by Claire Allan
I lifted the matches from the fireplace, struck one and watched it burn until it threatened to singe my skin. Then I threw it in the direction of the delicately wrapped notebook and all the other Christmas presents, and I watched until they caught fire one by one.
It was only when the flames started to lick across the carpet that something in me, a survival instinct of sorts, kicked in and I panicked.
I screamed for help, rushing to the kitchen, grabbing a pan full of water that was wholly inadequate and throwing it at the fire. The smoke alarms were pealing at this stage and I saw Joe, his face stricken, at the top of the stairs.
‘What have you done this time, you stupid girl?’
Chapter Fifty-One
Heidi
Now
I can’t let Marie tell Alex about what happened. I can’t let her control that narrative. No doubt she will leave out how completely horrific Ciara was before it all happened. How she had stalked me and humiliated me. She will focus on the fire, the six weeks I spent in in-patient care afterwards. The months in therapy. How I had to miss out on the end of my first year at university and start all over again the following academic year.
I was the demon. Ciara, who had admitted sending all those messages, seemed to be absolved of her sins. She had been drunk. Hurting. And sure, it had been almost two years since the last message.
I got a half-hearted passive-aggressive apology delivered to me while I was lying semi-comatose in hospital trying to find the energy to do anything other than stare at four walls. Joe visited almost every day. It wasn’t out of love for me, far from it. It was because the thought of me being in therapy, of spilling his sordid secrets, terrified him. I saw the fear on his face with each and every visit. I saw the silent pleading.
He needn’t have worried. Despite the gentle probing of my therapist, there was no way I was going to spill my deepest, darkest secrets to anyone. I was still too mired in shame, back then.
But standing outside of the kitchen now, hearing how damaging just one side of the narrative can be, I was starting to think it was time they all heard the whole truth, after all.
But I know that if I lose it now, it will only fuel their narrative that I’m crazy.
Stella is the first to spot me. Her face colours, knowing they have been caught out. She isn’t quite as obvious as to cough or make a dramatic change in conversation but she does say hello. Her smile is soft. Her eyes warm and welcoming. I like Stella. She seems to be a calming influence on Ciara and a nice person. It’s strange in this moment that she feels like the one ally I have in all of this.
‘Heidi,’ she says. ‘You’re here. Are you feeling okay?’
‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ I say.
Alex is staring at me as if he has never seen me before, but he isn’t speaking. I try not to focus on him, because if I do, if I see how disappointed in me he is, I might just break.
‘It’s been a tough few days,’ Stella says and I nod.
The others in the room haven’t spoken yet. I wonder if they’ve even taken a breath. Bar the ticking of the big kitchen clock on the wall and the shuffle of the chair I pull out to sit on, the room is silent.
‘It has,’ I say. ‘And there have been a few unpleasant surprises.’
I glance at Ciara. She doesn’t react. Not even a little. There is no trace of surprise, of hurt, of anger or even denial in her expression.
Kathleen is first to speak. ‘I understand there has been a bit of a mix-up.’
I remind myself not to give in to my heightened emotions. ‘Yes, you could say that.’
‘Sweetheart,’ she says and I dig my nails in deeper.
I am not Kathleen McKee’s sweetheart and nor will I ever be.
‘So much gets muddled at these times. We’re all through ourselves with grief. I swear I don’t know myself these days. I keep thinking I hear him or see him …’
She starts to cry, which causes a flurry of activity. Hugs from Ciara, a tissue from Marie. Stella announcing she will put the kettle on.
Alex moves. ‘I think I hear Lily. I’ll go and get her.’
Lily isn’t crying. I know that. I spot the baby monitor on the counter – no echoing cries through it, no moving lights, but still I step back and let him pass me.
‘I think maybe we have some things to sort out,’ Ciara interjects. Her voice is soft, but the expression on her face is hard.
‘I don’t think this is the time or place,’ I say. ‘But yes, there are things to sort out. To finally deal with. There have been enough whispered conversations, don’t you think?’
‘I agree,’ she says.
The tension is palpable. I can see her stiffen.
Marie speaks. ‘I’m sorry if today was upsetting for you, Heidi. I’m guessing you feel there has been some sort of a mix-up regarding the grave.’
‘I don’t feel there was a mix-up. There was a mix-up. Factually. Joe was never meant to be buried with my mother.’
‘Perhaps we can resolve this, when we’re all feeling a little less emotional.’ Marie says. ‘There are bound to be things we can do if you find this very distressing. Perhaps we could have him moved to a new plot?’
Kathleen gasps. ‘Oh God, that would be unbearable. Today was hard enough.’
‘But it clearly means so much to Heidi and really, we must all think of Heidi, mustn’t we?’ Ciara says. ‘Some things never change. There isn’t a scene or a family occasion that Heidi can’t make all about her, even a family funeral.’
She’s waiting for me to bite. She is goading me. Everyone can see it and feel it, and I know that whatever I say or do next will have lasting consequences.
No good comes of speaking in a temper, though. She has painted me quite successfully as unhinged already. Displaying any sign that it could in fact be true would be a bad move. Especially now, when the police are more keen than ever to pin this on someone.
‘I think it’s best we just leave all this for today,’ I say. ‘Nothing good can come of it.’
With my face blazing, tears unshed and a deep sense of shame eating at me, I turn and walk to the door. When Alex arrives downstairs with Lily, I tell him we’re leaving. He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t speak at all, in fact. He just follows me out of the door and to the car.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Ciara
Now
The white wine in my glass is tepid now. Almost undrinkable. I’ve been nursing it for the last forty-five minutes, too distracted by my thoughts to bring it to my mouth and sip from it. Added to that, I feel sick. Deep in my stomach there’s gnawing nausea that just won’t go away. I don’t want to eat or drink.
I wish I could sleep, but even that seems to be eluding me at the moment. I’ve been half watching something on the TV. Some reality show about properties being fixed up for half of nothing and transformed from perfectly lovely homes to functional spaces with cool, clinical lines. Where so much as a stray cup would have the place looking completely disordered.
A sandal-wearing male designer is waffling on about natural light and feng shui, and all I can think is that he has little to be worrying about. If I had any strength left in my body at all, I would lift the remote and switch the TV off, or, better still, hurl it at the TV.
The anger from earlier has left me drained. Exhausted. Pinned to the sofa with grief.
Stella sits down beside me, lifts up my legs and places them across her lap before repositioning the throw over them. She looks tired. Older. We’re all a bit broken by the last week or so.
‘How are you?’ she asks.
I know she expects an answer – a proper answer and not just a shrug of the shoulders, which I’m not sure I’ve the energy to deliver anyway.
‘Tired,’ I say, setting my wine glass on the floor. I know I won’t drink any more from it.
‘Today was rough,’ she says.
‘It was.’
Stella sighs, strokes my lower leg with her hand. ‘Things with you
and Heidi. Have they always been this bad?’
‘Perhaps not this bad – but nobody had been murdered before,’ I say.
I know I’m being glib. I see Stella flinch at my words and I don’t want her to think badly of me. Or worse of me.
‘Yes, they have always been bad. Always. It didn’t start well. I was angry with her, and her mother, over Dad leaving. I felt he chose them over me and I hated them for it.’ I stop, take a deep breath and look back up her. ‘I know that sounds pathetic now, as a grown woman. But I was young then and he was my daddy. I never thought he would leave, but he did. And even when Natalie died, when I thought he might come back to us, he chose to stay on. He chose her over me, and I don’t think I’ve ever forgiven them for that.’
There’s a tightness in my chest.
‘It was a long time ago,’ Stella says softly.
‘It was. And I know that the adult me should be able to rationalise it all. Adult me does, to an extent, but there’s still this child in me who is so hurt by it all. And I’ve not always done the right thing, Stella. I’ve done bad things, you know. Things I’m not proud of. I can feel myself slipping back into those bad behaviours and it scares me. I should be better than this.’
Damn it, I feel the tightness in my chest rise up. A tingle in my nose, stinging in my eyes. I feel as if the floodgates, while not exactly opening, are about to crack a little.
‘We’ve all done the wrong thing when we’re hurting. Good people can do bad things for good reasons. And you’re a good person. I know that more than anything,’ Stella says, picking at invisible lint on the throw and looking downwards while she talks.
I shake my head. ‘I’m not sure I am,’ I say. ‘I’ve been so vindictive towards Heidi.’ My face blazes.
‘It’s understandable. She was your competition in a lot of ways. But it certainly doesn’t seem that she was fond of your father, either.’
‘That’s what angered me most when he left – you know, back then. That she seemed to hate him so much when I would’ve given anything to have him back. It was easier to hate her than hate him, I suppose. I didn’t want to see him as the enemy.’
‘But that changed?’ Stella says, probing gently. Her voice is calm and soft.
A tear falls and I wipe it away hastily, even though my arms are limp with exhaustion. I nod, just as I can feel my heart rate start to rise.
‘What happened to change it?’
I close my eyes. Images, snapshots of a time long gone flicker in my mind. Things I wasn’t sure for a long time were real. Things maybe I’m still not sure are real but I feel they are. Somewhere inside me I know they are. He called it love, but it wasn’t love, after all. It was never love. I’m scared to say the words. Afraid of judgement, even though I know that it wasn’t me, you see. I was never, ever the one at fault. I was a child.
I was only a child.
That bastard.
I was only a child, and he took so much from me and tried to convince me it was because he loved me just so very much. And then, despite all that ‘love’ he said he felt for me, and only me, he left. Shame washes over me. The shame borne out of all those confused, fucked-up feelings I experienced. The loyalty I showed him. How I begged him, this monster, to come back.
In a voice as small as I feel in that moment, my face blazing with shame, my voice choked with emotion and my stomach churning, the small sips of tepid wine threatening to rise from my stomach and splatter the floor, I speak. I close my eyes and say the words I’ve not said to a single person before.
‘When I remembered what he did to me.’
Chapter Fifty-Three
Ciara
Then
I was a precocious child. I was led to believe from a young age that the sun, moon and stars shone directly out of my backside. I was the apple of my mother’s eye but I was, undoubtedly, a daddy’s girl. I hero-worshipped the very ground he walked on. There was no one in the world who mattered to me as much as him, often to the annoyance of my mother.
We were a team and I would often be at his side as his ‘shadow’, going with him to the library or for long walks in the countryside. I’d sit with him while he did odd jobs around the house. Ask him to explain them to me. I’d always manage to get an extra cuddle or three from him, whenever I could.
I would tell him, with all the innocence that comes with being a young child, that I would marry him when I grew up.
‘But I’m already married to Mammy,’ he would say with a laugh.
‘Well,’ I’d tell him, full of the confidence of a six-year-old – the kind that leaves by the time teen years arrive and never comes back – ‘you’ll have to get Mammy a new person to marry, because I love you the mostest and we have to get married.’
I’d become quite distressed at the notion of ever living in a house where he wouldn’t be. I was as obsessed with him as any child would be with their father.
He knew that, of course. And there were times, after, when I wondered had I loved him too much? Had I brought it on myself?
That’s what he did to me. That’s how he damaged me. That I would dare question it was my fault.
I was six the first time.
Six.
I cry still for the baby I was then and what happened to her.
He had come upstairs to read me a bedtime story. Mammy was downstairs. I could hear her singing to herself in the kitchen as he did things that I instinctively knew were wrong. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t like it. I was scared but he was my daddy. And he loved me ‘most of anyone in the whole world’.
Afterwards, he told me I was his best girl. That he loved me to the moon and back, and that no other daddy and little girl ever loved each other as much we did. We couldn’t tell anyone, he said, because they would only be jealous. He’d laughed when he added, ‘Especially not Mammy! She’d be so jealous and we haven’t found her a new person to marry yet, have we?’ he’d winked.
I heard him whistling as he walked downstairs afterwards, heard him joining in singing with my mammy when he reached the kitchen. He sounded so happy. They sounded so happy. I just felt incredibly confused by it all.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Ciara
Now
Stella sleeps with her arm wrapped tightly around my middle. She is the big spoon to my little spoon and her embrace is reassuring, protective, pure.
She held me in her arms and rocked me while I cried and roared and spilled my darkest secrets out. She said all the right things. She cried too. For the child I was and for the woman I have become – one who is scared to trust, who is confused about love, who lashes out with a tongue so sharp it can cut. The woman who has been holding this secret shame inside for two decades.
All the time she said the words I needed to hear, over and over and over. This was not my fault. I was a child. I did nothing wrong. He, Joe McKee, the man who I was grieving for in the most fractured of ways, was a monster.
I talked about all my mixed feelings. My anger at his betrayal. The rising sense that something was very wrong. The misplaced love. The rejection. The pain and anger. The shame. There was so much shame. Shame that I had, despite everything, begged him to come back into my life. How sick was I?
We talked about help. About support. About counselling. She held my hair back when I did indeed empty what little had been sitting in my stomach down the toilet. And she sat me tenderly on the edge of the bath and gently washed away my tears and the grime of the day with a facecloth.
She put my toothpaste on my brush for me and I know that if my arms had been too tired to brush, she would have done that, too.
She helped my exhausted body, the one that had felt as if it was wrong and dirty all these years, into a bath and she gently, so very gently, soaped me and cleaned me. And when we were done, for the first time in years I felt truly clean.
My body numb, she helped me to dress, slipping on my knickers for me and pulling the oversized T-shirt I slept in over my head. Taking my brush
from the dresser, she teased it through my hair, and then she pulled back the bed covers and helped me to lie down.
‘No one will ever hurt you again,’ she’d whispered as she had wrapped her arms around me.
And I had never felt so loved, or so protected before. I felt the shame that had held me down for almost my whole life start to ebb away.
The sun is shining on the front of the house at Aberfoyle Crescent. It’s glinting off the windows, making the place look warm and welcoming. There’s no sign at all, from the exterior, of the drama that has gone on behind those doors over the last week.
If walls could talk, I think wryly, they’d tell a very different story on the inside. Then again, it’s definitely better that they can’t.
I wish that I could turn back the clock and not come to see him, even though he was ill. It was selfish of him to pull me back into his drama again. He wanted to ‘make amends’, he said, and yet he’d never once talked about the past. That sordid past.
Maybe, if he had even said sorry, I could be less angry. But he hadn’t. The whole thing was just his way of trying to control me all over again. And I had fallen for it, because a part of me, that damaged part of me that was still mired in shame and confusion, believed it might have helped, needed him to say sorry and that he loved me, and that he knew he had done very bad things.
But I’d expected too much of him, just like I always did.
He knew if I’d ignored his request I’d look like the evil, ungrateful daughter. In his arrogance he had been sure that I would never reveal his filthy secrets to anyone. Or maybe it wasn’t arrogance at all. I had kept quiet for years, after all. I had not called out his sick actions. Maybe if I had …
I try not to think about that. I try to hold on to the sense of relief that I feel now he is gone. Now he is rotting in the ground.
I never have to fear hearing his voice, or seeing his face, or feeling his touch again.
But I do have to clear out his belongings from the house Heidi so desperately wants to get rid of. I try not to think about that too much, either. Why she wants to get rid of the house so quickly. Why she is so damaged.
