by Claire Allan
happen? Just so I know.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t think there’s any need to drag
things up,’ he said. ‘The past is the past and I hold no hard
feelings . . .’
‘ You? You hold no hard feelings?’ It was incredulous, what he was saying.
‘None,’ he said. ‘You didn’t know what you were saying. Your
mind was in a very dark place. Everyone knew it. But you’ll
always be my special girl. You know I did so much for you,
and I don’t regret it for a second. I walked away from my own
daughter for you, and your mother. To make sure you were
taken care of. Even when it was tough. Even when you hated
me, because I’ve always seen you as my daughter too, you know.
All those years of providing for you. Caring for you. Loving
you. They must count for something? Tell me they count for
something.’
This man. This man who had terrified and traumatised me.
He was now, weak, pathetic, trying to manipulate me again.
Trying to make me think I was losing my mind again. Trying
to tell me he’d done me a favour? Christ Almighty, I’d rather
have been left to roam the streets on my own than endure
what he did to me.
He reached out. His creepy bony hand, already showing signs
of the weight he had lost during his illness. I saw his fingernails, just a little too long. I remembered his touch. How his nails
would scrape at my skin. His clammy hands. His rank breath.
He had convinced himself, perhaps, of his own innocence,
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but I knew what happened. I had no doubts. None at all. As his hand moved closer to me, I flinched. I would not let him
touch me. Never again. Not for any reason.
I batted his hand away, using more force than I anticipated.
His arm, not as strong as it was, swung backwards, his hand
bashing against the bedside locker. I can still hear the thud it
made now when I think about it. He swore under his breath,
but I didn’t care. I stood up, scraping the chair back as I stood.
‘Go to hell, Joe,’ I said as calmly, but as menacingly, as I could, turning on my heel, ignoring his yelping about his injured hand
or his attempts to call me back.
‘Don’t be like that, Heidi,’ I hear him say as I closed the door
and headed back down the stairs just in time to see Alex arrive
back with Lily.
That was the last time I spoke to Joe McKee.
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Chapter Sixty
Heidi
Now
My breath is catching in my chest. I feel as if someone has
wrapped their arms around me and is squeezing too tight. Ciara
is standing defiantly at the door. She won’t listen to reason. She won’t listen at all.
At least, I think, at least Alex shouldn’t take long to get here.
He only works fifteen minutes away. If the traffic isn’t heavy,
that is. And it shouldn’t be. Although with the snow on the
ground now, things could take longer than usual. I could be
trapped here for longer. I start to spiral.
‘I’m going upstairs,’ I tell Ciara. I can’t stand to be under her
gaze for a moment longer.
‘Where?’ she asks.
‘My room. I just want to settle Lily,’ I lie. ‘She’s overdue her
nap and she’s upset and I want to make sure she’s okay.’
Ciara looks as if she is weighing up her options. What does
she think I’ll do up there anyway?
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‘Okay,’ she says with a degree of reluctance. ‘Just for Lily.’
I nod. I won’t thank her. She doesn’t deserve any thanks for
letting me leave her sight.
I climb the stairs, my legs still shaky from my fainting episode.
I hold on tight to Lily, terrified to let her go. I don’t want to
let her go ever again. Ciara is pacing the hall, muttering to
herself. Manic.
How will Alex feel when he knows what happened to me?
Will Ciara be able to convince him that I’m responsible? Will
she tell him I’m unhinged? Will she use the strange things that
happened to prove it to him? Will she tell him all about how
sick I was as a teenager? The scratching? The fire?
When he finds out how damaged I am, will he ever be able
to trust me, to love me, again?
Or maybe that’s been Ciara’s intention all along. Maybe,
despite our shared trauma, she hates me so much that she wants
to see my life implode.
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Chapter Sixty-One
Ciara
Then
On the night Joe died things had been tense in the house. Well,
things were always tense in that house, but they were more tense
that night. The great ‘I’m going to sell this house as soon as he’s gone’ announcement of the night before had wound us all up.
I veered between not giving a damn what Heidi Lewis did
with her godforsaken house and being so angry that she could
look at it all so coldly.
I suppose I was angry because her coldness simply mirrored
my own.
I wanted him dead. I hoped that he was right when he whined
about maybe only having weeks and not the months the doctors
said were possible. I couldn’t stand the thought of spending
months of my life in his presence. Spending months of my life
in that poky bedroom, where the air was stale and there was
little in the way of natural light no matter what the time of day.
I couldn’t stand the thought of having to play nice. I didn’t
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want to play nice. Seeing him had cemented that in my mind.
I just wanted him to admit to what he’d done and say sorry.
But it seemed that was too much to ask.
So that night, after we had eaten the begrudgingly prepared
dinner Heidi had thrown together, sitting around the table in
silence while Kathleen grilled a couple of pork chops for my
father and had cut them up as if he were some feeble infant,
my frustration had grown.
All this fussing around for a man who didn’t deserve a moment
of it.
It seemed like such a waste of everyone’s energy.
He seemed like a waste of everyone’s energy.
It was around nine when Kathleen presented me with a cup
of tea and a plate holding three custard cream biscuits and asked
me to bring my father up his supper. A man of plain tastes,
custard creams were his favourite biscuit and Kathleen told us
all that she’d gone and bought them especially. ‘But good ones,
mind, not those value pack ones that taste of nothing.’
I’d trudged up the stairs to find my father sitting on the edge
of his bed, his feet in his slippers on the floor. He seemed to
be lost in his thoughts.
‘Kathleen asked me to bring
you some supper,’ I said in a
voice that contained no trace of the warmth Kathleen had
shown him.
‘She’s good to me,’ he said, ‘she always was.’
I crossed the room to put the cup and the plate on the
bedside locker. I was just turning to leave, when he grabbed
me by the wrist. For a man who was supposedly so weak he
held a firm enough grasp on my wrist to make me wince.
‘Ciara, love,’ he said.
I felt my blood run cold just at the tone of his voice.
I tried to pull my hand away but he held on tighter, pulling
me closer.
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‘Ciara,’ he said again. ‘Can you help me? I need your help to get to the bathroom. My legs are feeling a bit weak.’
‘I should get Alex to help you,’ I said.
I didn’t want to be anywhere near him, never mind take him
to the bathroom.
‘Sure you’re here, you can help me, can’t you?’
He looked up at me, the expression on his face painted as
weak, vulnerable, but the grasp of his hand, the friction burn
I felt starting on my wrist, tells a different story.
I felt my own legs weaken, but I vowed to be strong. If he
wanted help to get to the bathroom, I’d do it. He wouldn’t
upset me. That’s what he wanted, I think, to set me on edge
and upset me. To remind me that the balance of power would
always fall on his side.
‘Let’s go then,’ I said, stepping back.
He let go of my wrist, took my hand instead. I closed my
eyes for just a second, just enough to steady myself.
I helped him to stand and we walked, him holding on to
my arm, towards the bathroom.
‘You were always such a good girl, Ciara,’ he said. ‘Such a
great daughter. We were so close once, weren’t we?’
I didn’t answer, and we reached the bathroom in silence.
‘There you go,’ I said, not wanting to get drawn into his
discussion about good girls and how close we were.
He stopped and looked at me. The way he always did. The
way that stripped away all my layers, emotional and physical.
‘Will you wait there ’til I’m done?’ he asked. ‘I’m not sure I
can walk back myself.’
‘Yes,’ I muttered. I’d say as little as I could to get through
this ordeal as quickly as I could.
‘Good girl,’ he said again and I felt another layer slip away.
‘Good girl.’ He used to say that then, too.
I closed the bathroom door between us and did my best to
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gulp some air, to try to steady my stomach. What I wanted to do was go back downstairs, or leave. But I knew they’d see it,
all over my face. Shame leaves its mark.
I could feel my resolve to stay calm waver. Could feel heat
prickling at the back of my neck, unshed tears stinging my
eyes. I jumped when the bathroom door opened and he hobbled
back out, grabbing on to my arm again. My whole body cringed,
tensed with his touch.
When we got to his room, he sat on the side of the bed
again. Took some deep breaths. He did look pale. Shaky. Unsure
of himself. I revelled in that for a moment or two.
‘Could you help me?’ he asked, and I didn’t know what he
meant.
‘Help me into bed,’ he added. ‘Like a good girl.’
There was something in the way he said it, something in the
expression on his face that made me snap. I couldn’t do this
any more.
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Chapter Sixty-Two
Heidi
Now
I can hear Ciara moving around downstairs. I can hear her
talking to someone. The noise is too muffled to make out
whether she is talking to herself or maybe on the phone. I
should have taken her mobile and thrown it across the room,
too.
I look at my watch. It’s seventeen minutes since she spoke
to Alex and he’s not here yet. I start to wonder, did she really
speak to him at all? She could’ve faked the call for all I know.
This could all be another move in her game. She is smarter
than I’d ever given her credit for.
She’d painted a very public picture of me being on the brink
of a breakdown while she’d, for all intents and purposes, main-
tained her poise. Any outpouring of emotion she’d shown had
been perfectly in keeping with a grieving daughter.
And she was his daughter, after all. His blood ran in her veins.
His sick and twisted blood.
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I put Lily, who is now sleeping, into the centre of the bed, placing pillows on either side of her so that she can’t roll off,
then kneel down and put my ear to the ground to see if I can
make out exactly what Ciara is saying and to whom.
There is an urgency to her voice. A manic quality. I press
my ear tighter against the well-worn carpet.
‘It has to be her,’ I hear her say. ‘She’s upstairs. Yes . . . I know
. . . there’s no proof, but it makes total sense, don’t you see?’
The loud ringing of the doorbell makes me jump. It’s Alex,
or at least I hope it’s Alex. Then again . . . What if he believes her too? What if they all believe her?
I stand up, glance back to Lily and, content that she is safe,
I go to the bedroom door and pull it open. I tense when I
hear Alex’s voice at the bottom of the stairs.
‘What is it, Ciara? Jesus, you look awful. Where’s Heidi? Her
car’s outside. And Lily?’ The panic is in voice is evident.
‘Come in, come in,’ I hear Ciara say. ‘Let’s get a cup of tea
and talk.’
She sounds so calm. So normal.
‘Ciara, you’re scaring me,’ Alex says. ‘Where’s my wife?’
From the top of the stairs I call out ‘I’m here,’ but there is
no hiding the shake in my voice. Alex looks up at me, his face
a picture of complete confusion.
‘Heidi, what’s going on?’ he asks as Ciara glares at me defi-
antly.
I open my mouth to speak but Ciara cuts in. ‘Heidi here has
something to tell you. About what happened to Joe. About what
she did, but don’t worry, because she had a good reason and
the police will understand. We just have to stand firm together.’
Alex does not break his gaze from me.
I’m shaking my head. ‘That’s not it at all,’ I say, but I can see
the fear on his face. The shock.
‘What’s she talking about?’ he asks.
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‘I didn’t do anything. You have to believe me,’ I say. ‘It wasn’t me.’
‘It was self-defence,’ Ciara says, ignoring me. ‘We can tell the
police it was self-defence. We’re going to tell them what he
did, Alex. We’re going to tell everyone.’
Alex looks
between the two of us. I gingerly take a few steps
down towards him.
‘Alex, don’t listen to her . . . She has it all wrong.’
I’m forcing myself to maintain eye contact with him, even
though every fibre of my body is screaming at me to look away.
‘Heidi . . .’ She says my name, just my name.
His face crumples. I can see I am losing him.
‘Why don’t we all sit down?’ Ciara says, and I follow her,
limply, to the living room.
I glance back at Alex trailing dejectedly behind me, all colour
drained from his face.
Clearing my throat, I speak. ‘Alex, you must believe me that
I love you and I never meant to keep anything from you. I just
. . . I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you the truth. I’ve never told anyone. I wouldn’t have told anyone . . . but Ciara . . .’
‘Don’t say it,’ he says, raising one hand, closing his eyes,
shaking his head.
I half expect him to put his hands over his ears.
But I have to tell him anyway, because it just can’t stay hidden
any more.
‘Joe hurt me,’ I say, closing my eyes because I can’t bear to
see the look on Alex’s face when my words register with him.
‘He abused me,’ I say, my voice as small as it was when I was
nine years old and heard that squeak of the floorboard. ‘He did
things . . . And I didn’t know what to do because if I told
anyone, he told me . . . he told me no one would believe me,
or I’d have to go into a home and that no one would ever
want me because I was too old for a family.’
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The words are pouring out. ‘He hurt me and I swear, I didn’t do anything to encourage it. I told him to stop. So many times
I told him to stop but he didn’t. He said . . . he said he couldn’t help it. And it was only because he loved me so much.’
I am bent double, my head in my hands, my chest as tight
as if someone was squeezing it just as someone had squeezed
Joe’s chest on the night he died.
I can’t speak any more, not for the moment. All I can do is
cry, shame clawing at me. I hear Alex cry too. Alex, who never
cries. The only time I’ve ever seen him shed a tear was the day
Lily was born. The first time he held her in his arms and he
vowed to protect her.
Ciara cuts in, ‘Anyone would understand. I understand. He
was a monster, Alex. If he hurt Heidi and he hurt me, who
else could he have hurt? He deserved to die. No one would
