by Claire Allan
T-shirt. ‘I’ll go and get started on breakfast. Why don’t you jump in the shower? I’ll have something ready for you when you’re done.’
Although I’m hungry, I’m not sure I can eat. My stomach
is unsettled. Nervous.
‘I’ll probably just have a piece of toast or something,’ I tell
him. ‘Don’t go to any trouble for me.’
He kisses the top of my head and takes Lily from me again,
stops for a moment to look at me; really look at me.
‘Nothing is too much trouble for you, Heidi. One day, you
might believe that.’
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Chapter Forty-Five
Heidi
Now
The spectacle of Joe McKee’s funeral has begun. Prayers to a
God I most certainly don’t believe in around the coffin. Standing
outside, aware that the coffin is being closed and that there are
no further chances to see his face again.
Marie has now reached peak grieving-widow mode. All that’s
missing is a black mantilla and she would give Jackie Kennedy
a run for her money. She sniffs, dabs her eyes. She’ll travel in
the funeral cars with Ciara, Stella and Kathleen. Alex and I will
make our own way in our car. We are sidelined already. No
doubt that will give a message of its own to the gawkers and
the grief voyeurs. DI Bradley and DC King are here again. Of
course. Maintaining a respectful distance but watching all the
same.
I’m sure I also saw a press photographer outside as we arrived.
This will be news. Maybe not today, but soon. When the police
solve their mystery, or when Ciara can manage to persuade
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them it was me all along. The cold-hearted, ungrateful wench of a step-child. My not crying won’t help me look any less
guilty, but I won’t cry for him. I won’t pretend. They can look
at my stony-set face and draw their own conclusions. I’m past
caring. Or so I tell myself.
There’s a scuffling of shoes, people moving backwards as the
door to the house opens and the undertakers guide Joe’s coffin
over the threshold. Some of the male neighbours, a work
colleague and Alex step forwards and hoist the coffin onto their
shoulders. They’ll walk to the end of the street and then they
will put the coffin in the hearse and some of us will continue
to follow on foot. A procession of grief, dressed in black, heads
bowed against the January wind and sleet. Family, friends,
colleagues. Neighbours. People who feel a sense of duty to be
there.
Alex has gone back to fetch our car. He’ll meet me in the
church grounds. Never have I been so glad that I have Lily
with me in her pram. I won’t have to link arms with any of
them and walk together, serious of face. I hate it.
I hate how people look.
I remember that from when Mammy died. The people who
looked. Who saw me, in my black coat, with my shiny patent
shoes, black tights and black dress. Ribbons, black of course, in
my hair. My hand limply in Granny’s as she linked on to
Grandad.
‘It would break your heart,’ I heard people mutter after.
‘Parents having to bury their child and then that wee girl left.’
‘Joe will look after her. God love him,’ someone muttered
back.
We reach the church, St Eugene’s Cathedral near the centre
of town, and Alex is beside me, Lily now in his arms, as we
file down the aisle after the coffin. I listen to readings and
prayers and hymns are sung. Father Brennan tells us the gates
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of heaven will be open wide to welcome Joe McKee back into the Lord’s house, and that while we might be sad, there will
be rejoicing in heaven as a man of faith, of strong heart, of
generosity comes home.
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 moth-
er’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 forward. 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
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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
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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 swim-
ming and I can hear the thumping of my heart so loudly I fear
it will burst through my eardrums. The edges of the conversa-
tion 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 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 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 under-
standing 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
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there, at 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.
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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.’
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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 since 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, termi-
nally 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.
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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.
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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, is
