by Claire Allan
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.
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 condolence 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 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. 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.
‘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 would 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.
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 forth hellfire 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 fact that Joe handed over my savings, my escape route from all this, to Father Campbell and my hope of 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.
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 y
ou 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 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.
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.
‘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.
‘And Dr Sweeney,’ Kathleen says, her voice thick, trembling with grief.
‘It’s very late,’ I say. ‘And a bad night. I’m sure the ambulance crew can do what’s necessary.’
‘Dr Sweeney won’t mind. He’s a friend of the family. Joe would want him to be here. He would want to be here,’ Kathleen says, her voice borderline hysterical.
‘Okay,’ I say, ‘I’ll make the calls.’ Anything to calm her down.
I half walk, half stumble through to the living room, dig my phone from the changing bag I’ve carried in with me. The same pale pink blanket is still poking out of the top of it.
I make the calls. I hardly recognise my own voice as I speak, and then I sit and wait to feel different.
I always thought the minute he was dead, my shame would die with him. But I feel it niggle as I climb the stairs. It has mutated, though. This time, some of it comes from the fact that a tiny spark inside me feels alive for the first time in twenty years.
Chapter Twenty-One
Ciara
Now
My teeth are chattering. The room – his bedroom – is still much too warm. It’s not the temperature that is making my teeth chatter, or my body shake. I’m sitting on the bed – his bed – the bed I refused to sit on over the last few days, and I am looking at this familiar face before me.
It has changed. Slackened in death. Even though he is still warm, I can see the colour, what little of it there was, leave his face in front of me.
Alex said he looked like he was sleeping. He doesn’t. He looks dead. What he was, who he was, is gone.
I hear voices downstairs. Cries from Kathleen. I’m aware Stella is hovering, unsure what to do. She puts a hand on my shoulder and I shrug her away. Probably too harshly.
‘I just … need a moment. Please,’ I say. ‘On my own with him.’
She says ‘of course’ and she leaves, pulling the door behind her until it’s almost closed tight.
I look at my father’s face again. See traces of me there. The same shape of nose. Pointy chin. I think of all the things I inherited from him. Not just his looks, I think. Or his love for books.
I think – no, I’m pretty sure – I inherited some of his badness. Because while I know I’m in shock and I know he’s gone, I know there’s a justice to it.
Joe McKee never should’ve had a chance at a bucket list. He never should’ve had anyone sitting around his bedside, trying to figure out how to support him.
He didn’t deserve to be waited on. To be able to creep his way back into our lives. To guilt us into feeling sorry for him when he never, even once in his sad and miserable life, felt sorry for the pain he inflicted.
He’d been given time to say sorry. I’d waited for him to speak up, but he hadn’t. He’d only tried his old tricks all over again. Manipulating me. Us.
My father deserves to be dead, I think as I see how he lies in his bed, seemingly peaceful. There is something so false about it all.
I hope wherever his soul is now, and I have my suspicions about that, it is in torment. It deserves to be. He should’ve died all those years ago, in the fire that Heidi started. He should’ve burned. I look at his body, the warmth draining from it, and I whisper, just as I hear the front door open and the tramp of paramedics on the stairs, that I hope he never finds a moment’s peace.
And suddenly, all of this is outside of my control. Paramedics are in the room. Followed by Dr Sweeney, who takes my hand and solemnly offers me his condolences.
Questions are asked and I answer them. As best I can. People come and go. Auntie Kathleen, who sits rubbing my father’s hand as the paramedics fill in their paperwork. Stella makes tea. Alex hovers. The one person who doesn’t come near the room is Heidi.
‘It’s probably better for him,’ Dr Sweeney says. ‘In the long run. I know it’s an awful shock now.’
I nod and make the right noises and say the right things, but I’m starting to wish they would all just get on with it. Take him away. Load him onto a trolley and into the
back of the ambulance, or get the undertakers to collect him. I can’t escape the reality that he is already starting to decay. With every minute that passes, I start to believe that this is real. That finally he is gone.
I want his physical remains to be gone, too.
I need him to leave.
‘It will be okay,’ Stella says, appearing beside me.
I want so much to tell her it already is.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Heidi
Now
There’s a uniform for grieving. I don’t think I’ve ever thought of it much before, but now, standing in front of my wardrobe trying to find suitable items in black to wear over the coming days, I realise that it exists.
I glance down at my stomach, still loose and flabby following Lily’s birth five and a half months before. It’s hard now to remember it swollen and tight. It’s hard to imagine the smiling, wriggling baby lying on her play mat beside me ever living inside me.
I find a simple shift dress, loose and forgiving, which I’d worn to a friend’s granny’s funeral, and decide it will do for now. Thick black tights, flat shoes and the grey cardigan from the back of the door complete the look.
I wonder if I should put make-up on. I don’t think I’ve worn make-up since Lily was born, but the black clothes will make me look even more washed out. I resolve to put on a little but not too much. I pull my hair into a loose ponytail, aware that it is still falling out in clumps. The joys of a post-pregnancy body.
I wish we didn’t have to go through this process. The Irish wake. Two days and nights of mourning over a coffin sat in our house. Several days of making sure he’s not left alone, bowing to tradition and superstition. Several days of handshaking and nodding and passing around cups of tea, snifters of whisky for the ‘oul fellahs’, before we can bury him and I can start to bury so much more.
I wish we could leave him in a funeral home. Visit only when we want to – if we want to. Keep a distance from it all. I wish I’d never have to think about Joe McKee again.