by Claire Allan
every time I look in the mirror. Even when I think I’m happy.
Even when I think I have it sussed and when I think I’m finally
‘over it’. My eyes tell a different story.
Seeing Ciara now, the look on her face, I know she feels it,
too. The pain, the betrayal, the hurt and the shame.
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My arms are like lead weights. Ciara is crying now. Gulping lungfuls of air. Lily is still howling. It’s only the sharpness of her cry that forces me to move, to turn from Ciara and focus
on the tiny child who needs me. The innocent baby.
My girl.
My precious little girl.
I could never have allowed him to hurt her, you see.
When she was born, everything I’d thought I’d pushed to
the back of my mind about Joe and what he’d done came back.
And with it came such a primal sense of needing to protect
my daughter, I vowed to distance myself even further from Joe
McKee.
And then he became sick and it all seemed as though karma
was finally catching up with him. But it trapped me. No one
would understand if I walked away from a dying man, but I’d
rather have died myself than tell people what I’d endured. They’d
never understand. I doubted they would even believe me. Joe
was regarded so highly, and I was always regarded as a strange
one, a misfit, the girl who was a bit ‘mad in the head’.
They’d never understand that it was more complicated than
it ever appears in the movies. Mind games and manipulation.
A destroyed sense of self. I had clung on to ‘love’ as twisted
and as damaging as it was. I’d almost persuaded myself it had
never happened. Until Lily was born. Until I woke up.
I’m aware of Ciara slumping to the floor behind me as I lift
my baby and rock her to me. Hold her close and soothe her.
Centre myself as she fusses. She’s hungry. Her physical need
reminds me I need to be present.
I lower myself to the floor and bring Lily to my chest. She
quiets as she starts to feed.
‘I’m sorry,’ Ciara says. ‘I’m sorry for everything. For what I
said. Or didn’t say. I’m right, aren’t I? He hurt you.’
I nod, a teardrop plopping onto Lily’s soft hair. It all seems
so sad.
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‘If I’d spoken up, maybe, just maybe . . .’
I can’t speak.
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 knew. 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.
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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’s
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 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 love 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 commu-
nicate 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.
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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
&
nbsp; 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. Become 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.
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‘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.’
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‘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 ludi-
crous 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 on the
other end and I snatch it from her quickly, throw 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.
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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.
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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 stub-
born?’ 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 s
ay, 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 . . .
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‘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?’,