The Liar's Daughter

by Claire Allan

  We sit in silence for a bit, our thoughts doing enough talking for us.

  ‘Things are very strained between you and Ciara, aren’t they?’ Kathleen asks.

  I shrug. I don’t know what she wants me to do. I can’t deny it.

  ‘It’s been a very stressful time for everyone. You know things have always been challenging between us. Between all of us.’

  She nods. ‘I thought once you two girls grew up, you’d see some sort of common ground. It can’t have been easy for Joe, dealing with his illness and the two of you at each other’s throats.’

  I’m annoyed. We were hardly at each other’s throats. Yes, the tension was palpable, but we just did what we had to do while ignoring each other as much as humanly possible. There’d been no screaming, roaring rows.

  I’m not sure how to answer. ‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ I stutter.

  Kathleen moves awkwardly in her seat. ‘Ciara says you’ve been cold with her, and I’ve seen it myself. Telling us all you couldn’t wait to sell the house? And that was before he even …’ She doesn’t finish the sentence, can’t bring herself to say that he has died. ‘Look, I understand that this is a stressful time but, you know, given everything, it’s not a good look for you.’

  ‘Given everything? What exactly are you implying?’ I say, feeling heat rise in my face. My heart rate starts to increase.

  ‘I’m not implying anything,’ she answers.

  ‘Yes, it’s true there’s been no love lost between us, but that’s not all down to me, Kathleen. You know that. You were there, remember? I tried to be a friend. As a child I tried, but she drew a very straight, very deep line in the sand and she’s never wavered from that. And now? Well, now I’m big enough and ugly enough to choose not to pander to people who clearly don’t give two damns about me.

  ‘But that doesn’t mean I’ve done anything wrong. I’ve been protecting my feelings. I’ve been protecting my family. I’ve not set out to hurt anyone. Not your precious niece and certainly not Joe. Though, God knows, there’s little love lost there, either. But that doesn’t mean I killed him, for the love of God!’ I whisper the world ‘killed’, afraid to say it out loud.

  ‘You are a cruel person, Heidi Lewis,’ she says bitterly. ‘I’m not saying he was perfect. I know his flaws, but he did the best he could for you when no one else wanted to. You never showed him any love. Any respect, even. Is it any wonder Ciara thinks you’re responsible for what happened?’

  ‘She can think what she wants, Kathleen,’ I snap. ‘It doesn’t make it true.’

  There’s so much that I want to say. I want to tell her I showed him more love and respect than he ever deserved. That I had hurt myself by not breaking contact with him. That I had kept his sordid secrets because I was too ashamed of myself to admit them to anyone. I know I could shatter her illusions with a sentence or two – but what good would it do now? As far as I could see she had made up her mind, just like Ciara, and anything I could say would only be dismissed as the lies of a bitter woman.

  ‘There’s no need to get upset,’ Kathleen says.

  I look at her incredulously. She’s just confirmed my suspicions that Ciara is pointing the finger of blame at me, and I’m not supposed to get upset?

  ‘There’s every reason to get upset,’ I tell her. ‘I see what’s going on here. I know Ciara isn’t the only person who thinks I’m to blame. Because of course I’d be to blame. Poor Heidi. Unhinged and mad. Sure, it was only a matter of time before I did something really bad, wasn’t it?’ I mock.

  Kathleen has the good grace to blush, but I see how her body language changes, too. She tenses, pulls herself away from me a little. Does she think I’m not done? Does she think I’ve more people to despatch from this earth? More people who have wronged me? Because I’m sure she knows she wronged me, too.

  Each of the McKees is as bad as each other and I won’t be the fall guy for their twisted ways any more.

  ‘I’m not saying that at all,’ Kathleen says meekly.

  ‘But you’re thinking it,’ I say, my voice low. ‘It’s written all over your face.’

  I’m about to say more, when DC Black comes back into the room. As quick as anything, Kathleen is on her feet making him a cup of tea, even though he says he’s had more than enough for one day.

  I think we’ve all had more than enough – of everything – for one day. I’ve had more than enough for a lifetime.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Heidi

  Then

  Even as a teenager Ciara McKee could be unspeakably cruel. She was spectacularly lacking in any form of empathy.

  She wore her hatred for me as blatantly as she wore her heavy goth make-up and her thick-soled boots. She was as wicked as any evil step-sister could be. I started to dread her visits.

  It soon became not good enough that I simply stayed out of her way when she came over. She would come and find me, seemingly with the express purpose of making me feel as bad about myself as possible.

  I spent my prepubescent years dreading every second weekend, knowing what was coming. The fact that I dreaded it even more than the weekends she didn’t visit – the weekends when it was just Joe and me in the house – said a lot.

  Is it any wonder my young mind started to struggle with notions of love and boundaries and what constituted abuse, given I was so desperate for attention and for affection?

  When I was roughly eleven and Ciara would have been sixteen, I remember her perching on the end of my bed as I tried to read. I had taken to keeping my head in a book, escaping to more peaceful worlds as much as possible.

  I wanted Ciara to leave me alone but I was too afraid to tell her to get lost, so I just did my best to ignore her.

  ‘Do you know what I’d do if nobody wanted me the way no one wants you?’ she said, a fraction too loudly for me to ignore.

  I made the mistake of looking up and catching her gaze for the briefest of moments.

  I didn’t ask her to tell me, though. I stayed quiet. I’d learned that staying quiet generally made things go away quicker. I had already become adept at managing harmful situations. Or so I thought.

  ‘I’d kill myself,’ she said, as if she was talking to no one, then she turned to look at me. ‘Don’t you think that would be an idea? I mean, you must miss your mum a lot, and you could be back with her? I know some people say it’s a sin, but how could it be? You’d just be going to be with your mum.’

  She stared at me for a moment while I stared back. I didn’t know what to say. How to react.

  ‘That’s what I’d do anyway,’ she added before getting up and walking out of the room, leaving me, an eleven-year-old child, wondering if she had a point.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Ciara

  Now

  ‘We can do this in the morning, if you’re getting too tired.’ Detective Constable Eve King sits opposite me. She looks younger than me. Prettier too. Petite and able to carry off one of those pixie haircuts I’d love to have but that wouldn’t suit my taller, more rounded frame.

  She has a gentle way about her, a face that shows sympathy. I have to remind myself why she is here and why she wants to talk to me in the first place.

  ‘I think I’d rather get this over and done with for now,’ I say.

  ‘And you’re sure you don’t want to have any legal representation?’

  ‘There’s no need. I’ve not done anything wrong.’ I wonder if I sound too defensive.

  ‘Okay,’ DC King says. ‘You can ask for legal representation at any time, and I’ll remind you that you are not under any direct suspicion at this time. However, we will be making a note of everything you say and if things change, this information could be used in any court proceedings.’

  I nod, wonder how long it will take. I’m so tired by now I think I could lie in bed while the SOCOs searched around me and not be bothered.

  ‘When was the last time you spoke with your father?’ she asks, DC Black at her side, p
en poised.

  ‘I’m not sure. Maybe it was around eight thirty. Nine perhaps. I brought him a cup of tea.’

  ‘And did you stay with him for any length of time?’

  ‘Not really. Five minutes maybe.’

  ‘And what did you do when you were there?’

  I shift in my seat. I don’t want to tell her what I did when I was there. Things had become heated. Tension that had been simmering had boiled over. There’s no way she would understand. There’s no way in which telling her the truth would work in my favour.

  I edit the facts in my head before I speak. ‘I sat with him, on the chair by his bed, for a bit while he drank some of his tea. We talked about how he was feeling and then he said he was tired and was going to sleep, so I left.’

  ‘And how did he say he was feeling?’

  ‘Still quite sore from his operation, lethargic too.’

  ‘And his frame of mind? How did that seem to you?’

  Should I answer ‘needy as be-damned’? Would that start a whole other series of questions coming my way?

  ‘Well, he knew he was dying. You know, of cancer. He’d been quite low about that. And that he didn’t feel he was rallying from his operation the way he should.’

  ‘Had he expressed any thoughts of wanting to end his life?’ She is looking at me directly in the eyes.

  I shake my head. ‘No. He wanted to hang on for as long as he could. He’s … he was … a stubborn old goat.’

  She pauses. ‘I know in some circumstances like this, people who are terminally ill want to have some say in when they die. It’s understandable really, especially if they worry they may be facing a lot of pain as their illness progresses. Sometimes they may ask someone to assist them in ending their life …’

  So, the police think this might have been some sort of mercy killing? That someone had helped him go gentle into that good night? If only they knew the truth about my father, they wouldn’t be so generous about anyone’s motives.

  I shook my head. ‘He didn’t want to die yet. If you’re asking me if I performed some sort of mercy killing, you’re on the wrong track altogether,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not saying that’s what happened, of course,’ DC King says. ‘Although it would be understandable if someone wants to help someone end their life rather than see them suffer. Could he have asked any of the others?’

  ‘I can’t speak for what happened between my father and anyone else. But I’ll state again, it’s my firm belief that he didn’t want to die.’

  Detective Constable King nods, pushes a stray lock of her hair behind her ear and readjusts herself on her seat before looking back at me.

  ‘After you left your father in his room that time, you didn’t go back to see him at all?’

  I shake my head again. ‘No. I went downstairs. Watched a little TV with Stella and Auntie Kathleen. Stella went out to run some errands and Kathleen and I sat and chatted in the living room.’

  She nods and DC Black scribbles furiously on his A4 pad of paper.

  ‘Did you notice anyone else go to see your father?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘We were all in and out all the time.’

  ‘Had you told the others he was going to sleep?’

  Had I? I didn’t remember.

  ‘I don’t know. We were all so tired and stressed. Things had been tense.’

  She raises one perfectly arched eyebrow. DC Black stops writing for just a moment and looks up, too.

  ‘How’s that?’ she says.

  I’m getting tired now. Out of my depth. I’ve had enough.

  ‘There’s a complicated family dynamic here,’ I say, trying to choose my words very carefully. ‘And of course, knowing my father was dying was hard on us all.’

  ‘What do you mean by complicated family dynamic?’ she asks.

  ‘Aren’t all families complicated?’ I say. ‘It’s been a long day and a long evening.’ I can feel my lip start to tremble and I’m embarrassed to find that I’m on the brink of tears.

  ‘Take your time,’ DC King soothes and I roughly brush away a tear that has shamed me by running down my face.

  ‘Look, Heidi is the daughter of the woman he left my mother for. He raised Heidi after her mother died. I was still just a teenager. Things were difficult. Heidi and I never saw eye to eye and we still don’t. She was a very troubled child well into her teenage years. You know, mental health problems and the like.

  ‘My father did his best to do right by her – at the expense of his relationship with me at times – but she never seemed to view him with anything other than utter disdain. But that doesn’t mean she’d have done anything …’ I said, knowing full well that it meant she was more than capable of it all the same.

  ‘Of course it doesn’t,’ DC King says. ‘How did she appear on the night of your father’s death?’

  ‘Tense,’ I say. ‘But we all were. We were all walking on eggshells. Just the night before she had told us she wanted to sell this house as soon as possible. It goes to her, you see. It was her mother’s and although my father was allowed to live here until he died, or formed a new family, it was always going to go to Heidi.

  ‘It seemed very distasteful to have that conversation with him dying upstairs, but that’s Heidi, you see. Cold at times. And she has just become a mother and by all accounts the house she’s living in now isn’t big enough for a growing family …’

  ‘I imagine that conversation made you angry?’ DC King asked.

  ‘Well yes, of course it did. It was callous. But my anger was with Heidi and certainly not with my father. I mean, there’s no telling what she’s capable of … not that I’m saying it was her, of course,’ I say, even though I want the blame to be shifted squarely onto her shoulders. It might just teach her to be more sensitive to other people and their feelings.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Heidi

  Now

  I’ve escaped the house for a while and am pushing Lily in her pram along the quay and back again, even though it is freezing and my face has started to go numb with the cold.

  I needed to get away from the house. It’s been just over two days since the police dropped the bombshell on us and we’ve spent hours talking to different officers. Going through the same details over and over again. They’ve been professional with us, nice even. But I can sense DI Bradley getting frustrated. They’re no closer to finding any answers. None of us are, but I can’t help but feel that they are all looking in my direction.

  They’ve kept asking me about my relationship with him. How had we got along? Had there been tension between us? They say things must be stressful for me, with a small baby and now losing my father. I don’t correct them that I have never considered him my father, in any sense of the word.

  They’ve asked me repeatedly about the house. Did I really have plans to sell it as soon as possible? They’ve asked about my mental health, any medication I’m on. But I’m not on medication just now. I’ve not been on medication for seven or eight years. I’ve been coping on my own. Doing well. And when I was sick, I directed all my self-loathing towards myself and only myself. I’ve never hurt anyone. I wouldn’t.

  They’ve asked if Joe had wanted me to help him die. If I thought someone might have helped him to end his life. I snort. While there was breath in his body, Joe McKee would have wanted to suck up whatever attention and sympathy he could muster. He wouldn’t have willingly skipped out on his grand finale.

  Alex has gone to work today to ‘finish some urgent paperwork’ and he couldn’t wait to leave the house this morning. He’ll be back as soon as he can, he says, but I have a feeling I won’t see him for hours and as he’s my only ally in the house, being without him there is too difficult.

  After another round of questioning this morning, I’d called him and told him how I felt as if the walls were closing in on me. He said I was being paranoid. But I can hear something in his voice. Worry, or suspicion, maybe.

  People stop
talking when I walk into the room. I know what that means. I know who they are talking about.

  I’m afraid to kick off. Afraid to fight my corner. Afraid to show any sort of strong emotion in case it feeds the narrative that I’m unhinged. What had been a stressful situation to begin with had now become almost unbearable.

  So I’d rather face the cold than go home, even though it’s threatening to rain and I should have worn a heavier coat. Keeping moving helps, you see. I focus on what I see, smell and hear. Keep mindful of the exact moment I’m in and ignore the bigger picture because I fear it will overwhelm me if I let it.

  When my hands are so cold they start to turn blue, I push Lily’s pram into a nearby coffee shop and order a large latte. I catch my reflection in the window. I look old and haggard. Unkempt, with the dressing still on my hand. My other hand bruised and grazed from my run-in with the peeler. Dark circles under my eyes. No make-up, not that it could perform the miracle I need it to if I’m to look more human.

  ‘Can I get you anything else?’ the waitress asks as she puts the coffee down in front of me.

  I shake my head, lift the cup, immediately using the heat from it to warm my hands. I could almost cry from this small feeling of physical comfort.

  I just have to get through the next few days and weeks, I tell myself. I just have to believe in myself. I know I didn’t hurt anyone. I know I’m innocent. I have to believe that will be enough to get me through this.

  I feel a heaviness in the pit of my stomach. I look at my coffee. I don’t think I’ve the stomach to drink it any more. My sense of freedom is slipping away.

  Suddenly, I have to leave the café, even though I’ve just arrived. It feels, like so much in life, just too small. Much, much too claustrophobic. The scarf around my neck feels too tight. My coat too hot. The chatter of people around me too noisy. I feel as if they are looking at me. Talking about me. And us. Gossiping. The thing with living in Derry is that while it’s a city, it still retains that small-town mentality. Everyone knows everyone else’s business. Ironic really, given that no one stepped in when my life was falling apart after my mother died.