by Claire Allan
I fidget in my seat. The priest talks of how Joe is reunited with those who went before him. His parents. His cousin, Paul. His aunt, Alice. I brace myself for hearing my mother’s name – knowing each time I hear it, it gives me comfort to know she’s remembered, but at the same time hurts because I still miss her so.
I close my eyes and breathe deeply.
‘And all those who have gone before him in faith to rest with the Father,’ Father Brennan says, skipping over my mother’s name. Erasing her from his narrative.
I open my eyes, look around me. Ciara and Marie both have their heads bowed in prayer. Kathleen is clutching a wrinkled tissue in her hands and looking straight ahead. I wonder can they feel my eyes on them. I wonder which of them told Father Brennan not to say her name.
Alex rests his hand on my knee, as if calming me. Is it an act of comfort, or is he afraid I’ll make a scene, right here, in the church in front of everyone? When everyone is starting to think I’ve lost the run of myself anyway. No, I’ll keep my peace. Grit my teeth and get through the day. Focus on being home in my own space later, away from it all.
Before I know it, we’re filing out again, in convoy behind the coffin, heading towards the City Cemetery. I realise I didn’t speak to Ciara, or any of them, after all, about the plot he will be buried in, but I assure myself it will be fine. They didn’t acknowledge my mother’s life at all during the Mass, so surely none of them would be so crass as to think he deserved to lie with her now.
So my stomach lurches as we approach the cemetery and the hearse does not turn down towards the new plots but instead turns left and travels up the hill to the older graves. To where my mother has been lying for the past twenty years.
‘They’re making a mistake,’ I say to Alex.
‘I think they know what they’re doing,’ he replies, his car following slowly, trying to gain a purchase on the icy ground.
But I can see it. I can see that my mother’s grave has been disturbed. A large mound of brown soil covered with a green plastic cover rests beside it. Before I know it, before I’ve had time to make a conscious decision to do so, I have unfastened my seat belt and am reaching for the door handle.
‘Heidi!’ Alex’s voice is loud and clear, the car is still moving, but slowly. I can still jump out.
I open the door, feel his hand on my arm trying to hold me back, but I shake him off. No. This is a step too far. He can’t go there. He can’t. No.
Alex slams the brakes on in the car and I lurch a little but not enough that I lose my balance. I am out of the car and I am half walking, half running up the remainder of the hill towards the funeral car they are all in. All eyes are on me. I can sense that, can hear things around me. Whispers.
My heart is pumping hard and I can feel a cool sweat break out on my forehead, even though it is bitterly cold. I want to scream. I want to claw at Ciara. To ask her what on earth she is thinking. To ask her why. Why would she do that? She’s not a stupid woman, she would know how much pain it would cause me.
The funeral car stops and the door opens just as I reach it. Ciara steps out, her face set thick with concern and a hint of fear.
‘What is it, Heidi? Are you okay?’
‘You can’t bury him here, in my mother’s grave!’ I shout and any eyes that weren’t already on me are suddenly focused in my direction. ‘You can’t do this. I can’t believe you’re doing this. Make them stop. Now!’
I watch as tears form and start to fall from Ciara’s eyes, how she takes a step back as if she is afraid of me. I’m aware of Stella getting out of the car and trying to direct her away.
‘But … it’s what he wanted. His final wishes. You were okay with that …’ Ciara says, crumpling. ‘It’s breaking my mother’s heart but it’s what he wanted. When we talked about it, you said we were okay to follow his final wishes. You agreed.’
I was okay with it? When did I say that? My head is swimming and I can hear the thumping of my heart so loudly I fear it will burst through my eardrums. The edges of the conversation I had with her are fuzzy. I’d been feeding Lily and was still reeling from the heated conversation with Alex.
Maybe I’m losing my grip on reality. I can feel it slipping away. I can feel the physical sensation of it falling from my hands as if it is my skin peeling from my bones. I feel it and it is the thing of nightmares, and I want it to stop. I need it to stop.
I feel a hand on my arm, strong. It’s Alex.
‘Heidi, please. Come away. Don’t make a scene. Not now. This is hard enough.’
He is whispering, but his voice is urgent. Embarrassment radiates from him as he tries to encourage me back to the car. I’m almost catatonic with a mixture of rage and fear, and I want to push him away. I want to run to my mother’s grave and do everything I can to stop them from going anywhere near it, and yet the sight of her open grave hits me with such a punch in the stomach that I fear I might throw up.
I can’t take my eyes from it, but I don’t want to see. I’m scared. I’m like that child again, nine years old and not understanding why they were putting my mammy in a hole in the ground. That wasn’t heaven, either. They said she was going to heaven. Not to a cold, wet hole in the ground. I had stood there, aged nine, shaking so badly with fear while people wept and wailed around me, desperate to tell them they were making a mistake but trying to be a good girl, just like Granny had asked me.
When the first shovelful of soil was dropped onto the top of her coffin, I had been so scared that I had, to my eternal shame, wet myself. Soaked through those black tights bought just for the occasion. The pee running into my shiny patent shoes. I was scared and humiliated.
And now, her grave open, the thought of where she is, how she is, that he will be placed on top of her remains – it makes me want to do whatever it takes to stop them.
But Alex is pulling me backwards. Using all of his strength. And still everyone stares. And still Ciara is weeping on Stella’s shoulder and Kathleen is glaring at me while Marie just looks lost.
And none of them, not one of them, has the right to be more upset than me.
Chapter Forty-Six
Heidi
Now
‘Don’t tell me how to react,’ I bark at Alex. I have my head in my hands and I am rocking back and forth. It’s the only way I seem to be able to try to settle the noise in my head.
He has driven out of the cemetery, leaving the rest of the mourners to witness the burial I can’t even bear to think about, and we are driving back towards Marie’s.
‘I’m not telling you how to react, Heidi, but remember, everyone is watching us all at the moment. Looking for any signs that any one of us has something to hide, or isn’t the full shilling.’
‘But I can’t let this go. Was I supposed to say nothing? When I’m faced with my mother’s open grave and that … that … monster being settled in with her? Everything about this was designed to hurt me, to wind me up. To make me lose my temper. But that? That was the final insult. That was cruel, Alex. Just cruel.’
My heart is still thumping as hard as it did in the graveyard. I’m trying not to shout. The last thing I want to do is wake Lily and disturb her from her sleep, but I can hear the volume increasing in my voice anyway. I’m so angry and growing angrier.
He pulls the car over to the side of the road. He puts the handbrake on and releases his seat belt, turning in his seat to face me.
‘Heidi,’ he begins and his face is grey with worry.
I can see that I’m scaring him. That he thinks I’m as crazy as Ciara would have everyone believe.
‘I can’t even imagine what seeing your mother’s grave open like that must have felt like, but I can’t help but think … Is there something more to this? Is there something you’re not telling me?’
He must think I did it, I think. He must think my descent into apparent madness is the result of my guilt over Joe’s death. It makes sense now. I see it there on his face. That’s why he’s been so off with me si
nce it happened. He’s scared of me, what I’m capable of. He thinks … he thinks I could hold a pillow over a man’s head and hold it down until the life went out of him. He thinks I could do that to a frail, sick, terminally ill man and if I could do that, what else must I be capable of that he’s not even allowing himself to consider? Is that why he reacted the way he did to Lily sleeping in bed beside me? Jesus Christ, did he think I would kill my own child?
‘I didn’t kill him. I’m not a killer!’ I say. ‘If that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘Jesus Christ, Heidi, of course I’m not thinking that.’
But he doesn’t sound convinced and I feel sick. If I don’t have Alex on my side, then I have no one on my side. The hunt for the evil witch continues and I am the number one suspect. They might as well burn me at the stake now, or prepare me for the ducking stool. If I float I die, if I sink I’m innocent. Maybe that’s what it will take.
‘Heidi.’ Alex’s voice cuts through my thoughts. ‘Are you listening to me?’
I nod, even though I haven’t been listening to him. I don’t want to listen to him any more. I want to be seven years old again, before we met Joe, before Mammy got sick, before everything … all the pain. Before it all went wrong.
‘So? Is there something else?’ He is looking directly at me, his eyes boring into me.
‘Why can’t it just be the case that you believe, or you see, how completely unreasonable they are all being? That you see what they are doing. They’re messing with my head and they know they can … they know I’m vulnerable …’
I realise I’ve possibly said too much. Will he think I’m just vulnerable because I’m bereaved? Will he probe deeper?
‘How are you vulnerable, Heidi?’ he asks, his voice soft, his face serious.
He’s still looking at me directly, searching my face for clues. There is something in his expression, the furrowing of his brow, the sadness in his hazel eyes – a sadness that can’t be ignored. That is as real as any I have seen.
‘Tell me, please. You can tell me.’
I can’t breathe. I can’t hold his gaze for any longer. I have to look away. I realise that my hands are gripping the sides of my seat tightly. I feel that tightness, the nausea, in the pit of my stomach. Despite the freezing cold weather, the persistent deluge of sleet-filled rain on the windscreen, I feel a deep heat rise in me. Shame. Pain. Memories that I have tried to keep stuffed somewhere in the darkest recesses of my mind flood my head. It’s almost a physical impact, the way these flashing images hit me. And the physical sensations as if I’m back there. As if it is happening right now. But I’m bigger now, you see, I’m bigger and stronger and I have somewhere to run.
I unclip my seat belt and without really thinking, I am opening the car door and climbing out. I am climbing out and running, and I can hear Alex behind me. I can hear him call my name, but I know he can’t follow. He can’t leave Lily in the car and I’m being clever. I’m heading for alleyways and pathways where his car can’t go. I need to get away. That’s all I can think – that I need to get away.
My skin is crawling. It feels like a separate entity to me, with a mind of its own, burning, and I swear if I could tear it off, I absolutely would. I would tear it off and leave it to bleed on the snow-covered ground.
Alex’s voice fades into the background, the sting of hailstones hitting my face and hands giving me something to focus on as I just keep running.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Ciara
Now
I am emotionally numb. My heart is beating and I can feel the thrum of it in my chest. I am aware of my inhalation and exhalation. I’m aware that there is a hair clip digging into the right side of my head, pulling my hair too tight. I’m aware that my feet are freezing. That black court shoes were not the best choice for a day as cold as this. I can feel, physically, all that is going on around me.
But I am numb. I cannot feel right now. I cannot grieve. I cannot be angry. I cannot sympathise with my mother and Kathleen and their horror at the scene at my father’s graveside. I cannot deal with the people asking questions. I cannot cry. I cannot allow myself to feel at all because if I do, I fear I will become so very angry that I will never be able to put that anger back in its box and put it away.
It will become who I am.
I know Heidi isn’t acting rationally. I know that Heidi is damaged. But I never thought in a million years that she would make such a scene at a graveside. Her anger, her fear was so visceral, so raw that I was scared of what she might do. If it hadn’t been for Alex hauling her back into the car, I dread to think how far she may have gone.
The looks on the faces of our fellow mourners as she screeched and screamed like a banshee will stay with me forever. The horror. As if people didn’t have enough to talk about. To gossip about.
Although I imagine from now Heidi will become the focus of their gossip. They will be watching her. We will all be watching her.
DI Bradley had come to speak to me at the graveside after all the other mourners had left. I’d wanted some time with my father, you see, now that he was underground. Now that I knew I would never see his face again. I’d wanted to tell him I was sorry. Sorry that I wasn’t stronger. Sorry that I ever allowed myself to be caught up in his horrible life again. I wanted to tell him not to expect fresh flowers to be placed on his grave. I would not be standing there and weeping. He was gone and I was happy about that.
The other mourners had wandered off, tongues wagging, no doubt. My mother and Kathleen had taken shelter in the car, both of them borderline hysterical. I had been whispering my final thoughts to my father on the wind, when I heard footsteps approach. I looked up to see DI Bradley, his hands plunged deep in the pockets of his long black coat, his collar turned up to protect him from the elements, standing a short distance away.
‘I don’t mean to disturb you,’ he said. ‘I can wait until you’re done.’
I looked down at the hastily covered over grave in front of me. It had been covered with a wooden lid for now, which was decked in the wreaths people had sent to offer their sympathy. The mound of dirt, turning into claggy muck in the sleet and hail, would be pushed in on top of him later. The black marble headstone, bearing Natalie’s name, declaring her a beloved daughter, mother and partner in gold letters, would soon bear Joe’s name, too. In that space at the bottom. It was as if it had always been waiting for him.
I blinked and shook my head. ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I have nothing more to say to him. Not today, anyway.’
‘This must be very hard for you all,’ DI Bradley said.
I knew that his words were not just those of a police officer interested in catching the bad guy. They were the words of someone who sees the human tragedy playing out in front of him for what it is. A shitshow of a mess that is destroying everyone.
‘It’s not easy,’ I told him with a shrug.
‘Heidi was very upset.’
‘She was,’ I said. ‘She didn’t want him buried here. I didn’t realise. Maybe I should’ve.’
I didn’t want him thinking poorly of me. Thinking that what Heidi had said was true and that I could legitimately be that cruel without so much as a second thought.
‘We’ve looked into her history. Her mental health history,’ he said. ‘She has had a rough time. But she has been stable for quite some time.’
‘She has, I think. As I’ve told you before, we never actually spent a lot of time in each other’s company. Very little, in fact. Especially in recent years.’
‘But she was responsible for the majority of care your father received, especially as his health deteriorated.’
I blushed. There was a judgement in his statement. How awful was I that I didn’t do my bit.
‘You know, my relationship with my father could best be described as complicated. We didn’t have the time to work on it.’ I looked back to the gravestone. I’m not sure having all the time in the world would have made an ounce of difference.
‘Things were complicated. Things are complicated. I have to live with that. But it doesn’t mean I did anything to hurt him.’
‘No, of course it doesn’t,’ DI Bradley said. ‘I didn’t mean to imply anything. This isn’t an official visit. I’m just offering my sympathies.’
I nodded. ‘Thank you.’
‘We will get to the bottom of this, you know,’ he said, shaking my hand and walking away.
I didn’t know whether to take it as a threat or a promise. Or both.
I let the conversation run through my head all the way to Mum’s house, wishing we could just go home to our own place. But it’s expected we’ll go to Mum’s, to join the other mourners for tea and sandwiches for the wake. She’ll be so cross if we don’t.
Stella just holds my hand. She doesn’t ask questions. And when we arrive, she doesn’t question me when I say I need some space. I climb the stairs and sit in my old bedroom – a room my mother long ago transformed into a ‘sewing room’. She has an upcycled Parker Knoll chair by the window and I sit here doing my best to hang on to the numbness that has come over me.
Heidi hasn’t shown her face. It’s a good thing. If she does, I don’t think anything in the world will be able to stop the rage from bursting out of me.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Heidi
Now
I find myself with the two people in the world I have always felt safe and secure with.
My grandparents live in a small, always overheated, flat in sheltered accommodation close to the city centre. They’ve lived there for more than ten years now and even though I wish they had somewhere with a little garden to potter about in, or somewhere just further away from the sometimes anti-social activity of the city centre, they seem happy.
They’ve done their best to make the one-bed flat their own; crammed as many of their possessions onto shelves or into cupboards so that there is still an air of the house I used to visit as a child about the place. Pride of place on the wall of their living room is a large framed photograph of my mother and me.
