by Claire Allan
She shakes her head. ‘I blocked it out,’ she says. ‘I didn’t allow myself to think about it. I was so angry. It was so messed up. For years, I thought it was normal. He made me believe what we did, no … what he did to me … was normal.
‘When you were ill …’ Ciara blinks at me. ‘Back when you were young, how you behaved, I should’ve known it was about more than your mother dying. But I swear I didn’t. I don’t think I wanted to see it. He told me I was his special girl, you see. His favourite.’ Her voice cracks and she puts her hand to her mouth as if she might throw up.
‘Oh God, I’m so, so sorry,’ she says. ‘I know you mightn’t believe this, but it was only when I spoke to Stella last night and she said …’ She pauses.
I can’t speak.
‘She asked me did I think he hurt you, too. I knew straight away he had. I felt it there and then. So much of what happened when we young just clicked into place.’
She is crying. Her fierce, cool, at times vicious exterior has been replaced with a vulnerability I’ve never seen in her before. Not when she was fourteen and screaming at me that she hated me. Not when she didn’t realise I’d heard her beg her daddy to come back.
‘I was so awful to you, Heidi. So awful. Even now, as a grown up. I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but you must know I’m really sorry. More sorry than I can ever say.’
There is such desperation in her voice, it’s heartbreaking.
‘I’d have said something if I’d known. I think I would’ve said something.’
‘I believe you,’ I say, my body sagging but also knowing it was always more complicated than that. It was never as easy as just saying something. Just telling someone.
Ciara nods. We are both utterly exposed to each other for the first time.
‘You’ve not told Alex, have you?’ she eventually says.
I shake my head. ‘I haven’t told anyone. I was too ashamed and then I didn’t want people, especially Alex, to look at me like I was damaged goods.’
‘I know,’ she says, because she really does know.
She knows exactly what this feeling is like.
‘He told me no one else wanted me,’ I tell her, feeling strange to say the words out loud for the first time. ‘I had no one. Everyone thought I wasn’t right, you know? Too much trouble. He told me he was the only person who loved me and he was the only person who would take care of me. He told me bad things happened to children in care and that’s where I would end up.’
Saying the words hurt. Bad things had been happening to me then anyway.
Ciara drops her head in her hands. ‘I told you those things too. If I’d known … Oh God, I made it so awful for you. I know it’s no excuse, but I was hurting so much. It was so fucked up. He told me I was his special girl,’ she sniffs. ‘That what he did, what he made me do, was how people showed each other how much they loved each other.’
‘God, when I think about it now, I was so stupid. So naive,’ I say.
Ciara pushes her hair back from her face, shakes her head. ‘We were children, Heidi. We weren’t stupid. We were scared, vulnerable children. And the only way I knew how to communicate with people was to hurt them,’ she says, wiping her eyes, then nose, with the back of her sleeve.
She pulls her knees to her chest and she looks, for all intents and purposes, like the truculent fourteen-year-old again I remember from all those years ago.
I realise we’ve both been trapped in time – stuck in an awful place of shame and hurt for so long that we never got the chance to grow up normally.
‘I don’t blame you,’ she says eventually, and I blink back at her. ‘I think you were brave. I’m jealous, almost.’
She must register the confusion on my face.
‘For what you did,’ she says. ‘I’m not angry. I wish I’d had the nerve to do it myself.’
I blink, tense. ‘What I did?’ I ask.
‘To him. To Joe. You killed him. It was you, wasn’t it?’
I stare at her. I can’t find the words – this is all moving on to a place I was not prepared for.
‘I mean, I get it now, I understand. God, anyone would understand,’ she says, her voice growing in confidence. ‘And I’ll help you in whatever way I can. We can tell the police, together, both of us. We can tell them how sick he was, and I mean in the head. What he did. How he manipulated us. What he took from us. They’ll understand. If we both tell them. They’ll have to take it all into consideration. Trauma and all that.’
I shake my head again. She really thinks I was the one to suffocate the life out of Joe.
‘But, Ciara. I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me,’ I say.
She blinks at me. ‘You can trust me,’ she says, more urgency in her voice. ‘I’m on your side now. I understand.’ She sniffs. ‘The pressure you must have been under. Being in this house. Being around him all that time. No one – no one in the world would blame you. I don’t think you have to be scared,’ she says. ‘Once the police know what he put you through, what he put us through …’
She’s repeating herself. Rambling. Becoming manic. Breaking just as I had broken.
‘Ciara, I didn’t do it,’ I repeat. ‘I had nothing to do with it,’ I mutter, but she just shakes her head.
‘I think it would be better to go to the police before they come to you. To tell them before they find their evidence, you know. Don’t they say that these things are always better for you if you come forward yourself? I’ll go with you. We can go now, once you’re finished feeding Lily.’
Her voice has risen an octave or two, become quicker. Her eyes are more manic. She is caught up in her own storm and she isn’t listening to anything I say.
‘Or I could just call them now, you know. I’m sure that DI Bradley would come over if I asked him.’
My chest tightens. Lily wriggles, responding to my body tensing. I lift her up onto my shoulder as Ciara tries to pull herself to her feet, moving towards the phone on the table.
She’s not listening to me. She’s convinced, no matter what I say, that I did it. And I know, despite her apologies and her tears, that she is very good at making people believe her.
Maybe all this, all these tears and confessions, have just been an act as well. I wouldn’t put it past her. It’s just a way of manipulating me further – of making me take the fall for her. The most disgusting of all her attempts to hurt me.
Could she be covering up for her own actions? She had the same reasons to hate him as I did. And there’s no denying that she hates me, too. That doesn’t just disappear in the course of one conversation, no matter the topic.
‘Ciara, stop it! You’re not listening. I didn’t do it. I swear on Lily’s life, I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t do anything that would risk me being taken away from her.’
‘Lily will be fine.’ Ciara brushes off my pleas. ‘I bet you won’t even serve time, once they know.’
She reaches for the phone and I scramble to my feet, my daughter still in my arms.
‘Stop it!’ I’m screaming now. ‘You’re not phoning the police. I won’t let you.’
‘Are you threatening me?’ she asks. ‘If you think you can intimidate me into taking the blame for something you’ve done, you can think again.’
She’s twisting everything and I can’t keep up. My head hurts.
‘I’m not threatening you,’ I plead, trying to reach out to her.
She shrugs and turns away from me, grabbing the phone with a shaking hand. ‘All this could be over and done with if you’d just admit it. Have we not all suffered enough at this stage? I feel like we’ve suffered enough … And anyone can see you were distracted with everything. Not in your right mind.’
‘Ciara!’ I say firmly, my hand on her shoulder, spinning her round to face me. I know I’m in her face and I’m intimidating her now. ‘You’re not listening to me. I didn’t do it. Why would it be me? You’ve as much of a motive as I have …’
She looks at me as if I’ve just come out
with the most ludicrous statement of all time.
‘Well, it was hardly me,’ she says, turning the phone away from me again.
She’s dialling the number. I can hear the phone ring at the other end and I snatch it from her quickly, throwing the phone as hard as I can to the floor so that it smashes.
‘I won’t take the fall for you. Or for anyone else,’ I tell her.
She is glaring at me, her eyes dark, enraged. For the first time in days, anger is not my primary emotion – fear is.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Ciara
Now
Heidi has knocked the phone out of my hand. It’s in bits on the floor. I look at it, then look back to her. Why did she do that? And she thinks maybe I’m the one covering up for my actions.
She’s actually suggesting I did it. That I killed my own father. She is delusional and dangerous.
‘Why did you do that?’ I ask, stepping towards her. ‘Why would you be so stupid to do that? I only wanted to help!’ I’m so angry now. Why won’t she let me help her?
‘You’re not listening to me,’ she says, but all I’ve done is listen.
Over the last few days that’s all there has been to do. To listen to everyone gather round and talk about this man who was the ‘salt of the earth’. How he ‘deserved more than he got’ and would be ‘greeted at the gates of heaven by the faithfully departed’. Every single thing I’ve heard has made me want to throw up.
But I haven’t. I’ve stayed because my mother needs me. And Kathleen, too. And here is Heidi and I’m offering to help her and she’s acting like a woman possessed.
Why can’t she see that all I want to do is help?
I get that she’s scared. I get that she might not want to admit what she did. I get that she might even actually believe that it was me who did it …
‘Why are you being so stupid? Why are you being so stubborn?’ I’m shouting and she’s hugging that baby to her in the way she used to hold that stupid, ugly doll of hers. ‘I’ve said I’ll help. I’ll help make them believe.’
She shakes her head and my frustration grows stronger. I know that maybe I’m rambling a little bit, tripping over my words.
‘Everyone has to know,’ I say. ‘And we have to tell them. You have to tell them.’
Heidi looks like a rabbit caught in the headlights. For every step I take towards her, she takes a step back. She is holding that baby of hers so tightly that Lily is starting to protest.
‘Put the baby down,’ I say, moving towards her.
‘Ciara, back off,’ Heidi says, taking another step backwards, straight into the wall.
‘I’m only trying to help,’ I tell her again. ‘That’s all I’m trying to do. If we can prove he hurt us, hurt both of us …’ I want to cry, or shake her or find some way to get through to her and make her understand.
I can see panic in her eyes. She is rocking her baby almost too much.
‘Give me the baby,’ I say, reaching out for Lily.
All I want to do is make sure she is safe. Heidi is being too rough.
‘Leave me alone,’ she cries out.
And I know she is scared, but if she squeezes Lily any tighter …
‘I just want to make sure she’s safe,’ I say. ‘Please.’
Heidi is shaking her head. ‘No. No. You want to hurt her and you want to take her from me. Everybody always takes everything away from me …’
She’s becoming hysterical. Maybe if I call Alex. He might be able to talk some sense into her. He will be able to calm her down. She’ll listen to him.
I step back, mutter to myself to remember to breathe. That I’m okay. I won’t give in to the panic that is clawing at me, too. My mobile is in my bag, which is hanging at the bottom of the stairs. I know I put Alex’s phone number in it on one of the evenings we were planning how to help Joe. Was it even on the night Joe died? It might have been. That night has become hazy now. I’ve barely slept since and my memories are blurring into one another.
‘Okay,’ I say, my hands shaking, reaching in and pulling out my phone. ‘I know it’s scary, but it doesn’t have to be.’
‘Who are you calling now?’ Heidi asks. ‘Don’t call the police. I told you, it wasn’t me. Don’t call the police.’
I raise a hand to quiet her.
‘Who are you calling?’ she shouts at me.
The call is connecting on the other end. I can hear it ringing. Heidi is crossing the room to me. I will Alex to pick up, sag with relief when I hear his voice.
‘Alex,’ I say, fighting against Heidi’s hand reaching out for the phone. ‘You need to come home, to Joe’s house. You need to come now.’
Heidi is shouting at me, Lily is wailing.
‘What are you doing?’ she’s screaming.
Alex will be panicking. I hear him mutter ‘What’s going on?’, but Heidi is almost on top of me now so I end the call and throw the phone back into my bag.
‘What have you done?’ Heidi wails. ‘You can’t do this.’
‘He’ll understand. Surely, he’ll understand. He loves you. He’d do anything to protect you.’
‘You don’t get it,’ Heidi says. ‘Why don’t you believe me? Why are you doing this, Ciara? Why are you doing your best to point this at me? You’ve done it all along. Making me think I’m losing it. Messing with things. And you’re doing it now. You’re trying to mess with my head to the extent that I will admit to something I didn’t do. Do you think I’m mad? Do you really think I am mad enough that I would do this?’
‘And why don’t you see I’m trying to help?’
Lily is almost purple from the effort of screaming now and Heidi is only getting more and more wound up. If she’s unstable there’s no telling what she might do.
‘Lily is getting upset,’ I soothe. ‘You have to calm down. Think of Lily. Look at her.’
She glances down at her distraught daughter and her face crumples.
‘Oh my God, Lily. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’
She looks at me, fear mixed with anger blazing in her eyes.
‘Look what you’ve made me do. She’s so upset. She’s overheated. What if something happens?’
She’s shaking now. I can see the colour drain from her face.
‘Heidi, you don’t look so good. Give the baby to me. Give her to me.’
Heidi shakes her head, but it’s enough to set her off balance and she looks at me, eyes wide.
‘I’m going to faint …’ she manages to mutter before she starts to drop to the ground.
I have just enough time to grab Lily from her before she lands like a sack of potatoes in the hall.
Lily is still wailing, Heidi is as white as a ghost and I’m shaking so hard that my teeth are chattering. I look around, grab my thick winter coat from the coat rack and lay it on the ground so I can place Lily on it. Then I kneel over Heidi, put my hand to her forehead. She’s clammy and still. My panic is building, when her eyes slowly start to flicker open.
With one look at me she descends into tears, tries to sit up, and she is clearly still woozy.
‘It’s okay, just rest there a minute.’
‘Lily?’ she mutters.
‘She’s fine. Can you hear her? She’s fine.’
Heidi curls into a foetal position and sobs. I tell her I’m going to grab a glass of water. I’m scared now but for a different reason. I’m seeing how truly vulnerable Heidi is. I kneel beside her, help to raise her head so she can sip the water.
‘Take your time,’ I tell her. ‘Don’t sit up until you’re ready. You fainted.’
She nods and I lift Lily, try to comfort her. Poor little Lily who hasn’t a notion what is going on around her. She wriggles and pushes against me at first. She looks at me with wide eyes as if she’s trying to make sense of everything and then, as I do my best to soothe her, stroking the soft curls on her head, she quiets, grabs hold of my fingers, and I feel my heart contract.
Meanwhile, Heidi is pulling herself to sit
ting, the colour very slowly coming back to her cheeks.
‘Please,’ she says, ‘give me my baby.’
She looks scared. Scared of me. Does she really think I would do anything to hurt Lily?
‘I will,’ I say. ‘I just want to make sure you’re well enough to hold her when I do. How do you feel?’
Heidi gives a small laugh, which quickly turns into tears.
‘Awful,’ she says. ‘Nothing about any of this isn’t awful. I knew you hated me,’ she says, looking directly at me, ‘but this much? To try to destroy me?’
‘I don’t want to destroy you. All I want to do is help,’ I tell her and I realise that’s the truth. Now anyway. I just want to get us both – all of us even – through this.
‘You’ve made it worse,’ she says, her voice sad.
She puts her hand to her forehead. No doubt she feels the cold film of sweat that has broken out.
‘All these games,’ she whispers. ‘And now Alex.’
‘Alex will want to help too. He loves you. I can see that. When he knows everything, he’ll be able to help you.’
‘He thinks I’m losing my mind,’ she says. ‘All these things, the last few days. The doll, the missing book, the grave. All those things have him thinking I’m not right. That I can’t be trusted with Lily.’
Shame floods me again. The things I’ve done and said. But I’m not responsible for it all. Not for the prayer book. Not for the grave.
She starts to get up. ‘I want to go now,’ she says, reaching out for Lily. ‘Give her to me.’
‘You can’t leave!’ I say, holding Lily firm.
I won’t allow her to just walk away. We’re all living under a cloud and she is the person who has the power to stop it.
‘Who are you to tell me what I can and can’t do?’ she says, stepping closer. ‘Now please, hand my daughter over to me.’
Lily turns her head towards her mother’s voice. I hold her firm.
‘I’m not giving her to you when you’re behaving like this.’
‘I’m not behaving like anything. I just want to go because I don’t feel safe around you. I don’t feel safe in this house. I don’t feel comfortable with your accusations. So please, give my daughter to me and let us both leave.’