by Claire Allan
that I need to get away.
My skin is crawling. It feels like a separate entity to me, with
a mind of its own, burning, and I swear if I could tear it off,
I absolutely would. I would tear it off and leave it to bleed
onto the snow-covered ground.
Alex’s voice fades into the background, the sting of hailstones
hitting my face and hands giving me something to focus on as
I just keep running.
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Chapter Forty-Seven
Ciara
Now
I am emotionally numb. My heart is beating and I can feel the
thrum of it in my chest. I am aware of my inhalation and
exhalation. I’m aware that there is a hair clip digging into the
right side of my head, pulling my hair too tight. I’m aware that
my feet are freezing. That black court shoes were not the best
choice for a day as cold as this. I can feel, physically, all that is going on around me.
But I am numb. I cannot feel right now. I cannot grieve. I
cannot be angry. I cannot sympathise with my mother and
Kathleen and their horror at the scene at my father’s graveside.
I cannot deal with the people asking questions. I cannot cry. I
cannot allow myself to feel at all because if I do, I fear I will
become so very angry that I will never be able to put that
anger back in its box and put it away.
It will become who I am.
I know Heidi isn’t acting rationally. I know that Heidi is
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damaged. But I never thought in a million years that she would make such a scene at a graveside. Her anger, her fear was so
visceral, so raw that I was scared of what she might do. If it
hadn’t been for Alex hauling her back into the car, I dread to
think how far she may have gone.
The looks on the faces of our fellow mourners as she screeched
and screamed like a banshee will stay with me forever. The
horror. As if people didn’t have enough to talk about. To gossip
about.
Although I imagine from now Heidi will become the focus
of their gossip. They will be watching her. We will all be watching her.
DI Bradley had come to speak to me at the graveside after
all the other mourners had left. I’d wanted some time with my
father, you see, now that he was underground. Now that I knew
I would never see his face again. I’d wanted to tell him I was
sorry. Sorry that I wasn’t stronger. Sorry that I ever allowed
myself to be caught up in his horrible life again. I wanted to
tell him not to expect fresh flowers to be placed on his grave.
I would not be standing there and weeping. He was gone and
I was happy about that.
The other mourners had wandered off, tongues wagging, no
doubt. My mother and Kathleen had taken shelter in the car,
both of them borderline hysterical. I had been whispering my
final thoughts to my father on the wind, when I heard footsteps
approach. I looked up to see DI Bradley, his hands plunged
deep in the pockets of his long black coat, his collar turned up
to protect him from the elements, standing a short distance
away.
‘I don’t mean to disturb you,’ he said. ‘I can wait until you’re
done.’
I looked at down at the hastily covered over grave in front
of me. It had been covered with a wooden lid for now, which
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was decked in the wreathes people had sent to offer their sympathy. The mound of dirt, turning into claggy muck in the
sleet and hail, would be pushed in on top of him later. The
black marble headstone, bearing Natalie’s name, declaring her
a beloved daughter, mother and partner in gold letters, would
soon bear Joe’s name, too. In that space at the bottom. It was
as if it had always been waiting for him.
I blinked and shook my head. ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I have nothing
more to say to him. Not today, anyway.’
‘This must be very hard for you all,’ DI Bradley said.
I knew that his words were not just those of a police officer
interested in catching the bad guy. These are the words of
someone who sees the human tragedy playing out in front of
him for what it is. A shitshow of a mess that is destroying
everyone.
‘It’s not easy,’ I told him with a shrug.
‘Heidi was very upset.’
‘She was,’ I say. ‘She didn’t want him buried here. I didn’t
realise. Maybe I should’ve.’
I didn’t want him thinking poorly of me. Thinking that what
Heidi had said was true and that I could legitimately be that
cruel without so much as a second thought.
‘We’ve looked into her history. Her mental health history,’
he says. ‘She has had a rough time. But she has been stable for
quite some time.’
‘She has, I think. As I’ve told you before, we never actually
spent a lot of time in each other’s company. Very little, in fact.
Especially in recent years.’
‘But she was responsible for the majority of care your father
received, especially as his health deteriorated.’
I blush. There was a judgement in his statement. How awful
was I that I didn’t do my bit.
‘You know, my relationship with my father could best be
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described as complicated. We didn’t have the time to work on it.’ I looked back to the gravestone. I’m not sure having all the
time in the world would have made an ounce of difference.
‘Things were complicated. Things are complicated. I have to
live with that. But it doesn’t mean I did anything to hurt him.’
‘No, of course it doesn’t,’ DI Bradley said. ‘I didn’t mean to
imply anything. This isn’t an official visit. I’m just offering my sympathies.’
I nodded. ‘Thank you.’
‘We will get to the bottom of this, you know,’ he said, shaking
my hand and walking away.
I didn’t know whether to take it as a threat or a promise. Or
both.
I let the conversation run through my head all the way to
Mum’s house, wishing we could just go home to our own place.
But it’s expected we’ll go to Mum’s, to join the other mourners
for tea and sandwiches for the wake. She’ll be so cross if we
don’t.
Stella just holds my hand. She doesn’t ask questions. And
when we arrive, she doesn’t question me when I say I need
some space. I climb the stairs and sit in my old bedroom – a
room my mother long ago transformed into a ‘sewing room’.
She has an upcycled Parker Knoll chair by the window and I
sit here doing my best to hang on to the numbness that has
come over me.
Heidi hasn’t shown her face. It’s a good thing. If she does I
don’t think anything in the world will be able to stop the rage<
br />
from bursting out of me.
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Chapter Forty-Eight
Heidi
Now
I find myself with the two people in the world I have always
felt safe and secure with.
My grandparents live in a small, always overheated, flat in
sheltered accommodation close to the city centre. They’ve lived
there for more than ten years now and even though I wish
they had somewhere with a little garden to potter about in, or
somewhere just further away from the sometimes antisocial
activity of the city centre, they seem happy.
They’ve done their best to make the one-bed flat their own.
Crammed as many of their possessions onto shelves or in
cupboards so that there is still an air of the house I used to
visit as a child about the place. Pride of place on the wall of
their living room is a large framed photograph of my mother
and me.
Professionally taken, in the early Nineties, it looks dated. A heavy wooden frame. Soft blurring around our faces. My mother’s hair,
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teased and backcombed. Her lip gloss a shiny pale pink – I can still remember the sweet smell of that gloss and how it would
leave sticky marks on my cheeks when she kissed me. I’m there,
all of three years old, hair much curlier than it is now, tied in
two pigtails with pale blue ribbon, and a pretty, flouncy,
completely over-the-top party dress. We are looking not at the
camera but at each other, and we are both grinning.
I wish I could say I remember the day it was taken but I
don’t. Still, every time I see that picture in my grandparents’
flat, part of me feels like that day says everything that needs to be said about my relationship with my mother.
I’m looking at it now, sitting on a small brown two-seater
sofa while my grandparents, perched either side of me in their
armchairs, look between me and each other, waiting for me to
speak. My granny has wrapped me in a blanket after roughly
towel-drying my hair. She gave me her housecoat to wear while
she hung my coat, dress and tights around the various radiators
in the flat, adding to the stuffy, humid feel to the place.
I’m wearing a pair of my grandad’s thick woollen socks and
I think my teeth have finally stopped chattering.
They know Joe’s funeral was this morning, but neither of
them are in good enough health that they could attend. My
grandfather is now entirely immobile. His days are spent being
hoisted by carers from his adapted bed to his hospital-issue bed
and back again. He is a prisoner in his own house and, increas-
ingly, a prisoner to his own mind. There are days when he
doesn’t so much as utter a word, Granny tells me. Other days
he gets agitated wondering when ‘his Natalie’ will come to
visit.
Today, he is staring at me through cloudy eyes, his jaw slack.
He is trying to place me. To remember who I am and what I
am to him, and I’m reminded once more of just how cruel life
can be.
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Granny does her best to be positive, but she is broken. She has been broken since the day my mother died. I do as much
as I can to help them, but over the last few weeks that has been
very little. Still, they never make me feel guilty. I think they
carry their own guilt at not being able to take care of me after
Mum died. We, all of us, are weighed down by guilt.
When I arrived at their door I was barely coherent. My
grandmother didn’t ask questions. She just pulled me in through
the door and set about making me feel better, looking after me
as if I was still that scrappy little girl who had clung to her legs on the day my mother was buried. I don’t know how I’m going
to tell her about Mum’s grave. I don’t know how she will react.
I decide just to blurt it out.
‘Granny,’ I start. ‘I’m really sorry, but I have some bad news.
They put him in Mammy’s grave with her.’
I start to cry and I can’t even bring myself to look at my
grandmother’s face. I hear a sharp intake of breath and a whis-
pered ‘Jesus, Mary and St Joseph’ and that tells me what I need
to know.
I lift my head. ‘I don’t know how it happened. I know you
were both to be buried with her. I don’t know if Ciara did it
to spite us all but she says she didn’t and I’m just so sorry . . .’
I crumple.
‘Hush, pet.’
My grandmother’s voice is soft. I feel the gentle pat of her
hand on my knee.
‘I don’t want you getting upset over it. I suppose he’d every
right to be buried with her.’
She is trying to soothe me but I can’t help but notice the
defeated tone in her voice. Her hands are shaking just ever so
slightly, enough to give it away that she is struggling. As if her life isn’t hard enough already.
I know that I will never, ever tell her just why he had no
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right to ever be near to my mother again. Why he should never, even in death, be allowed near another person again. It would
kill her.
If she knew – God, if she knew what happened it would
destroy her altogether. She deserves to believe she did the best
she could for me all those years ago when I was left in his care.
For the first time ever, I’m grateful for my grandfather’s
dementia. None of this can touch him now. But my poor granny.
She wraps her arms around me. Everything about her embrace
screams comfort and security. The familiar smell of her talcum
powder, the softness of her jumper. The feel of her skin, warm
and soft. I let her rock me and I revel in the kisses she places
on my head, and how she tells me that everything will be okay
over and over again.
‘You poor pet,’ she soothes. ‘You’ve not had it easy, but you
have to focus on the good things now. On Alex and that wee
baby of yours. Don’t be fretting on behalf of your grandad or
me. We’ve been through enough battles to know we’ll win the
war as long as we have each other.’
Her words should soothe me completely, of course, but all I
can think is just how awful all this is. I’m not going to let them get away with this. Ciara is not going to get away with this.
I’ve had enough.
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Chapter Forty-Nine
Heidi
Now
Guilt, or a sense of duty, or a sense of not wanting to make
things worse with Alex, brings me back to Marie’s house. I’ve
been AWOL for two hours, enough time for the small number
of mourners who came back to the house to have had their
fill of tea and sandwiches and gone home.
I’ve seen our
car outside, so I know Alex is there. He will
be angry with me. I know that. Angry and worried. I’ve seen
the missed calls on my phone, but I couldn’t bring myself to
call him back. What I need to say to him can’t be said over the
phone.
I’m sure I hear Alex’s voice from the living room, so I pop
my head around the door. Two sets of eyes, neither of them
belonging to my husband, stare back at me.
‘Are you feeling better?’ a woman with a mass of messy red
curls and too much make-up on her face asks me.
I don’t know who she is. I nod and thank her for her concern.
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I hear Alex again, realise his voice is coming from the kitchen, so I walk that way.
‘I don’t know why she would say that,’ I hear Ciara say.
Her voice is thick with emotion. I press myself close to the
wall to listen, even though there is no way they would be able
to see me from where I am anyway.
‘I know this is really distressing,’ I hear Kathleen speak. ‘But
try not to let it, or her, annoy you. The poor girl hasn’t had it
easy. Losing her mum so early. And whether we like it or not,
Joe was the only father she ever knew, so here she is without
the pair of them and with a new baby to deal with, too. She
might be finding it very hard to cope.’
I hear Ciara sniff. ‘But, she’s not the only one who’s had it
tough. It’s almost as if she’s trying to make out I have some
sort of vendetta against her. That I’m trying to make her life
hard. And I swear to you all, I’m not.
‘She wants everyone to think I did it, I know that. She wants
everyone to think I was capable of killing my own father. I
think she’s losing the run of herself and is determined to drive
us all mad in the process.’
I bristle. I’ve done no such thing. I’ve not tried to heap blame
on her at all. If anything, she has been setting me up for a fall.
I’m disgusted, angry at the tone in her voice. If I didn’t know
categorically that she was lying then I might even be convinced
myself. If there was an Oscar for best performance at a family
funeral, I was sure she would be a contender. I roll my eyes,
anger making me immune to her sniffs and sobs.
But then I hear it. An unmistakably male voice. Alex.
‘I know,’ he says. ‘I’m really starting to worry about her,’ he