by Claire Allan
and down the stairs over the course of the evening to take care
of him. Or to take care of Lily. Or to use the bathroom. It was
all muddled.
‘I’m not sure,’ I say and DC King looks to Ciara, who shrugs,
too. ‘We were all in and out with him during the evening.’
‘Okay,’ Detective Constable King says before taking contact
details for us all.
There seems to be an awful lot of red tape in this ‘just a
formality’ business.
‘What happens now?’ Ciara asks.
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‘Well, your father’s remains will be taken to Belfast, where the postmortem will be carried out. There are no facilities for
this to take place closer to home, unfortunately. We should have
preliminary results fairly quickly and we will keep you informed.’
‘Will his remains be released afterwards? Might it still be
today?’ I ask.
‘That depends on the results of the postmortem,’ DI Bradley
interjects. ‘But we will keep you . . .’
‘Informed,’ Ciara butts in.
‘If you could, Officer, that would be appreciated,’ Stella says,
the lilt of her Glasgow accent softening the tension.
‘We are very sorry for your loss,’ DI Bradley says as he stands.
‘By all accounts Mr McKee was a well-liked man.’
Ciara nods. All fight seemingly gone. I don’t. I don’t react at
all. I don’t stand up or follow the officers to the door to let
them out. I think I’m afraid my legs will give out from under
me if I even try to stand.
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Chapter Twenty-Six
Heidi
Now
I’m afraid to speak, afraid to ask questions. I watch the door as
if someone will walk in with answers. I watch my phone. I do
my best to stay out of Ciara’s way, but I hear the rumblings of
a heated conversation between her and Stella behind the closed
door of the kitchen. I look out into the street, to where the
light the is already fading, and I wonder if people are peeking
out from behind their own curtains to see what is going on
here. Surely they must be wondering why his remains haven’t
been returned yet, why the official period of mourning has yet
to start. Did they notice the unmarked police car earlier?
I try not to think about the ‘unexplained marks’ that DI
Bradley spoke about. Try not to think about how police are
looking at all lines of inquiry or however he worded it. I defi-
nitely try, unsuccessfully, not to think about ‘foul play’ that may or may not be suspected or what that might mean. Except that
someone else may have been so angry with Joe that they may
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have done the one thing I have spent my whole life wanting to be brave enough to do.
I push those as far to the back of my mind as I can. That
way madness lies.
I go back to hovering. Waiting. Ignoring any phone call that
isn’t from the police or the undertaker. Ignoring text messages
asking what the arrangements are.
People are talking.
Gossip spreading.
There’s nothing we can do to control it.
I think about the postmortem. Try to imagine at what stage
in the macabre proceedings things may be at now. Marie has
gone to Belfast. None of us could face it. A friend has driven
her because she is much too distraught to have driven herself.
I have long suspected she still harboured some feelings for her
ex-husband. God knows why.
When she’d heard none of us were planning to go to Belfast,
she’d insisted on going, determined that Joe should not make
the journey alone – as if he hasn’t gone way past being able
to care. ‘He deserved to have family with him’ she had said.
There was no hint of judgement in her voice – just sadness.
They’ll definitely be in Belfast now. This could be the moment
that first incision is made. A straight line, diagonal, under his
collarbone. Like you see on TV. Is it like it is in the movies?
Solemn and respectful. Or is it all in a day’s work? Another
body on a slab to be carved and dissected. Another set of lungs
to examine. Mottled skin to be sliced, blood and tissue removed
and tested.
Thinking about it is making me sick. My stomach gurgles.
I don’t know if I need to eat something or throw up. Perhaps
a lungful of air will help.
I make a cup of milky tea, which I’m not sure I can stomach,
and walk the frost-covered back garden. In the dusk the frost
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sparkles, a reflection of the glow of the lights on in the kitchen.
I try to focus on that while I wish I hadn’t given up smoking
when I was pregnant with Lily. A cigarette would be perfect
just now.
I hear footsteps and turn. Alex is at the door, his own cup
in his hand. It will be a black coffee. Extra strong. He drinks
too much caffeine, I think in passing. Wondering how fast it
makes his heart beat. Would they be able to see his addiction
if they carved out his heart in a postmortem and examined it?
‘How’re you holding up?’ he asks, sitting two cushions on
the patio chairs so that we can sit down more comfortably.
I pull a face. One I hope conveys that I don’t have the first
notion in the world how I’m holding up.
‘It’s scary,’ he says. ‘That they think someone might’ve hurt
him.’
I nod.
‘He wasn’t a very good man, was he?’ Alex asks.
I look at him and he is staring at the grass. He needs a shave
and a decent sleep. Probably something to eat.
‘No, he wasn’t,’ I say. ‘He wasn’t what people think he was.’
I feel shaky. This is a conversation I suppose I need to have
but don’t want to.
‘What was he like, Heidi? I mean, what was he really like?’
Alex’s eyes are on me now, looking into my eyes. And there’s
this place inside of me that is so filled with pain and so in need of healing that I almost tell him. I almost explain how Joe hurt
me. Abused me. Raped me. Yes, raped me. That word – that
experience. How he messed up every sense in my head of what
love and family meant. How he broke me and then couldn’t
understand why I was broken. It’s the same place that wants
me to stand up and applaud that he is dead.
But I see sadness in my husband’s eyes, and fear. It strikes me
that maybe, just maybe, he thinks I was the person who left
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the unexplained marks. That he should have seen it coming.
And once he thinks that, and once people start looking – because
they will start looking, and they will find out just what happened on that Christmas ten years ago –
they will conclude, without
question, that I killed Joe McKee.
I’m the most likely suspect. And it terrifies me to consider
that my husband may realise this.
I keep Alex’s gaze. ‘He didn’t know how to be a father. Not
to Ciara and not to me. He was cruel and selfish. I’d have been
better off in care than in this house. It breaks me to think
things would’ve been so different if only my grandparents had
been well enough to take care of me. Or if my mother had
known what he was really like before she died.
‘They were together two years and he never dropped his
perfect persona with her. It was only after she died that he
showed himself for what he was. It destroys me that she trusted
him to take care of me. It even made me really angry with her
for a long time. I wondered how could she have been so blind
and so irresponsible? And then I was angry with my grand-
parents for not taking me in anyway. Even with their problems.
I’m not saying I was perfect, Alex. I was an angry teenager.
Mixed up. But he? He was evil.’
Alex nods. I can see his eyes fill with unshed tears. I’ve said
more to him than I ever have before. Before I’d just say we
were never close. That we never really bonded. That Joe was
strict and, at times, controlling. All of which had been true. And it had been enough for him not to question me when I told
him I preferred a wedding away on a beach in Italy, just the
two of us and some friends. That I had no need to have a father
figure walk me down the aisle. That I made my duty visits to
Joe, but no more. Until he became sick and it all changed.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he says.
‘What for?’ I ask him.
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He opens his mouth to speak but we hear the back door open and Ciara steps out – a mug of tea or coffee in one hand
and her e-cig in the other.
‘I’m not disturbing anything?’ she asks.
Alex shakes his head. ‘No. No, of course not. Actually, I was
just going to go and check on Lily.’
‘Might be a good idea. I think I heard her crying a few
minutes ago.’
I bristle. ‘Could you not have told us?’
‘I am now,’ she says matter-of-factly as she draws on her e-cig
and releases billows of steam into the cool air. ‘It doesn’t do
babies any harm to cry it out now and again. They have to
learn to self-soothe,’ she says.
‘I think that’s for us, as her parents, to decide,’ I say as we
rush back to the house.
‘Well, I didn’t know where you were. For all I knew you
were upstairs with her.’
She steps out of the way to allow us to walk back into the
house, but not far enough that my throat doesn’t catch with
the rancid smell of whatever it is she has been vaping.
‘Heidi,’ she calls my name and I shoo Alex on, even though
I can’t hear Lily crying now.
I turn to look at her. She looks like she has the weight of
the world on her shoulders and she’s about to unload some of
it in my direction.
‘What do you think they’ll find?’ she asks.
‘I have no idea,’ I reply.
‘Don’t you? I mean trouble in this house seems to follow
you around.’
I don’t like her tone. I don’t like where this conversation
could go. I certainly wasn’t prepared to help her go there.
‘As I said,’ I repeated, walking past her, ‘I have no idea what
they might or could find and I’m not really in the mood to
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discuss it with you further. We’re not children any more, Ciara.
I’m not some wee girl desperate for you to like me, or treat
me with an ounce of decency. I can walk away from you at
any time I choose and I’m choosing to do that right now. My
child needs me.’
I didn’t wait to see if she had anything else to say, but as I
climbed the stairs to find Alex and Lily, I felt my nerve go a
little and some old demons swoop in.
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Chapter Twenty-Seven
Heidi
Then
I’d always wanted a sister. I’d tried to build a relationship with Ciara in the haphazard way a nine-year-old tries to build
friendships with anyone. I shared my sweets. (She didn’t like
toffees.) I let her play with my dead mother’s make-up, even
though I really wanted to keep it in a box to use myself when
I was older. I gave her a bottle of perfume, one that Mum only
used occasionally so it didn’t hurt too much to part with it. I
offered her a loan of my dolls, even Scarlett.
She’d pulled a disgusted face. Said the dolls were babyish.
Creepy. Like they were watching her. She told me no one
played with dolls like that any more. I was a freak, she said,
who no one loved.
But I still wanted Ciara to like me, and I wanted to be happy.
I knew what happy looked like and felt like. I had been happy
when my mother was still alive. I also knew sadness. I lived
with it every day then. Knew it inside and out; so I knew Ciara
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had sad written all over her. If we could just get along, wouldn’t it be easier on us both?
I saw how wounded she looked when Joe turned his atten-
tion to me and not her. When she saw the latest book or jigsaw
puzzle he’d bought me when she came to see us. He was forever
promising her he would get her something ‘the next time’. Of
course the next time never came and Ciara’s hatred for me
grew. She never knew the presents were bought out of guilt,
or to try to buy my silence about what he was doing. She
never knew I hated those presents.
I wanted to tell her so many times that it wasn’t my fault
he’d left her family. And that I never asked him for anything.
No books, or jigsaws. Certainly not to stay in this house with
me and look after me. I didn’t want him.
I’d act up more in front of Joe when she was around. Try to
make him cross so he would favour her over me. It didn’t seem
to work.
I can still remember the dejected look on her face. Her grey-
blue eyes cast downwards, her mousy brown hair falling over
her face. The sleeves of her sweater pulled down over her hands.
But when she looked up, it wasn’t him she glared at but me.
Because it was my fault. I existed and worse than that I seemed
to have become the apple of her daddy’s eye. If only she knew
what that meant and what he did.
It didn’t seem to matter, though. Nothing did. Nothing I
tried or did or said made a difference. The lines were well and
truly drawn.
The only thing I could do to protect myself from being hurt
further was to start hating her as well.
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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 lie. I know she
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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.
