always right.’
And still he searches my face for signs of the truth and I just look at him, not daring myself to talk, until he gives up. He throws his hands in the air, then plunges them deep into his pockets as he turns away. ‘I think I hear Lily,’ he says. ‘I’ll go check on her.’
I know as well as Alex does that Lily isn’t making a noise, he just needs an excuse to leave. I stay in the garden, even though it is starting to rain. Fat drops of ice-cold rain land on my face, stinging me where my skin is rough and sore from the tears I didn’t even realise I had been crying.
They start, as these things do, slowly at first. Little drops. Warning s
igns leaving me enough time to get inside if I want to. It’s like they’re telling me to go. To run. Take shelter. Now they come in greater numbers, but still I know I can get into the house relatively untouched if I just move. But I can’t move. I’m frozen in the middle of all this and the rain rushes at me, soaking me through to the bone until I am so wet, so icy cold that the hailstones that have started to fall don’t hurt. I am untouchable. I don’t care about the storm. I have always been right in the middle of one.
Chapter Seventeen
Heidi
Now
I offer to make Alex a cup of tea when we get home. He refuses, says he is tired and takes Lily from me and goes upstairs. We barely spoke on the drive home and I can’t shake the feeling that everything is slipping out of my control.
I’m tense and even though my body aches with tiredness, I know I’ve gone past any notion of sleep, so I make myself a cup of very milky tea and curl up in front of our gas fire watching the faux flames flicker and dance. Ironic, really, that I can find flames comforting.
Well, ironic or worrying. One of those.
I think of the chain of events that led to that point – when I ended up in hospital, missing the second semester of my first year at university and having to start all over again come the spring.
Did it all start that day in Fiorentinis? Or the day my mother died? Or was it the first time he came into my room to ‘comfort’ me?
So much is blurry now, you see. After all these years. But some details are crisp and clear in my head and they never leave. The senses of things. Smell. Touch. Pain.
I shake my head, trying to shake all those memories from it. If only it were that easy.
But it’s not, of course. And it’s only going to get harder over the next week and months. I have to find a way to cope, otherwise I’ll not only push Ciara and Kathleen further away, but I’ll also push Alex away. That is truly unthinkable.
I have to stop taking my anger out on other people. Even people such as Ciara and Kathleen. People I’d tried to make like me all those years ago. People I’d wanted to love back then, but who never loved me back. I owe them no loyalty, but they aren’t responsible for what Joe did any more than I am.
Eventually I drift off into something approximating a sleep, only to be woken at 4 a.m. by a hungry baby in need of a feed. When I’ve satisfied her needs, I climb into bed beside my husband and whisper to his sleeping form that I love him, and our daughter, more than he could ever understand.
When morning comes, I apologise to him for being insensitive. I tell him I’m stressed but I love him. He pulls me into a hug, kisses the top of my head and whispers that he loves me and just wants me to be happy. I stop myself from crying. I just plaster on a smile, tell him I am happy and send him on his way to work.
I have the same fake smile plastered on my face when I arrive at Joe’s house and offer an apology to Ciara and Kathleen, which I’m making to try to smooth the waters.
‘I’m sorry if I came across as clinical and cold last night,’ I say, trying my best to maintain eye contact even though it is almost physically painful to do so. ‘This is difficult. For us all. I was feeling stressed and I didn’t mean to upset anyone.’
They nod and we sit in uncomfortable silence until we hear the tinkle of the bell Kathleen gave Joe to summon us when he needs anything.
Ciara is first to her feet. I take the break in the awkwardness as a chance to move myself.
‘I’ll peel some potatoes for dinner. There’s chicken and veg there, too,’ I say, getting up and going to the kitchen, where I pull the bag of spuds from the vegetable rack and look for the peeler.
Kathleen is behind me before I’ve had the chance to shed even one slice of skin from the mud-covered potato in my hand.
‘Can I ask you something, Heidi?’ she says, and I turn to watch her sit down, wincing as she does so, on one of the kitchen chairs. ‘My knees,’ she says, rolling her eyes. ‘Seems all that road-running has left them in a bad way.’
I mumble something sympathetic and wait for the big ‘something’ she wants to talk to me about.
‘Why do you hate him?’ she says eventually, her eyes sad. ‘You always did. All those years when he just tried to look after you. You made it so hard for him, you know, but he never gave up on you. You never give him credit for that. I know he’s not perfect. Believe me. But does he really deserve to be hated?’
I blink at her. I don’t know what to say. Can she really not know?
I shrug, feeling a tingle of nervousness start at the top of my spine, enough to send little shockwaves through my head.
‘That’s it?’ she says with a strange laugh. ‘A shrug to explain it all.’
I shrug again, scraping at the potato with the peeler, not realising that my finger has moved perilously close to the blade. One strike and I take a layer of skin with it, yelping as I do so.
The sight of blood, which comes before the sting of the cut, makes me feel woozy.
Kathleen, sore knees and all, jumps to her feet, forces my bleeding finger under the running tap, and I watch the water turn pink, mingling with the soil from the potatoes as it hits the steel surface of the sink. I watch it. I feel the pain bite. I’m reminded of a release. Of a coping mechanism. Kathleen pulls my hand from the water, wraps a clean piece of kitchen towel around it, squeezing tight. So tight it’s painful.
‘Hold that for a bit,’ she says. ‘We’ll get a proper look at it in a minute. Does Joe have plasters?’
I nod to the thin cupboard beside the cooker, where Joe stores an old tin first-aid box.
‘I … I’m sure it’s just a scratch,’ I stutter. ‘I was … I was distracted.’ I can see the crisp white kitchen towel start to colour with my blood. I need to sit down.
‘You certainly were,’ Kathleen says, pausing for a moment, looking at me intently.
She hands me some more kitchen paper, then sets about fishing in the first-aid tin for a suitable dressing.
Chapter Eighteen
Joe
Now
They’ve all been to see me today. My ‘family’, for what they are. The daughters who don’t seem to care too much. The sister who hovers around me. Fidgets as she talks. Babbles. Annoys me. The drippy husband. Talks about going for a pint. And that woman – the deviant my daughter is with. I can barely look at her, never mind tolerate her faux sympathy.
All these conversations take place that mean nothing but seem to teeter close to the edge of something else.
The day has been painfully long. Bookmarked with the times when I’m allowed to take medication to make everything go fuzzy again for a while.
I’ve tried to read a little, but my eyes won’t focus for long enough – and I’m finding myself having to read and reread the same passage over and over again. None of it making sense.
Every now and again I hear raised voices. The cry of that baby. A phone ringing. Doors closing and opening. A whole world carrying on within earshot, but excluding me all the same.
The rain is getting heavier outside. I can hear it batter against the windowpanes. It’s a noise I used to find comforting. But not now. Now, I can hear that there is a storm brewing.
I take my medication. Feel it numb me and lull me to sleep, only to wake with a jolt. With a feeling of pressure. Choking me. Making me gag.
It’s said your life flashes before your eyes in the moments before your death. That your electrical synapses fire, pulling memories from the innermost depths of your brain and flooding your senses with them.
There are no flashbacks now, but I know that I am dying.
I know there is no way out.
There are no visions of long-lost relatives reaching out to me between dimensions.
There is no angel of death to help me move between worlds, either. There is someone here, of course, but this person is no angel. They’re not guiding me towards a soft beam of light. There is no sense of peace.
No sense of forgiveness or redemptio
n.
There is just fear. Disappointment.
Grief that it has all come to this.
I fight, even though I’m weak. I had been sleeping, but now I feel the weight of something on my face. A pillow, perhaps. It’s soft but it’s not malleable. There’s no give in it. No matter how I turn my head, it is there and it won’t move.
There is a fierce, unquenchable burning in my lungs and a pressure on my chest. Is someone kneeling on me? Has someone placed a weight on me? I’m pinned down. Is there more than one person in this room? I’m trying my hardest to orientate myself to the space around me, but I can’t. I try to cry out but I can’t. I can’t breathe. I can’t make a sound. I hear a voice I can’t place, muffled, almost drowned out by the increasingly loud thumping of my heart. I can’t tell if it is man, woman or beast. It feels as if my chest will open, my lungs explode or burst into flames.
The Devil, I think, the Devil is in this room and I can feel his flames threaten to engulf me. I know where I’m going and all those years of kneeling at the altar rails haven’t made a difference.
‘Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out,’ the Bible says. Maybe God knew what I wouldn’t admit – the sin was always in me.
I want to breathe. I need to breathe. I need oxygen. I need to live.
I am trying, thrashing. My hands are fisting the bed sheets trying to gain purchase on something, on anything, on this life. The voice again, indistinct, muttering words I cannot hear. But they are not words of love. I know that much.
This person is weighing me down, I realise, jabbing their bony knee into my chest, close to a wound that’s not yet healed, that I can feel start to pull and strain against the pressure. Everything is tearing. Everything is burning and still they don’t stop. They keep going. I try to suck air in, even the smallest amount. Just enough. I just want enough. I don’t need more. I just want to live.
