by Claire Allan
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 redemption.
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
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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.
But I can feel it all slipping away. A dizziness washes over
me, tingling. A sensation, almost as if I’m floating, as if I could just drift away. And the pain stops, you see. My lungs stop
burning. I stop needing to breathe in. There is a moment of
relief.
Of false hope.
There is a moment where I’m between this world and the
judgement that awaits me.
Then the darkness stretches out in front of me.
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Chapter Nineteen
Heidi
Then
Joe McKee was a clever man. He was very good at making
people believe he was a nice person. I learned that very quickly.
People always smiled when they saw him in the street. They
would stop to talk to him, and he would listen intently to their
news and offer his nuggets of wisdom, or reassurance or condo-
lence as appropriate.
I quickly lost count of the number of times I heard people
say: ‘You’re a sound fella, Joe,’ and they’d pat him on the back.
Sometimes they’d slip a shiny fifty pence piece into my hand
and tell me to treat myself to something. They’d give me a
sympathetic look and pat me on the head. I’d smile and thank
them, because that was what was expected, but I never bought
sweets, not with that money. That money always felt like a
consolation prize.
I’d started to think that the whole world must have known
was what happening in my house. That they couldn’t be oblivious
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to the fact that I was a troubled child, that something was badly wrong. I started to think that they either didn’t care or maybe,
worse than that, this was something that happened to all little
girls and just nobody ever talked about it.
Like how nobody ever talked about the fact that Santa wasn’t
real. I learned that one quickly too, the year my mother died.
Instead of the lovingly wrapped pile of presents under the tree,
there were some books and a selection box. New underwear
wrapped up in crinkly Christmas paper. Pants and vests.
Nightdresses, when I preferred pyjamas. Maybe a board game,
something we would have to play together, because I never,
ever asked anyone to come back to the house with me. I was
too scared to. Imagine they found out? Imagine if he hurt them,
too?
No, it was better to go it alone. And I had my dolls for
company. And I had my growing collection of fifty pence pieces,
which I saved in a spare Trócaire box I’d taken from school. If
I saved enough, maybe I could get a plane ticket and fly away
to America or somewhere. Then I’d write to my granny and
grandad and tell them I was safe and happy, and maybe they
would come and visit me.
I’d never tell Joe, though. Never, ever tell him where I was.
So it broke my heart, and my spirit, the day I came home
from school to find Joe standing in the living room, in front
of the fire, the Trócaire box, used to collect money for charity
during Lent, on the mantlepiece.
It was May, I remember that. It had been a sunny day. Warm.
I’d made a daisy chain at school and I was still wearing it around my neck when I got home. I had a sense of things being, maybe,
possibly okay. That things were going to be okay.
Then I saw him. Saw the expression on his face. Thunderous.
Not the smiling, genial ‘sound fellah’ everyone thought he
was.
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‘Would you care to explain this?’ he said, thrusting the box at me, a picture of a starving African child, eyes wide, staring
at me.
‘I was just . . .’ I was trying to think. How to tell him I was
saving to run away. How I never wanted to see him again. Or
what to say so he wouldn’t know my plan, after all. That I
wou
ld still have a chance to get away with it.
But I didn’t get past those three words.
‘You were just what, Heidi? Stealing? From a charity? From
these starving children?’ He thrust the box at me, so close to
my face that I closed my eyes in anticipation of an impact that
didn’t come.
‘That’s not what . . .’
‘I know people feel sorry for you, poor little girl, having lost
her mammy.’ He spat the words at me. I felt flecks of his spittle
hit my face, his coffee-tainted breath fill my nostrils. ‘But this!
This is despicable. I have never been more ashamed of anything
in my life. After all I’ve done. After all I do and you steal from a Christian charity from people who have nothing?
‘Maybe you’d like to live out there, Heidi, starving, sick, alone.
Then you might stop being such a selfish, moody little bitch!
May God forgive you for what you’ve done!’
He grabbed me by the arm so tight that I feared it would
break and he hauled me through the house, the Trócaire box
in his other hand, and into the street. He let go only to open
the car door and then he practically threw me into the back
seat, my head colliding with the sill of the door as I fell. The
skin of my bare legs burned against the hot leather of the car
seat and I tried to curl up.
‘Sit properly, girl, or so help me!’ he hissed, of course keeping
his voice low enough that no neighbour out mowing their
lawns or soaking up the sun could hear the vitriol with which
he spoke.
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He wouldn’t tell me where we were going, and I dared not ask more than once. Soon we were at the parochial house and
he was hauling me from the car, my daisy chain breaking and
falling to the ground, trampled over by his heavy shoes as he
dragged me to the door.
‘Now, Heidi, you are to tell Father Campbell what sins you
have committed and you are to beg him for his forgiveness.
You wicked child, it’s a good thing your mother is dead so she
doesn’t have to be humiliated by how badly you’ve turned out.’
Father Campbell was an old school priest. Small, round,
hunched with his white hair that seemed to sprout as much
from his nose and his ears as it did from the top of his head.
He didn’t ever speak during Mass, he bellowed as if he had the
power to bring hellfire forth on command. Every child I knew
lived in mortal fear of Father Campbell and I was no different.
My legs were wobbly beneath me, my arm aching from Joe’s
tight grasp as he dragged me towards the large wooden door
of the parochial house. I couldn’t help but cry even though I
was trying so hard to be brave. I always tried to be brave no
matter what, but this . . . It was beyond me.
I prayed with all my power that Father Campbell wouldn’t
be in. That Father Brennan would answer the door instead. He
was young then, new to the fold, considered to be approachable.
He told funny stories when he visited us at school. I might
have a chance of him believing me.
But it wasn’t Father Brennan who answered the door. It was
Father Campbell, who glowered at me from beneath his
heavy-set eyebrows as Joe told him of his deep shame at finding
the ‘stolen’ Trócaire box and money in my room.
I don’t know which scared me most. The abuse I took from
Father Campbell, who told me hell had a place waiting just for
nasty little thieves like me – a place where I would be shown
no mercy for stealing from innocent, starving children. Or the
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fact that Joe handed over my savings, my escape route from all this, to Father Campbell and my hope at getting away was gone.
The beating I got back at home could not have broken me
more than the loss of that money. The beatings I knew I could
take as long as I knew I could get away some day.
Of course, what followed the beating was worse. The creaking
of the floorboard and Joe, his face a picture of misery at my
door, telling me he was sorry. That he had done it only for my
own good, you see. I had to learn. I had to be a good girl.
Then he crossed the room and even as I cowered from him,
he climbed into the bed beside me.
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Chapter Twenty
Heidi
Now
‘The roads will be icy,’ Kathleen says. ‘You’d better be careful
if you’re heading out in it.’
She has barely spoken to me since our earlier conversation
in the kitchen and the drama of me cutting my finger. She
keeps looking at me though, and I don’t like how exposed I
feel.
‘I think maybe I’ll stay here tonight,’ she says to no one in
particular. ‘The chances of getting a taxi won’t be great.’
‘We can drop you to Pauline’s,’ Alex offers.
I don’t give out that dropping her to Pauline’s will take us
at least ten miles in the opposite direction of home.
‘I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble,’ she says, her
voice meek.
‘It’s no trouble at all,’ Alex says.
‘You’re very kind,’ Kathleen says, yawning again.
She’s exhausted. We’re all exhausted. None of us are sleeping
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well. I can tell just by looking around the room. Dark circles and bags under our eyes. Pale skin, bodies stiff with tension.
We’re no further forwards in coming up with a cohesive plan
about Joe’s care, but we are at least faking an air of mutual
respect. No, not respect. Tolerance. We are tolerating each other.
‘You go on,’ Ciara says. ‘We’ll stay here tonight, Stella and I.
In the spare room.’ She looks me square in the eyes as she says
this.
Is she marking her territory on this house? Still sore from
my outburst yesterday. I’ve apologised so there’s nothing I can
do, or am willing to do, to appease her further.
‘Well, we should get going, then,’ I say, more keen than ever
to get away from this house and the stifling atmosphere.
‘I’ll get Lily from upstairs,’ Alex says, standing up and stretching before going to get Lily from my old bedroom.
I don’t want to be left alone with the others, so I set about
packing up Lily’s things and putting my coat on. I’m in the
hall, cramming a pale pink blanket into the top of her changing
bag, when Alex appears at the top of the stairs. His face is pale, his eyes wide. He isn’t carrying Lily and for a moment I feel
my heart sink to my stomach and fear grip me.
‘Lily?’ I mutter. ‘Where’s Lily?’
I feel my head start to spin. Why doesn’t he have Lily? The
look on his face. Something bad has happened. My knees start
to go beneath me. He can barely speak. He shakes his head
slowly.
&
nbsp; I think I might throw up. It feels like minutes, hours even,
are passing when really it can only be a second or two. Then
he speaks.
‘It’s Joe,’ he says.
A guttural cry breaks forth from my chest – and it’s not for
Joe. It’s borne of relief that Lily is okay. Ciara comes out of the hall to see what the fuss is about.
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‘What is it?’ she asks, her eyes darting between Alex and me.
‘He’s dead,’ Alex says, matter of factly, as if he can hardly
believe what he is saying. ‘Joe’s dead. I’m so sorry.’ There is a
tremor in his voice now.
Joe McKee is dead. I inhale deeply.
In that moment everything is still. The ticking of the clock
is the only thing to punctuate the silence. I can almost feel
Alex’s words, and the realisation of what they mean, move
around the room, around the house. They wash over us all, and
they start to sink in and the noise builds slowly. Kathleen wails, quietly at first, but her cry increases in volume and intensity
within the same breath. Ciara calmly, maybe too calmly, asks
Alex to repeat himself, and she’s already moving towards the
stairs as if she needs to see it for herself. Stella is calling her back. Alex is looking at me, watching for my reaction, perhaps.
I’m frozen to the spot. I dare not move, or hope . . .
Ciara pushes past Alex, knocking him flat against the wall.
Stella is following her up the stairs pleading with her to slow
down. Kathleen has slumped to the floor and she is keening,
rocking backwards and forwards. She is muttering something.
The words of a prayer or something that I can’t quite hear over
the buzzing in my head. Alex moves to her and not me, sitting
beside her and wrapping his arms around her.
‘It looks very peaceful,’ he says, his voice shaky. ‘He looks
very peaceful. He must have just gone in his sleep. I’m so sorry.’
I watch them as if I’m watching a TV show. Without emotion.
Without a feeling it is real.
I hear a shout from the top of the stairs. A cry out. A ‘Daddy’
– it’s the most vulnerable I have ever known Ciara to be.
Stella appears at the top of the stairs, her face as ashen as
Alex’s. ‘I think we should call an ambulance,’ she says.
‘But if he’s dead . . .’ I blurt. My voice sounds funny.
‘I think it’s still protocol,’ she says.
