The Liar’s Daughter (ARC)

Home > Other > The Liar’s Daughter (ARC) > Page 2
The Liar’s Daughter (ARC) Page 2

by Claire Allan


  my hand gripped in hers, my cheek pressed against the soft

  fabric of her coat.

  9

  TheLiarsDaughter_R_1stProofs_20191011_372ZZ.indd 9

  11/10/2019 16:22

  ‘Heidi, this is Joe,’ she said. ‘He’s a friend of mine.’

  The man smiled, extended his hand towards mine. Dark hairs

  crawled from the cuff of his jacket. They looked like spiders. I

  cuddled in closer to my mother.

  ‘Heidi, say hello,’ she said, an urgency in her voice.

  He withdrew his hand and sat down. ‘She doesn’t have to if

  she doesn’t want to, don’t you not, Heidi? I’m a little nervous,

  too.’ His smile was kind.

  The tightness in my chest eased as he lifted his teacup and

  sipped from it. I dared to take a step away from the safety of

  my mother’s long, green woollen coat.

  ‘I know it’s cold and rainy outside, but maybe you’d like an

  ice cream anyway? Since we’re here?’ he asked.

  ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Heidi?’ My mother’s voice was

  more relaxed again, too.

  I nodded.

  ‘How about we get them to make you the biggest ice cream

  they’ve got?’ he asked and my eyes widened at the thought.

  There was little that seven-year-old me loved more than ice

  cream.

  ‘With jelly?’ I asked, because jelly came a close second.

  ‘Lots of jelly,’ Joe said with a wink, and I smiled at him and

  then at my mother.

  The smile on my face was mirrored on her own. Then I

  noticed how she looked at him. How her smile was different

  when she was smiling in his direction. It was how those men

  and women smiled at each other on the front covers of her

  romance novels. She was falling in love. I knew it at once.

  It was only when he came back from ordering and reached

  out to hand me the giant ice cream he was carrying that I

  noticed the glint of a gold ring on his finger.

  I may have been only seven, but I knew what that meant.

  And I also knew he wasn’t married to my mother. He was

  10

  TheLiarsDaughter_R_1stProofs_20191011_372ZZ.indd 10

  11/10/2019 16:22

  grinning at me. Telling me he asked for extra sprinkles. I could sense Mum beaming at him from beside me. I knew she wanted

  me to smile, so I did. I remembered my manners just like I’d

  always been taught, and I thanked him and ate the ice cream.

  I pretended it didn’t suddenly taste a little sour.

  11

  TheLiarsDaughter_R_1stProofs_20191011_372ZZ.indd 11

  11/10/2019 16:22

  Chapter Three

  Heidi

  Now

  I wonder what the official protocol is when it comes to saying

  no to a dying man. Is it an out and out no-go area, or is it

  okay in some circumstances?

  I chew the nail of my left thumb while I try to build up the

  nerve to call Ciara.

  Alex, my husband, tells me getting her involved might be a

  good thing. She may be able to lessen any burden on me. Which

  sounds great, but still I’m not so sure. I’m not sure I have

  enough emotional energy to deal with a second toxic relation-

  ship just now.

  I sigh as I realise that despite my misgivings, I have to do

  this. I just have to suck it up.

  Alex is at least sitting close to me as I call Ciara’s number. I

  draw a little strength from him. My hands are shaking, my

  tummy tight. Even the sound of her voice makes me nervous.

  I take a deep breath. Remind myself that she is an adult now.

  12

  TheLiarsDaughter_R_1stProofs_20191011_372ZZ.indd 12

  11/10/2019 16:22

  As am I. I’m a wife and mother, for goodness sake. I should be able to speak to another grown woman without losing my

  nerve.

  But the truth is Ciara has always intimidated me. At times

  she has utterly terrified me, if I’m being honest. She was the

  loud to my quiet. The tall to my short. The confident to my

  terrified. The angry to my sad. She was always bigger and badder

  and more able to dominate a room than I ever had been or

  ever could be. She’s the kind of person who can shred your

  self-confidence to ribbons with just one look.

  I hear a soft voice say hello in a calming Scottish lilt. ‘Hello,

  Ciara’s phone.’

  I’m momentarily thrown. ‘Hello,’ I stutter, ‘I’m . . . I’m Heidi

  Lewis. It’s about Ciara’s father, Joe . . .’

  I hear an intake of breath. An awkward ‘uhm’, which tells

  me what I suspected. This phone call will not be welcomed.

  ‘Is she there? I need to speak to her about her him.’

  ‘One moment please, I’ll check,’ the voice answers, efficiently

  as if she is speaking to a business associate.

  Perhaps Ciara is still at work. Maybe this isn’t the best time

  to call. I think about hanging up. It would be easier and I’d

  have a good excuse to do so.

  I’m just about to take my phone away from my ear and end

  the call, when I hear the calming Scottish lilt replaced by a

  brusque Derry hello.

  ‘Ciara?’ I say, to be sure.

  ‘Yes. It’s me. Heidi, what can I do for you?’

  She sounds as pissed off now as she did as a truculent teen-

  ager. I revert to type and feel inadequate. My tongue feels heavy

  in my mouth. I feel unable to form coherent sentences.

  ‘Erm, are you still at work? Because maybe, you know, this

  would be a call better taken later, a conversation . . . you know

  . . . to have when you’re free to talk.’

  13

  TheLiarsDaughter_R_1stProofs_20191011_372ZZ.indd 13

  11/10/2019 16:22

  I sound like an imbecile.

  It annoys her.

  ‘I’m at home,’ she says, her voice terse. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s your father,’ I begin. I wait for an interruption that doesn’t come. ‘He asked me to call you. Look, Ciara, maybe this really

  is a conversation better had to face to face.’ I realise I don’t

  want to tell her. I don’t want to have to be the one to say those

  words to her.

  ‘I’d rather you just spat it out,’ Ciara says. ‘What is it? Does

  he need money? Has he met someone else?’

  I take a deep breath.

  The easiest way to do something you really don’t want to is

  to do it quickly, like tearing off a plaster. That’s what my mother would say, so I say the next sentence quickly. Probably too

  quickly. The words rattle off my tongue.

  ‘It’s nothing like that. Ciara, he’s not well. He’s just been in

  hospital for surgery and well, the news isn’t good. It isn’t good

  at all, I’m afraid. And he has asked me to call you to let you

  know he’d like to see you if you’d be willing.’

  There’s a pause. ‘Are you telling me he’s dying?’ Ciara asks,

  as forthright as she always was.

  I nod before saying, ‘Yes, Ciara. It’s cancer. He’s been given

  maybe three to six months, at best.’

  The phone line goes quiet. I wonder if she has hung up, take

  the phone from my ear to see if the call is still connected.

  ‘Good,’ she says, eventually, although I hear a trace
of emotion

  in her voice that wasn’t there before. ‘Good. He’s dying. Good

  enough for him.’

  ‘Ciara . . .’

  I start to talk but the line goes dead. She has hung up. I stand

  staring at my phone, my face blazing, wondering how I tell Joe

  what has just happened.

  14

  TheLiarsDaughter_R_1stProofs_20191011_372ZZ.indd 14

  11/10/2019 16:22

  Chapter Four

  Ciara

  Now

  ‘Dinner’s ready,’ Stella calls from the kitchen.

  I don’t answer. I’m staring at my phone, trying to process

  the conversation I’ve just had with Heidi bloody Lewis. The

  golden child. It had to be her to tell me, didn’t it? It couldn’t

  have been anyone else. He couldn’t have spoken to Mum and

  got her to break the news. No, he was always one to go for

  maximum impact. Maximum distress.

  The bastard.

  Anger wells in me and I throw my phone at the sofa, watch

  as it bounces off the cushion and hits the solid wooden floor

  with a crack. I’ll have broken the screen, in my anger.

  ‘Good enough for him,’ I’d said to Heidi. It had been my

  gut reaction, to feel angry and shocked and think fuck him for

  getting her to contact me only to tell me he was dying.

  He is dying.

  My father, for all that word really meant to me, is dying.

  15

  TheLiarsDaughter_R_1stProofs_20191011_372ZZ.indd 15

  11/10/2019 16:22

  ‘Ciara,’ I hear Stella, ‘are you still on the phone, only the pasta . . .’

  She walks into the room, glass of white wine in hand, and

  looks from me to the phone on the floor and back to me again.

  The glass is put down on the table and she is across the room

  beside me before I can figure out what to say to her.

  ‘What is it?’ she asks, her eyes searching my face for infor-

  mation that I’m still trying to process.

  ‘He’s dying,’ I say, thinking about how the words feel on my

  tongue. How they sound in my voice. Alien. Weird. Melodramatic.

  Her eyes on mine, her blue eyes, deep and dark and able to

  see the real me. ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ she says, one hand gently

  caressing the side of my face. It’s her sympathy, not the news

  of my father’s terminal illness, which brings tears to my eyes.

  ‘The bastard has cancer,’ I tell her.

  One tear falls and she brushes it away with the pad of her

  thumb.

  Stella knows I have a complicated relationship with my father.

  Or had. We haven’t had much of a relationship at all in at least

  ten years. I’ve been more than happy about that.

  ‘He wants to see me,’ I say as she leads me to the sofa. All

  thoughts of dinner, or glasses of wine or the movie we had

  planned to curl up on the sofa to watch, are gone. ‘He asked

  Heidi to call me. Not enough balls to even call me himself.’

  That angers me. Maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe he is now just a

  frail old man facing a death sentence and I should give him

  some leeway; but then again, when did he ever give me leeway

  for anything? He walked in and out of my life leaving damage

  in his wake without so much as looking back. So much damage.

  ‘Do you want to see him?’ Stella asks.

  Only she could ask that question and not have me bite back

  at her. She understands me in a world where it felt like no one

  else does.

  16

  TheLiarsDaughter_R_1stProofs_20191011_372ZZ.indd 16

  11/10/2019 16:22

  I shrug. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe I’d like to tell him exactly what I think of him.’

  ‘Or maybe it would help you find your own peace and move

  on a bit?’ Stella asks. ‘But, you know there’s no right or wrong

  in this? You do what you want to do. If you want to see him,

  I’ll come with you. If you want to tell him to go to hell, I’ll

  hold your hand while you do it.’

  I brush away a second pesky tear, take a deep breath. I’ll be

  damned if he can force me to make a decision like this quickly.

  Who does he think he is to get his mousey little minion to

  call me and ask me to come over?

  ‘Is there much wine left in that bottle?’ I sit back and ask

  Stella.

  ‘Not much,’ she says. ‘But there’s a second bottle in the fridge

  and I’m sure there’s another bottle of something in the rack.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say, sniffing and sitting up straight. ‘That dinner we

  spent all of fifteen minutes cooking is going to be absolutely

  ruined if we don’t eat it now. So, I say we eat. I don’t want to

  waste any more energy today thinking about that man.’

  17

  TheLiarsDaughter_R_1stProofs_20191011_372ZZ.indd 17

  11/10/2019 16:22

  Chapter Five

  Ciara

  Then

  I was an only child and I was deliriously happy in my only-

  child status. I was never lonely. I had lots of friends. We lived

  in a busy street in the Creggan Estate – a proudly working-class

  area on the west bank of the River Foyle.

  There was always someone to play with. Come rain or shine

  we would be running up and down the streets on our bikes, or

  scooters or roller-skates. We would play ‘padsy’ or ‘tig’ and occasionally a gang of us would disappear en masse into one of our

  friend’s houses to watch a movie and eat crisps and biscuits.

  I’d seen how friends with a houseful of siblings didn’t get

  the same treats that I did. Or the same attention from their

  parents, either. I was the apple of both of my parents’ eyes – but at heart I was always a daddy’s girl.

  Right up until the day he left.

  At thirteen years old, I experienced the worst, most painful,

  heartbreak of my life.

  18

  TheLiarsDaughter_R_1stProofs_20191011_372ZZ.indd 18

  11/10/2019 16:22

  It didn’t make sense. I thought my daddy loved me. I was his special girl. I trusted him never to hurt me. But then he

  left – on a Thursday afternoon. I came back from school to

  find my mother perching on the edge of the sofa, a cigarette

  in her hand and a tautness to her posture that screamed that

  something was wrong. Being thirteen, my first thought was that

  I was in trouble. I braced myself for her to launch into some

  rant about my messy bedroom or the three pounds I’d nicked

  from her purse that morning. I expected her to use my full

  name and though my heart sank at the thought of the rollicking

  I was about to receive, I was already preparing my best eye-roll

  and ‘But, Mammy . . .’ response.

  ‘Sit down, pet,’ she said.

  It was the ‘pet’ that threw me. She was hardly going to give

  out yards to me if she was using ‘pet’. I felt a knot in the pit

  of my stomach.

  ‘Look, there’s no easy way to tell you this, Ciara, so I’m going

  to come right out and say it. I want you to know that I love

  you very much. And your daddy loves you, too. You’re not to

  doubt that, ever. Okay?’

  There was a strange buzzing sound in my ear. I could feel

  something build up inside of me, a burst of
adrenaline that

  made me want to fight or run. I dug my fingernails as hard as

  I could into the palm of my hand to try to ground myself. I’d

  seen enough corny movies to guess where this was going.

  ‘Daddy has moved out,’ she said, the shake in her voice belying

  her true feelings. ‘It was a mutual decision and it’s just that we don’t make each other happy any more.’

  ‘Where has he gone?’ I asked. I needed to know where I

  could see him. When I could see him.

  My mother’s face coloured. She sagged momentarily before

  straightening her back again. ‘He’s gone to live with a friend,’

  she said.

  19

  TheLiarsDaughter_R_1stProofs_20191011_372ZZ.indd 19

  11/10/2019 16:22

  Of course it wasn’t long before I found out that friend was another woman, and that woman had a daughter.

  My father had left us to go and be with another family. A

  family he’d known for less than a year. A family with a daughter

  for him to love.

  My teenage heart hurt so much that I cried until I threw

  up.

  20

  TheLiarsDaughter_R_1stProofs_20191011_372ZZ.indd 20

  11/10/2019 16:22

  Chapter Six

  Ciara

  Now

  It’s two days since Heidi called and I’m now standing, with

  Stella, outside the front door of my father’s house. It’s less

  than ten minutes’ walk away from our riverside apartment,

  but it might as well have been another country for all these

  years.

  I have avoided the shops I know he frequents. Stayed away

  from the library where he used to work, and where he still

  liked to spend his mornings drinking strong tea from polysty-

  rene cups and reading over the day’s papers.

  He holds court there, talks to everyone who comes in. Shares

  his stories of old Derry and snippets of local history. It’s laughable for the man who barely looked at a book when he lived

  at home with my mother and me. Once he left, he transformed

  himself. Discarded his working-class persona entirely, lost

  himself in books. Went back to college. The few old friends

  he still deigned to spend time with gave him the nickname

  21

  TheLiarsDaughter_R_1stProofs_20191011_372ZZ.indd 21

  11/10/2019 16:22

  ‘The Professor’ because he was considered so learned. He enjoyed feeling superior to them. He enjoyed revelling in their

  new-found respect for him.

  Learned and respected. It galls me to this day.

  I feel Stella give my gloved hand a little reassuring squeeze.

 

‹ Prev