by Claire Allan
As carefully as I can, I tiptoe out of my room, avoiding that squeaky floorboard, listening to what is happening downstairs.
I still don’t hear Ciara. Just Kathleen ranting, punctuated by thuds as if she’s throwing something. I peer over the bannister, down into the hall. The living room is open and with another thud, I see one of Joe’s precious books hit the floor – flung through the door. I look down to see a hand, an arm, prone on the floor as if someone is trying to crawl out of the living room to safety.
Ciara, I think as I start to shake. I have to help Ciara. I need to get help, but I have to think of Lily. I’ve no phone. I can’t call the police except … I remember the phone in Joe’s room. He barely used it, but it was there ‘for emergencies’.
I’d arranged to have it disconnected, but I can’t remember when. It might still be in service.
I pray that it’s still in service.
Back in that room – his room – I make my way gingerly to the chest of drawers, where the cheap cordless handset blinks at me from its cradle.
I pick it up and press the call button and I pray, as hard as I can, that the line will still be active.
At the sound of the dialling tone I find myself fighting the urge to fall to my knees. Shaking, the numbers on the handset blurring in front of my eyes, I dial 999.
Help is coming.
Help will be here.
I just pray it’s on time.
Chapter Seventy-Three
Heidi
Now
I will never take this for granted. I will never not appreciate the strong man who is lying by my side. I will never complain (well, not much) when Lily wakes in the night needing a feed, or a change or just a cuddle. I will never complain about the jammy handprints she has left on the carpet, or the times she manages to make such a mess of herself that a bath for us both is the only way to clean up.
I won’t complain about teething. I won’t complain about Alex sleeping on while I feed our baby and revel in her pureness.
I will enjoy every moment, because this is my second chance. This is my chance to experience the childhood I should’ve had back then. The childhood he stole from me.
‘You’ll have to be careful not to spoil her,’ Ciara said the last time we met.
I’d laughed, especially as Ciara, who declares herself to be the least maternal person in Christendom, had brought a teddy bear with her that was at least the same size, if not bigger, than Lily herself.
Ciara and me? Well, we’re not best friends or anything. But we’re trying. She spent five days in hospital after the attack. Kathleen had managed to break two of her ribs and puncture a lung. Along with the books, Kathleen had kicked her in the stomach several times. There were concerns about internal bleeding, but thankfully she was fine. She is making a good recovery, physically. And mentally, she’s getting there. With the help of Stella, of course.
And I’m trying, too. Because we both know what it’s like to have been hurt so badly. We carry the same emotional scars. We’re getting counselling. Going to support groups. Trying to meet once a week, for a stroll along the quay and then a coffee. It’s been four months since Joe died and the winter is giving way into spring. There’s a lightness to the air that I don’t think is entirely down to the change in the season.
Sometimes Stella comes to join us. Sometimes Alex meets us when he has finished work. He’s doing okay. He still feels some guilt about not calling for help for Joe, even though the doctors and the police have told him there was nothing that could’ve been done for him at that stage anyway.
Kathleen had done a good enough job to send Joe almost all the way to hell – just not quite far enough. She tried, of course, even after the assault, to pin the blame for Joe’s death on Ciara and me, and on Alex, too. Even though she knew she was facing jail anyway for the assault on Ciara, she still seemed determined to punish us.
But she underestimated the power of a guilty conscience. Poor Dr Sweeney – living with the secret got too much for him, especially when he saw Ciara, bloodied and bruised in her hospital bed. He’s a good man, I still believe that. He was trying to help in his own way, but he’ll pay the price for covering up for Kathleen, who seems not one bit sorry for the position she put him in.
Of course Kathleen had also underestimated the value of our testimony. Ciara and I had cried our way through several boxes of tissues as we had outlined the years of abuse we had suffered to the police. Ciara told me how she thought we might not be Joe’s only victims. That she thought Kathleen may have been targeted, too – but when the police asked her about it, she reacted with the same anger she had shown Ciara.
Marie was devastated, of course. I believe she genuinely knew nothing of her husband’s perversions. She has finally taken her wedding ring off and reverted to her maiden name.
As for Joe, his remains were exhumed and he was buried, alone, in a plot further down the cemetery. I’m not even sure where his plot is, but that’s fine by me. I have no desire to visit his grave. I think he’ll have a lonely rest there.
Me? I’m determined to move on. Ciara is, too. The house is on the market. There have been a few offers. Young families looking for a place to build happy memories. It will be gone soon and I hope all those painful memories with it.
The rest of our life awaits. Alex stirs in his sleep, turns over and wraps his arm around me. I feel secure. I feel loved.
I feel free.
Epilogue
Kathleen
Then
I didn’t like seeing my big brother look so weak. So pathetic. So scared. It was so unlike Joe. Normally he was this larger-than-life character, full of self-confidence. Sometimes he was too full of self-confidence, but we all had our faults.
Joe had always had a swagger about him. A sense that he was destined for bigger things. The first in our family to stay on at school past sixteen, he’d been determined to rise above the fairly basic working-class lifestyle he’d grown up with.
Joe knew things – all the facts in the world. I could listen to him tell me stories about far-flung countries and exotic insects, the great battles in the history, the Greek myths; his knowledge seemed endless.
Being nine years younger than him, I had hero-worshipped him. Loved it when he took me out on the back of his bike to meet his friends. He never saw me as the annoying little sister – not the way my friends’ brothers saw them. And he always bought me sweets. A quarter of cola cubes in a white paper bag. I just had to give him the first one, to make sure it wasn’t poisoned, he’d say.
Now he was in pain, pale, and his mood was dipping day by day.
‘I’m scared,’ he’d told me as I sat holding his hand at his bedside.
‘What of?’ I asked. ‘We’ll take care of you, I promise.’
‘I’m not scared of dying,’ he said, ‘or even the pain that might come with it. I’m scared of what happens after.’
It wasn’t something I wanted to think about too much. I think I was still in denial about his illness. Just the day before, I’d wept in Dr Sweeney’s office, told him the thought of seeing Joe suffer and die was almost more than I could take. I couldn’t even think about after.
‘We’ll take care of you then, too,’ I said, gently rubbing his hand. ‘We’ll do right by you.’ I couldn’t hold back my tears, but nor could Joe.
‘I don’t mean like that,’ he’d said. ‘I mean the afterlife. Where I go. My soul, you know.’
‘You’re a good man,’ I told him.
‘I wasn’t always,’ he said and his eyes flickered from mine.
‘You repented and you stopped,’ I said. ‘That’s what matters.’
I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t want to have this conversation. There are things I had buried deep in the recesses of my mind and Joe’s sins, those awful ones, were one of them.
‘I could get Father Brennan for you, to hear a confession. It might put your mind at rest a little.’
‘I think my sins are beyond what Father Brennan could
fix for me,’ he said sadly.
‘But if I could forgive you …’ I said, my voice faltering.
‘The others haven’t,’ he said.
‘Others?’
I felt a shiver run through me. I knew of one. Heidi. I’d suspected something when I stayed at the house. I’d confronted him and he’d promised that he would stop. He promised me he hadn’t hurt anyone else.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve been so weak. I didn’t mean to. I couldn’t help it. I really tried, really, really tried.’
‘Who?’ I asked, my voice firm. I pulled my hand from his.
‘Does it matter now?’ he said. ‘It will all come out when I’m gone. I’m sure of it.’
‘Who?’ I asked again.
Who else had been told they were Joe McKee’s ‘favourite’? His ‘special girl’. I remembered how confused it had made me feel, but how I loved him. And how he had cried when I was older and asked him about it. How he said he was a bad person and he should just kill himself. And I’d be so, so scared that he would that I told him it was okay. I told him I was okay because that was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?
He whispered two names. Ciara and Heidi, of course.
‘When did it stop?’ I asked him.
‘I don’t remember … maybe Heidi was around thirteen. Something like that.’
I knew immediately that was at least two years after I’d left. Two years after he’d promised me, swore to me that he wouldn’t do it again.
He had lied to me. He had betrayed my trust once again. Something snapped.
‘They’ll tell everyone, after I’m gone, I know it. If not before. Everyone will know I’m a monster.’
I soothed him, because it felt like the right thing to do. I told him that I would sort it out, just as I did before. He wasn’t to worry.
What I didn’t tell him was that I had no intention of our family secrets being spilled. I had no intention of people asking me questions. Asking me did I know. Asking me if he did it to me, too. Because I loved him, as flawed as he was. As much of a monster as he was, he was still my big brother and if I could do one thing for him I would make sure his reputation was protected.
It was a mercy killing of sorts, in the end. I had left him, content, and gone downstairs. I had looked at the faces of the two young women whose lives he had destroyed. I had thought of the child I had been. Nine years old, or was it eight? I thought of all the times he told me it was because he loved me. All those times I believed him. Helped him.
I couldn’t stand to have any of us, wounded and damaged as we were, dance attendance on him when he had caused us so much pain. I knew we never had a chance of getting justice for his crimes, but I could make sure it was over. Really over. For us all.
I think I was in a haze when I did it. If I hadn’t been, maybe I’d have seen that stupid diary. Taken it with me, made sure no one ever read those words. But you see, I really didn’t plan it. I just popped my head around the door to his room and saw him sleeping there, like a baby. Without a care in the world. Sure that he would be protected in this life and the next – that his reputation would remain unsullied while he had destroyed three lives.
That’s when I lifted the pillow.
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Acknowledgements
Oh, this book was a doozy to write! It challenged me more than any other I’ve written because I wanted to do the subject matter justice.
There are a lot of people who helped me along the way.
This book’s first and biggest cheerleader was my agent of almost 14 years, Ger Nichol, who saw something in the fairly ropey earlier drafts and encouraged me to keep digging and teasing out this storyline. She gave me faith in the book and in myself as a writer when I was struggling to find it myself and I am incredibly grateful.
Also encouraging and cheering, and holding my hand through the scary bits, was my editor Helen Huthwaite whose faith in my writing is massively appreciated, as is her keen eye and her ability to push me to make a book the best it can be.
Along with Phoebe Morgan, who is taking over the reins while Helen is on maternity leave, I know that I have the best editorial team in the world behind me.
So love and thanks to all at Avon and Harper Collins Ireland for all the incredible work they do behind the scenes to get my books looking great, onto shelves and into people’s hearts. Their enthusiasm and dedication is second to none. A special mention to Claire Pickering who has once again made the copy-editing process a relatively painless one.
To my police sources, who offered information on police procedure in such cases, including my sister-in-law Inspector Penny Jones of the Cheshire Police, and Karen – thank you for your guidance.
Also thanks to those lovely Twitter people who offered me advice on autopsies and the release of remains in ongoing criminal cases.
Any mistakes in the above are mine and mine alone.
To sell books, authors need booksellers and huge thanks to all those who get behind my titles and support me and this industry. In particular, love and thanks to Jenni at Little Acorns, Dave at No Alibis, Bob (the giver of the BEST hugs) at the Gutter Bookshop and the team in Eason, Foyleside. Thanks also to the supermarket buyers who put my books front and centre.
Heidi Murphy of WH Smith in Ireland has been a huge support to me, and happened to mention that you don’t get many Heidis in books these days. So I’m delighted to have named a character after her in this book.
To my writer friends who have just been amazing and who fully understand how insane this business can be, thank you. You have gone above and beyond. Thank you in particular to John Marrs, Louise Beech, Rowan Coleman, Liz Nugent, Cally Taylor, Sheila O’Flanagan and Brian McGilloway.
Special thanks to Jane Casey and Alex Barclay who took time out of their hectic lives to read this.
Special thanks to my best writing pal, Fionnuala Kearney who did most of the tea-pouring, and wine-pouring, and Diet Coke providing, and listening and hugging. And thanks to her husband Aidan for allowing me to steal his wife every now and again and to the wider Kearney family who always make me feel welcome when I visit the Claire Allan Suite.
To all the journalists and book bloggers who provide invaluable support and who take part in blog tours and offer reviews. You are amazingly generous with your time and praise and I am forever grateful. Special love to Mairead at Swirl & Thread and Margaret Bonass Madden at Bleachhouse Library.
To the friends who have held my hand, Julie-Anne, Vicki, Carey Ann, Erin, Catherine – thank you.
To my readers, Facebook followers, Twitter pals – thank you so much. Our chats and interaction help to make a very isolated profession a lot more bearable. Thanks in particular to Sam Missingham for invaluable industry support and advice.
And lastly to my family who are my everything. Mum and Dad, Peter, Eavan, Lisa, Mark, Emma, Niall, Abby, Ethan, Darcy, Arya, Thomas and Finn – thank you. To my husband, Neil, thank you for giving me the time and space to live my dream. To my children, Joe and Cara – everything is for you both. You are the greatest loves of my life. And to the two frankly disinterested cats, and the one very interested and amazingly cute puppy, Izzy, thanks for the cuddles.
About the Author
Claire Allan is a former journalist from Derry in Northern Ireland, where she still lives with her husband, two children, two cats and a hyperactive puppy.
In he
r eighteen years as a journalist she covered a wide range of stories from attempted murders, to court sessions, to the Saville Inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday, right down to the local parish notes.
She has previously published eight women’s fiction novels. Her first thriller, Her Name Was Rose, was published in 2018 and became a USA Today bestseller, followed by Apple of My Eye and Forget Me Not in 2019.
When she’s not writing, she’ll more than likely be found on Twitter @claireallan.
Also by Claire Allan:
Her Name Was Rose
Apple of My Eye
Forget Me Not
About the Publisher
Australia
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United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
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United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
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