by Claire Allan
I look up at him. The look on his face is one I’m familiar with from other people. That mollifying look – the ‘there, there’ glance. The expression that says, ‘I think she might be losing it.’ Seeing it on Alex’s face – the one person in this world who I thought I could trust to be 100 per cent on my side – is devastating.
I shake my head slowly. ‘Why can’t you see what she is trying to do? Why can’t you see how she is setting me up for all this? You don’t know her like I do, Alex. You don’t know how cruel, how dangerous she can be. She hates me! She has always hated me. And she’s planting seeds, and whispering in ears, and before I know it, I’ll be the one in jail. They all want it to be me. No one will come to my defence.’
‘It won’t come to that, Heidi. Sure, we’re several days in now and even the police say they are no further forwards. The coroner has released his body. It will all settle down.’
‘Not until they have pinned the blame on someone, it won’t,’ I say, wiping my face again, wincing at the pain of my raw skin.
‘We can leave,’ he says, hoping I’ll agree. ‘We can leave them to their wake and their funeral. We don’t have to be a part of this.’
I pause and look at him, seriously considering it for a moment, but I realise it wouldn’t solve anything.
‘We can’t do that,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘If they suspect me now, won’t that just be giving them, and everyone else, reason to suspect me even more?’
‘I don’t care,’ he hisses. ‘I really don’t care any more what they think of you or us or any of it. This whole thing, everything, is so toxic. It’s eating at us. I can’t sleep and I know you’re not sleeping, either. I don’t want to be near them and I certainly don’t want them anywhere near Lily. She doesn’t deserve to be caught up in all this.’
‘People will talk. People outside of here.’
‘Maybe it’s time they talked,’ he says, and I’m suddenly just so tired.
I feel as if I’m hanging on to my sanity by a thread and little else.
‘What do you mean?’ I ask him.
There’s something in his expression that I can’t quite read. He looks at me, opens his mouth to speak but stops.
‘Alex, what do you mean?’ I ask him.
‘Nothing,’ he shrugs. ‘Nothing.’
He pauses, looks to Lily and then back to me. ‘We’ll wait until he’s brought home and then can we just get away from here for a bit? I think I need us to get away from here for a while.’
He looks defeated, and maybe that’s because in that moment we are defeated. I realise I’m shaking and I long for him to wrap his arms around me but I don’t want to ask him to. I want him to know instinctively that is what I need. If he hugs me, I tell myself, I’ll know we’ll be okay. Us two, our little family unit. We’ll at least make it through this and no amount of lies will change that.
‘I love you,’ I whisper.
He sighs, shakes his head as if he’s having a conversation with himself that isn’t going the way he hoped, and reaches out and gives my hand a squeeze. It’s not a hug but it will have to do for now.
‘I love you too, but I worry about you, Heidi,’ he says. ‘I’m worried about you now.’
I nod. I’m worried about me, too. We’re disturbed by the sound of the doorbell downstairs. I stand up and peek out of the window to see a hearse pulled up, a small group of nosy neighbours and an unmarked police car not far behind. Out of it steps DC King and DI Bradley, both wearing serious expressions on their faces.
My chest tightens.
Chapter Forty-Two
Heidi
Then
The messages kept coming. Mostly late at night. Mostly at the weekend. I tried calling the number back a couple of times, but it just rang out until an automated, factory-set voicemail message told me the person I was calling was not available just now.
Is it true your mammy didn’t really die of cancer? That she killed herself to get away from you?
If I was as ugly as you are, I’d never show myself outside the front door another read.
Your friends are only being nice to you because they feel sorry for you. You’re like their care in the community project!
Nobody wants you.
You are so disgusting. Your friends just hang out with you so it makes them look prettier.
Kill yourself!
Put your head in the oven!
Ugly bitch!
And so it went on. I wanted to block the number but at the same time I was drawn to the messages. Wondered what would be said next. I believed they’d eventually leave a clue as to who was behind them.
I started looking at my friends differently. I started looking at everyone differently. I couldn’t even be in the same space as Ciara, just in case she was behind the messages. And there was every chance that she was. My hatred for myself grew until I couldn’t stand to look in the mirror any more. I stopped taking care of myself. I started finding release in dragging my fingernails as hard and as deep as possible along the top of my thighs, over and over again until I drew blood.
If I thought the sight of blood would disgust or deter me, I was wrong. It felt good. There was a euphoria in being in control of my own pain for once. This was my choice.
Only when the wounds started to heal again, the vivid red scars marking my skin, would my self-loathing creep back in.
The reason my mystery texter was having such an effect on me was because whoever it was was only telling the truth. They were only repeating the same things to me that my own mind had been saying to me for years. The voices in my head were now everywhere.
Chapter Forty-Three
Ciara
Now
I start to shake as soon as Mum tells me the undertakers have arrived. I’m already feeling a little jittery. My altercation with Heidi was far from pleasant.
She almost hit me. She was just a hair’s breadth away from slapping me across the face. I seem to be bringing that out in people today, I think, my face still tingling from where my mother had slapped me. I’m wishing Stella was here as I hear my mother call to me that ‘it’s time’. She should have been back from the shops by now. I’m not sure I can do this without her.
I can hear the tremor in my mother’s voice and it unsettles me. My mother usually stays calm. Even when he left, she kept her cool, despite the fact I knew her heart was shredded. I stand on wobbly legs and grab my coat to stand outside while the undertakers bring my father in. I see Heidi and Alex come down the stairs. Both of them look pale and shaken. I’ve no space to think about them more than that. I don’t care how they feel. I have way too many of my own feelings to deal with right now.
My mother and Kathleen are huddled together at the bottom of the path. I walk towards them, fat flakes of snow falling at my feet. I see our neighbours, the people I grew up beside, stand out as a mark of respect. I’m touched they are here for us. For him. Especially after he turned his back on them as well as Mum and I when he left. He was too good to be seen around here after that. But still they come out of their houses and stand solemnly as his coffin is carried into the house.
I look to them, see them whisper between each other. Are they talking about us? It strikes me that maybe they aren’t standing out as a mark of respect after all, but more for a chance to get a good look. Are they trying to figure out who the guilty party is? How much do they know about it all?
They are staring and whispering and I am shaking more and more. I’ve not even dared to lift my head yet to see the coffin. The coffin that carries my father. The coffin that carries the man who broke my heart over and over and over again. It’s true that there is the finest of lines between love and hate.
Slowly, blinking against the falling snow, I lift my head and it is there. This wooden box. Not much for an entire life. Not much for a man who seemed larger than life in so many ways. His body is inside. I try not to think about the fact that his heart has stopped beating, his lungs have stopped breathing. I tr
y to think about how he has been carved up and put back together again.
And still the neighbours are whispering, and Alex and Heidi are clinging on to each other as they walk down the path. The sound of Kathleen crying, now more of a wail than a sob, pierces the air. I want to put my hands over my ears and run. I want someone to hold on to.
Then I see them, those police officers, DI Bradley and DC King, standing a respectful distance from us, but they are there all the same. Watching, no doubt. Reading for signs that might give away what happened. Do they think we’re all in it together? Do they think, as Father Brennan suggested, that we gave him a merciful death? That we’re all covering for each other?
Would I mark myself out as more of a suspect if I told them that I didn’t think he deserved a merciful death?
Or do they suspect that there are darker secrets among us that we’ve not told anyone yet?
I want to hurry him inside. Away from the spectacle. Not out of any respect for him, but because none of those people really give a ha’penny damn about him, about us, or about what has really gone on in our family.
I don’t cry, not until I see Stella. She is walking down the street and when I catch her gaze, she is mouthing that she is so sorry and she speeds up her step to get beside me. The warmth of her hand as she takes mine has the effect of opening the dam of emotions I’ve been doing my level best to keep locked up.
Everything in my life is crumbling. Except for Stella and what we have. At least, I hope … God, I hope she is still with me. Still believes in me.
She keeps me together. She makes me want to be a better person. A good person. A lovable person. But she’d be ashamed of me if she knew what I’d said to Heidi upstairs. She’d be ashamed of me if she knew how I’d challenged my mother.
So when I cry, I’m crying for me and the bitter, harmful woman I know lurks inside, for Stella and her naive trust in me that I am a good person. I’m not. I never had the chance to be. He made sure of that.
‘It will be okay,’ she whispers into my hair as she pulls me into an embrace as his coffin is carried past me. ‘I promise you, it will be okay. I’m here for you. I will be here for you. No matter what. You’ve got me.’
As I truly allow myself to believe what she is saying, I vow that I’m going to try to find it in me to tell her the truth. The horrible, shameful truth.
Chapter Forty-Four
Heidi
Now
I’d woken in the early hours, our house dark and silent, and had listened to Lily’s soft breathing from her cot beside our bed. Alex’s parents were forever telling us we should have her in her own room by now, but I can’t bear to be apart from her. She’s not even six months old. Still tiny. She’ll be in her own room soon enough, and for long enough.
For now, I need to know she is safe and secure. I need to feel the security that having her close to me brings me, too. The coming day will be hard and I need to remind myself there is good in the world. It’s two days since Joe was brought back to Marie’s house. Two days of mourning. Of stilted conversations. Of awkwardness. Of walking on eggshells. I’m exhausted to my very soul by it all. Exhausted by the paranoia and trying to fend off the negative thoughts that swoop in on a regular basis, making me want to hide.
I want it to be over. I want to be back to my life, my family. This child who means so much to me.
The golden rule, of course, is never to wake a sleeping baby, but when I had woken, I’d needed to hold her. I’d crept out of bed and lifted her, warm and soft, her breath sweet with milk, and had placed her in the bed beside me. She’d fussed – ‘fissled’ as my mother used to call it – but didn’t wake, and I allowed myself the luxury of holding her, stroking the soft skin of her cheeks, kissing her tiny fingers and marvelling how I had any part in making something so pure and so innocent. I’d drifted off at some stage, only waking now, Alex standing at the bottom of the bed in the half-light of the room, panicking about where Lily is.
‘She’s here, Alex,’ I say, shuffling over a little so that he can see where she is, lying safe and sound beside me.
‘In the bed? Jesus, Heidi. Why is she in the bed? And you were sleeping! You could’ve rolled over …’
‘I didn’t, Alex. She’s fine. I was awake most of the time. I just needed a hug.’
‘But what if? Heidi, we agreed no co-sleeping. You know how scared I am that she’ll overheat or get smothered.’
He seems really panicked, even though I’m showing him evidence of a perfectly healthy baby beside me.
‘She didn’t, though. She’s safe. Look, she had no duvet over her and plenty of room to stretch. She was fine, Alex. I can be trusted to keep her safe, you know.’
I’m not sure where the tone in my voice has come from, but as soon as the words are out I know that they say more than I thought. They’re accusatory. Defensive. I feel on edge, my hackles already rising before I’ve even got out of bed.
He sits at my feet and reaches up and lifts Lily, waking her from her sleep and prompting a wail of hunger in return.
‘You know I’d die if anything ever happened to her,’ he says. ‘We can’t take risks, Heidi. Not with Lily. She’s not one of your dolls!’
He kisses the top of her head, holds her close to him as if I’ve just held her dangling out of the window, or committed some other such heinous crime against her.
‘Of course I know she’s not one of my dolls,’ I snap back at him. ‘Christ, Alex, I just needed to be close to her.’
Can’t he see how hard all this is for me? I feel tears spring to my eyes. This whole episode is a nightmare. When I do manage to sleep, my dreams are filled with terrible images from my past, and visions of police officers hauling me away from my family, never to see them again.
‘I’m sorry,’ Alex says, not entirely convincingly. ‘We’re all on edge. I’m on edge. Of course I know you wouldn’t hurt Lily. That was stupid and cruel of me to compare her to a doll,’ he says.
He hands her to me and I see it as a gesture that he trusts me, that his panic from earlier has passed.
‘Will we get this day over and done with?’ he asks. ‘The undertakers are coming at nine thirty. We need to get up and ready and go round to Marie’s.’
I nod. In a matter of hours, Joe McKee will be in the ground. One half of this ordeal will be over. We will just have the police to face then. Just the police … ha! If I say it fast enough maybe it won’t sound so scary.
‘Grand,’ he says, pulling on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a 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.’
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 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 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.