The Liar's Daughter

by Claire Allan

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Heidi

  Now

  ‘He’ll be back soon,’ Kathleen says over and over to whoever enters the room and we nod as if we haven’t already heard her say it at least ten times. She has a large industrial kettle bubbling with boiling water ready to make as many cups of tea as necessary and a huge pot of home-made vegetable soup on the go. For when he is home. For when the mourners come.

  She’s still a little dazed, probably still has traces of whatever tranquillisers Dr Sweeney gave her last night in her system. She asks the same question over and over again. ‘What exactly did the police say?’

  Her repetitive questioning is starting to grate on me, though. Each question ties a knot tighter in my stomach. I don’t want to think about what the police might find, but I can’t escape it with her constant commentary. That’s without even taking into account the conversation Ciara and I had in the kitchen, when she made it clear where her suspicions lay. I know she will have no qualms at all about using my past against me if the police need to ask more questions. My secrets could all be laid bare.

  The need to get away washes over me again and I feel it settle on my chest. I will my breath to stay settled, my heart to not race and my inner panic to stay contained, but I know I’m fighting a losing battle.

  I make my excuses in a room where I’m sure no one is really listening to me and climb the stairs, past his room to my old bedroom. Two doors away from Joe’s room. On the left-hand side of the landing.

  We’ll be sleeping here tonight, in this room. I don’t want to, but I’m nervous about leaving Ciara alone in the house. I don’t trust her. I don’t want to leave her here to start telling anyone who calls to the house, be it mourners or the police or nosy neighbours, just how much ‘trouble’ followed me around.

  I wish Alex was here, but he has taken Lily out for a walk around the block in her pram. I think he feels as hemmed in as I do and he doesn’t even know a fraction of what went on this house.

  I sense that something’s wrong as soon as I walk into my bedroom. Not quite as it should be. There is a feeling that someone has been in here. Looking through my things, perhaps. Looking for something to use to pin Joe’s death on me. Planting evidence. An uneasy feeling prickles at the back of my neck. ‘You’re being paranoid,’ I whisper to myself.

  But then I see that there are only three porcelain dolls on the shelf, where there should be four. Scarlett isn’t standing where she should.

  I spot a whisper of green velvet poking out from under the legs of the chest of drawers. On my knees, I reach under the drawers and pull her out, skirt first.

  Her face, once perfectly porcelain, flawless with green glass eyes set against the palest of skin, is a mess of sharp edges and dust. Someone has very deliberately applied brute force to her face and crushed it. She is broken beyond all hope of repair.

  I touch my hand to the crooked edges where her cheek is now hollowed out, her green glass eye forced inwards, and yelp as the sharp porcelain slices the side of my hand. Watching the blood pool then drip on her clear white skin, I wait for the stinging sensation to take hold.

  When it does I allow myself to cry, but only a little. I’m scared. I’m scared that someone – most likely Ciara – is deliberately targeting me. Someone is pushing me because they know that I do have a breaking point.

  Someone is creating their own narrative of whatever happened in this house and they firmly believe, or want people to believe, that I snapped. That I killed Joe.

  They want me to snap again. To show myself in all my flawed, unhinged, damaged glory. But I won’t do that. I’m better now. I can control my emotions. I have a husband who loves me and a daughter who needs me, and I won’t show either of them just how broken I was.

  Broken just like Scarlett. She may be only a doll. A stupid remnant from my childhood to anyone looking in. But she is the last one my mother bought for me. She is symbolic of happy times – more innocent times. And the one person left alive who knows this more than anyone is downstairs right now painting herself as a grief-stricken daughter.

  I reach into the pocket of my cardigan, pull out a spare tissue and wrap it around my hand, feeling my nerve endings throb and sting, a welcome distraction from the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I look down and see there is blood on my cardigan and more has run up my arm, leaving a red tide in its wake.

  The door to my room opens just as I reach for the handle and Alex is there, Lily in his arms, looking first at me, my eyes wet with tears, my cardigan stained with blood, then at the broken doll.

  He glances to my hand, the tissue I have held to my cut already becoming sodden with yet more blood. I don’t think it’s a deep cut, but it doesn’t seem to want to stop bleeding, or throbbing with pain.

  ‘Jesus, Heidi, what happened? Are you okay?’

  ‘I’ll live,’ I say, trying to give him a watery smile, which I’m sure looks less than convincing. ‘I don’t think Scarlett will, though.’

  ‘What happened? Did you drop her?’ he asks.

  ‘No. I found her like this. Half hidden under the chest of drawers. Someone broke her and then tried to hide the evidence.’

  ‘Someone?’

  ‘I’d put my money on Ciara,’ I tell him.

  His eyes widen just a little. I want to take Lily from him, to hold her, but I know my hand is still aching. Still bleeding. I lift one of her muslin cloths from her changing bag and wrap it around my hand.

  ‘I’ll need to clean this out to get a good look at it,’ I say.

  ‘You don’t really think it was Ciara, do you? Don’t you think it might have just been knocked off the shelf by a breeze or something? These things happen. It doesn’t have to be malicious.’

  ‘There’s no breeze in here,’ I say, wanting him to be on my side. No, needing him to be on my side. ‘Look at how her face is smashed in, Alex. That doesn’t come from a tumble from a shelf!’

  ‘But if she hit the drawers on her way down,’ Alex says, lifting the doll and carrying her back to where I found her. ‘Look, there’s debris on the top here.’

  There is a small smattering of porcelain-coloured dust, a few chips. But I’m still sure that someone has done this deliberately. Or am I? I look at Alex and he has a look of sympathy, or pity, or something in his eyes.

  ‘I’m not making it up,’ I tell him. ‘You think I’m unhinged, don’t you?’ I ask, aware that right at this moment, my hand bleeding, my eyes red with tiredness and tears, I do in fact look unhinged.

  ‘I think, Heidi, that you’re exhausted and stuck in this strange limbo that would drive anyone to distraction. But accidents do happen.’

  I don’t know if there’s any point in arguing back. What would it achieve, after all?

  ‘Look, maybe you’ll feel better after we get that cleaned and you can have a rest. I’ll go and get the first-aid kit and we’ll get you sorted, then you can grab a few hours’ sleep. I’ll wake you if we get the call about Joe. I’ll see if maybe this doll can be repaired, too,’ he says, gesturing at Scarlett, but I know she’s beyond fixing. No amount of glue and patience in the world will put her back together again.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Ciara

  Now

  I shouldn’t have had that third cup of coffee. I’m jittery now and my heart is thumping. I wish I still smoked proper cigarettes, not these pathetic vape devices. I wish I could have a drink right now. God, I wish I could smoke a joint. I wonder if anyone would notice if I rifled through my father’s meds and found something to give me a suitable hit.

  I’m not a drug user. Not really. Cannabis doesn’t really count, or the odd discreetly acquired prescription med. And I need something to take the edge off.

  The police had walked in and turned everything on its head. ‘We will be here to support you,’ they said before leaving and offering absolutely no support, just the fear that they would find out ‘foul play’ had been involved in my father’s death. />
  Dr Sweeney had been happy to sign the death certificate. That should’ve been the end of it. He knows what he’s doing, after all. We thought we’d just move on to the wake and the funeral and then with the rest of our lives.

  But now everything has changed.

  I’d love to just block it all out, but I’m sure it wouldn’t look good if I was stoned out of my head either. I suck on my e-cig, hoping for a hit of something it can’t give me, and pinch the bridge of my nose. I’m tired. Really tired. Maybe Heidi had the right idea of going for a sleep, but I sense Kathleen is on the point of unravelling and I feel it’s my responsibility, for my sins, to support her. To contain her.

  I should probably eat something, I think. I’ve not had anything since last night. I’ve not been hungry, but now my stomach is growling and I realise if I don’t at least try to eat something there’s a good chance I’ll be sick.

  I can’t face the vat of vegetable soup Kathleen has made, so I decide to make some toast and put on a pot of tea as well. The panacea for every ill, it seems.

  Comfort food, I realise. I need comfort food.

  I hear someone come into the room and turn to see Alex walk in, looking just as pale as the rest of us. He’s an attractive man, I suppose. Not my type, of course, but I can see he is handsome. Tall, thin – possibly a little too thin – with thick dark hair that he wears just long enough that it has started to curl a little at the ends. He wears glasses, a modern dark-rimmed pair, and is in need of shave. He’s not quite rugged, but he screams ‘nice guy’. He has a decent job, dresses well. He’s fairly sociable. I wonder what he sees in Heidi. How he fell in love with her. She has never had any redeeming qualities, in my eyes. Quite plain-looking, quiet, spoilt. I very much doubt he knows all about her past. I’d seen the fear flash in her eyes when I’d mentioned it earlier.

  ‘I was just going to get myself a glass of water,’ Alex says. ‘Heidi’s still sleeping.’

  ‘I’m putting on a pot of tea. Making some toast, if you’d prefer that?’

  ‘I think I’ve reached tea saturation levels for the day,’ he says. ‘And I grabbed a burger when I was out earlier. Walked as far as McDonald’s.’

  ‘Oooh, a Big Mac would hit the spot right now,’ I say with a wry smile, relieved to have just a hint of a normal conversation.

  ‘I’ve brought the first-aid kit back,’ he says and I notice for the first time the blue box in his hand. ‘Can I get past you to put it back in the cupboard?’

  ‘First-aid box? Did you hurt yourself or something?’

  He sighs. ‘No, it was Heidi. She cut her hand.’

  I raise an eyebrow, wonder if she’s up to her old tricks. Alex looks weary again.

  ‘One of the dolls in her room was smashed. She cut her hand trying to clean it up.’

  I have the good grace to blush and thankfully he doesn’t seem to notice.

  ‘She’s very upset about it,’ he says. ‘It was one of the dolls her mother got for her.’

  ‘God Almighty.’ I hear Kathleen’s voice from outside of the room. ‘The man who raised her is dead and she doesn’t shed a tear, but she’s in bits about a doll. That girl! There was always a want in her.’

  ‘I’m sure she is upset about Joe,’ Alex stutters. ‘It’s just, you know, her link with her mother?’

  ‘He was a parent to her longer than her mother was,’ Kathleen declares before sitting at the table.

  Alex doesn’t respond. He just looks extremely uncomfortable with her outburst.

  ‘Is it a bad cut?’ I ask. ‘Did you find what you needed in the first-aid box, because I can always take a run out to Sainsbury’s and pick up anything else you might need? It might do me good to get out of here for a bit.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s particularly deep. But it did bleed a lot,’ he says. ‘It seems okay now and she’s sleeping. I think it will do her good. She’s getting herself so wound up, which is understandable, but you know, it’s not good for her.’

  I raise an eyebrow, wonder if Alex does know just how bad things can get when his wife gets wound up. Does he know what she is capable of?

  ‘I think we all need to keep a special eye on her,’ I say. ‘She’s very vulnerable, isn’t she?’

  The look on Alex’s face tells me this is news to him. I wonder if I’ve said too much.

  ‘In what way?’ he asks.

  ‘You mean you don’t know?’ Kathleen says incredulously. ‘She must’ve told you.’

  Alex bristles. ‘If she’d told me I wouldn’t be asking questions now.’

  ‘Your wife was a very troubled young woman,’ Kathleen says. ‘But maybe you should ask her about it. I don’t think it’s our place to say.’

  Alex looks to me. ‘What does she mean?’ he asks.

  ‘As she says, it’s something you probably need to talk to Heidi about. And, you know, it was a long time ago and she’s been stable for a good while now.’

  He looks alarmed. ‘Stable?’

  ‘That probably makes it sound worse than it was,’ I say, aware that it was actually that bad. ‘She struggled a lot, you know, after her mother died. It was to be expected, I suppose. And maybe we should have seen the signs faster, but she was just so angry and paranoid and didn’t want to talk to any of us …’

  The last bit wasn’t exactly true. She may well have wanted to talk to us, but we – and especially me – didn’t want to talk to her. She was a freak who’d stolen my father. I thought he deserved the hard time she put him through.

  Just as I think she deserves to have that stupid doll of hers smashed to pieces. I’m not proud of myself for that, but it was either that or take my anger, grief and fear out on her.

  Chapter Thirty

  Heidi

  Then

  The poor pet. Is it any wonder she’s acting up? Losing her mother so young. Joe’s a saint taking her on. Honestly. No one would blame him if he just walked away.

  The whispers from the mammies in the school yard weren’t long in reaching my ears. And acting up? I wasn’t doing anything. I was just wandering around the playground on my own, rattling a stick against the railings.

  Sure, when Kathleen had called for me to come on now, it was time to go home, I’d pretended not to hear her, even though her voice was high and scratchy and everyone else seemed to have gone quiet.

  But that wasn’t acting up.

  I just didn’t want to go home. Truth was, I didn’t know what home was any more. All I knew was that the only place I’d ever remembered living my whole entire life didn’t feel so safe and cosy now.

  But if I said anything, anything at all, what would become of me?

  When I did see Granny she seemed so sad all the time. She’d visit at least once a week, but she was never really present. Not the way she used to be. It seemed as if she’d given up on life. Grandad’s health was deteriorating. She was struggling. There was even less chance than before that they would be able to take me in. ‘Oh, wee doll, as nice as it is to see you, it’s like a knife to my heart at times. You’re so like your mammy was at that age,’ she would say and break into fresh tears. The last thing I wanted to do was to make her life any harder than it already was. Speaking up would’ve done that.

  I already felt guilt-ridden just for reminding her of my mother, but that wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t help how I looked. Maybe if I cut my hair I’d look different. That’s what I was thinking the night I took the big scissors and hacked at my ponytail. I watched my curls fall to the ground. One strand followed by another, followed by another.

  Maybe if I looked less like Mammy, Granny wouldn’t be so sad. She wouldn’t cry when she saw me.

  Maybe she would invite me to stay more and I could show her what a great help I could be with Grandad, and that I didn’t take up much space, or eat much or need her to spend money on me.

  Maybe if I looked less like Mammy, Joe wouldn’t look at me the way he did. He wouldn’t cross the landing at night-time to ‘see if I was okay’ and
‘offer to tuck me in’. He mightn’t tell me how beautiful I was and how I made his heart happy.

  He wouldn’t call me his special girl.

  Joe had been horrified when he saw what I’d done to my hair. He’d called for Kathleen, who was living with us at the time, and her mouth opened wide in shock like a cartoon character.

  ‘Oh, Heidi, what have you done to your lovely curls?’ she asked.

  I looked downwards. Yes, maybe I’d got carried away with the scissors. I didn’t mean to cut my hair so short, but at the same time, I could see that it had got to Joe and that gave me a sense of satisfaction.

  ‘Can you do anything with it?’ he asked his sister.

  ‘Christ, Joe, I don’t think there’s anyone who could do anything with that. We’ll just have to try to tidy it up the best we can.’

  Tidying it up the best they could, involved hauling me to the nearest old lady, style-and-set hairdressers. They begged a really rather fed up-looking hairdresser to do her best to fix it. She was clearly about to head home for the day, so they offered her a generous tip.

  She did the best she could, but fashioned what could only be described as a crew cut out of it all. The result certainly provoked a reaction, but not one I might have hoped for.

  ‘Look at you! Just look at you, cutting all your hair off like that. Oh, Heidi, when it broke your poor mammy’s heart to lose her hair to the cancer and you’re after hacking your own hair off,’ Granny had wept and I had felt worse than I thought was possible.

  Perhaps unexpectedly, Ciara had a cruel reaction. ‘Did you have nits or something? Because I’ll have to get Daddy to boil wash every towel and sheet in that horrible hovel of yours before I come and visit again,’ she sneered.

  When I had curled up on my bed and sobbed, no longer buoyed by the thought my actions might actually make my life a little easier, Kathleen had come and sat beside me, tenderly resting her hand on my shoulder.

  ‘You know we all just need to be brave now, Heidi, don’t you? And we all have to work together to get through this. I know it’s very, very sore on you. And it’s not one bit fair, but try to remember there are other people hurting, too. Yes, you lost your mammy and that’s awful, sweetheart. But Joe lost his partner. He loved your mother very much and he’d hoped to spend the rest of his life with her. He’s hurting too and he doesn’t always get it right. But he does try. If we all try, it will come good. I promise.’