The Liar’s Daughter (ARC)

by Claire Allan

  ‘You can’t blame me for it!’ she says. ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘Not fair?’ Ciara is shouting now. ‘Not fair? Are you serious?

  You were the only person who had the power to make sure it

  never happened again and you abdicated your responsibility. So

  yes, we can blame you and it’s perfectly fair. And more than

  that, you destroyed evidence that proved what he did! Jesus

  Christ, Kathleen. Coming in here and talking about fair. You’ve

  no idea what you’ve done.’

  ‘I believed he would stop,’ Kathleen says, crying now. ‘He

  knew he had so much to lose. He knew he was doing the

  wrong thing. And he was my big brother, and I loved him. I

  needed to believe in him.’

  ‘You left him in sole charge of a vulnerable female child!’

  Ciara shouts. ‘You knew what he was capable of and you never

  thought to get Heidi out of there.’

  ‘Well, neither did you! You knew as well, Ciara. You knew

  what he did to you!’

  ‘I was a child myself!’ Ciara shouts again, crossing the room

  and pointing her finger directly at Kathleen. Jabbing it towards

  her, pressing it against her collarbone.

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  I can see her hand curl into a fist. She is trembling with anger.

  ‘You! You were the grown-up. You were the person with the

  power. But instead you cleared off. Lived your life without a

  thought of what might have been going on here. You could

  just pretend it had stopped because it was easier for you to do

  that than to face what your brother had done. You’re disgusting,’

  she screams, and there is no other word for it, into her aunt’s

  face.

  I see a fleck of spittle shoot from her mouth, landing on

  Kathleen’s face. Kathleen who looks as if she, too, might throw

  up. She can’t move. She is pressed back against the sofa and

  Ciara is looming over her. I want to reach out and take Ciara’s

  hands, the way she stilled mine earlier.

  I’ve seen her lose her temper before, but this? This is a whole

  new level of anger. I’m not quite sure what she would be

  capable of but I’m determined that Kathleen will not be coming

  out of this situation as a victim.

  She could never be a victim. What she did – or didn’t do

  – is unforgivable.

  It was bad enough what he did. But to have someone who

  could’ve stopped it, who chose not to? That was a different

  level of cruelty. I wonder how many times she’d seen me flinch

  when he stood too close. How many times she’d heard me

  crying. I wonder what had crossed her mind all those times

  she had soothed me, told me I had to be brave. Was she making

  excuses for him? Had she been as complicit in all of this as he

  was?

  ‘Ciara,’ I say gently and she looks at me, and it’s as if she

  comes out of her trance. Is aware of her position, her anger.

  Knows how close she is to losing control.

  She steps back and I see Kathleen sag with relief that the

  immediate threat to her has passed.

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  Ciara takes a deep breath. ‘You stupid, selfish bitch! You let him get away with it then,’ Ciara says, her tone measured but

  no less intimidating, ‘and by burning his confession, you’re

  letting him get away with it now. And you’ve taken away the

  evidence we need to help Alex!’

  ‘What on earth has Alex got to do with any of this?’ she

  asks, blinking at us.

  ‘Alex had the balls to do what you didn’t,’ Ciara says and I

  crumple at the mention of his name.

  My Alex. My husband. Sitting with the police now.

  ‘Alex made sure he was punished for it. Alex made sure he

  was dead,’ Ciara adds.

  Kathleen blinks in my direction, taking in the expression on

  my face. She turns her gaze to Ciara.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she asks and her voice is heavy

  with bewilderment.

  ‘Alex, my Alex,’ I say as evenly as I can. ‘He told us this

  morning. He was with Joe when he died. He found him unwell

  and . . .’ I can’t say the rest. I can’t bring myself to have someone, especially not Kathleen, judge Alex.

  ‘And what?’ Kathleen asks.

  Ciara continues. ‘He didn’t call for help. He chose not to. He

  saw the diary and he was so upset, so angry, he let my father

  die.’ Ciara’s voice is devoid of emotion. She is not upset with

  Alex. She’s not angry with him. ‘He’s with the police now.

  Making a statement about it all.’

  ‘They took him away,’ I blurt, thinking of his stricken face

  as he climbed into the back of the police car.

  Kathleen is shaking her head. ‘That’s impossible,’ she says.

  ‘It’s all too possible. Those two officers, King and Black or

  whatever their names are. They cautioned him and he left with

  him.’

  Kathleen is still shaking her head. I want to rattle her. To

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  grab her by the shoulders and scream in her face that it’s her fault, just like Ciara screamed in her face.

  ‘No. Not that. I’m not talking about the police. I’m talking

  about Joe. It’s impossible he was still alive when Alex went into

  the room.’

  She looks stricken. Panicked for the first time in all of this.

  Her eyes dart between Ciara and me.

  ‘He was dead. He was definitely dead when I left the room.

  I made sure of it,’ she stutters.

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  Chapter Seventy-One

  Ciara

  Now

  I can’t quite believe what I’m hearing. Kathleen? Her words

  stop me in my tracks.

  ‘What?’ I exclaim, and I can see that Heidi’s eyes are as wide

  as mine.

  Kathleen is fidgeting, curling her hair behind her ear. Her

  legs jiggling up and down with nervous energy. She shakes her

  head periodically, as if trying to put together the pieces of a

  puzzle in her mind, and then stops.

  ‘I . . . should’ve checked for a pulse. But he wasn’t breathing.

  I know that. He was still and he’d stopped fighting me . . .’

  I’m dazed by her words.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I tell her.

  There is nothing about this that makes sense. Kathleen has

  grieved the loudest and hardest of all of us and now she’s saying

  she was responsible all along? Were her tears borne out of guilt

  and not grief?

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  ‘I don’t know how I can make this any clearer,’ Kathleen says. ‘I . . . I killed him.’ She pauses, chokes back a sob then

  takes a deep breath to try to compose herself. ‘I put a pillow

  over his face, a knee to his chest, and I held it down until he

  stopped moving.’

  She
is looking at neither of us as she speaks. It’s as if she is

  replaying her actions in her head. I see her shudder.

  ‘Did you know it takes longer than it usually does in the

  movies to kill someone that way? You have to . . . well, you

  have to try and put pressure on their chest, too. I can’t stop

  thinking about it. How I had to do it. How I felt him struggle

  beneath me, but I was trying to make it easier for him. To make

  it quicker. I read about it . . .’

  ‘You read about it?’ I ask, stunned by her words. ‘What do

  you mean? Do you mean you planned it? Jesus Christ, Kathleen!’

  ‘No!’ She blinks at me, eyes wide before she casts her gaze

  downwards again. ‘Well, not really. I’d researched it but, you

  know, half-heartedly. It didn’t mean anything. I didn’t expect

  to . . . Well, I didn’t think I’d ever do it. I just wanted to know how, in case things got really bad for him.’

  ‘For him?’ Heidi snorts. ‘In case things got bad for him? What

  about the rest of us, Kathleen? Did you ever research how you

  could save us if things got really bad?’

  Kathleen shakes her head. Brushes the tears from her eyes.

  What little trace of make-up she had been wearing has now

  been rubbed clear.

  ‘He was my brother,’ she says mournfully. ‘You can’t possibly

  understand. I’m not saying he was perfect. God knows he wasn’t.

  God knows he did some things that were unforgivable, but he

  was still my big brother. I still loved him. You can think that’s

  wrong all you want, if that’s what makes you happy . . .’

  ‘Nothing about this makes us happy,’ I tell her. ‘Nothing at all.’

  I’m trying to take in everything that Kathleen is saying. To

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  take in her twisted loyalty to Joe even though she knew what he was capable of. Even though she had moved hundreds of

  miles away, he still had this pull over her. She still felt compelled to come back to him in the end. She still loved him. She wanted

  to help him in her own way. In the end.

  I think about my own relationship with him, how he retained

  that same pull over me, too. How he’d been able to summon

  me back into his life, too. That he had kept Heidi in his web

  all this time. Despite everything he’d done.

  I find myself shaking. ‘Nothing at all about this makes sense.

  You loved him, you say, but you were the one who killed him.

  You can try to dress it up as a mercy killing if you want, but

  you murdered him.’

  She winces at the word. Rubs her temples. Perhaps all this

  is giving her a headache. God knows my own head is starting

  to thump right now.

  ‘I never wanted him dead,’ she says eventually, the word ‘dead’

  almost a whisper. ‘But I’d seen this before. This cancer. How it

  eats away at people. The death it gave my father.’ She shakes

  her head as if trying to shake away the memory. ‘You were so

  young at the time, Ciara, I doubt you even remember it. But

  it was horrific, and I didn’t – God, I just didn’t want to see Joe go through that. No matter what he’d done.

  ‘Heidi, you must understand? Your poor mother. You saw

  what cancer did to her. How it ate away at her. No one deserves

  that. If Joe had been an animal he’d have been put to sleep and

  spared his misery.’

  ‘He was an animal,’ Heidi spits. ‘And don’t dare bring my mother into this. There’s no comparison. She didn’t deserve her

  pain. Joe deserved every bit of his. Every last twinge.’

  I sit beside Heidi. Rest my hand on hers to try to keep her

  calm so that Kathleen can say her peace. I need to understand

  why she did this.

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  ‘No one deserves that pain,’ Kathleen bites. ‘I was trying to be compassionate. That was my intention. I didn’t think all this

  would happen.’ She gestures around the room. ‘I didn’t expect

  that the police would become involved. I thought – well, I

  thought I’d dealt with that side of things.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask her. How on earth had she ‘dealt

  with things’?

  She takes a deep breath. ‘Dr Sweeney,’ she says.

  I feel my breath catch in my throat. Dr Sweeney? Kind, old

  Dr Sweeney with the soft expression and the soothing voice?

  He had something to do with this? My head starts to spin. I

  close my eyes and breathe deeply, trying to steady myself, but

  I can hear Kathleen still talking.

  ‘You mustn’t think badly of him. He was trying to do the

  right thing. He’s a good man.’ There’s a hint of warmth, of

  emotion in her voice again. She wipes away another tear. ‘I’d

  spoken to him about how I didn’t want Joe to suffer, you know.

  I thought if I just . . . you know . . . helped him on his way.

  It wouldn’t be painless, but it wouldn’t be as bad as what was

  ahead of him.

  ‘Of course he told me that such things aren’t legal and that

  he couldn’t condone it or advise me on it. In fact, he urged me

  to be sensible. Told me palliative care had come on leaps and

  bounds since my father died, even since your mother died, Heidi.

  ‘I didn’t plan it, you know. But that night, Joe was in so

  much pain. He was scared. I suppose I got scared, too. Before

  I even knew it, I’d done it.’ She glances at her hands as if she

  can’t quite believe what they were capable of.

  ‘When I called Dr Sweeney that night he knew as soon as

  he saw Joe that something had happened; that I’d done some-

  thing. He asked me, when you were all out of the room. He

  asked me to tell him what I’d done, so I did. But he understood

  what you can’t seem to. That I was doing Joe a favour. That I

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  was saving him from pain in the long run. That my intentions were good. I pleaded with Dr Sweeney not to say anything

  and, well, we were friends a long time ago and he agreed. He

  was only trying to help . . .’

  ‘Well, we have to tell the police this,’ I say softly. ‘You know

  that, don’t you, Kathleen?’

  She looks at me and blinks as if the thought hasn’t even

  occurred to her. ‘I don’t think we do,’ she says.

  ‘Of course we do!’ Heidi replies, casting my hand off from

  hers, pointing a finger at Kathleen. ‘My husband is sitting in a

  police cell now for all we know. He has been beating himself

  up for causing Joe’s death when he did no such thing. He did

  nothing wrong.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ Kathleen says and there is a dark

  glint in her eyes. The softness, the grief, is gone. The change

  in her tone shocks me. ‘If he’d just kept quiet. Don’t you see?

  The police had nothing to go on. Apart from the postmortem

  findings. There was nothing there to link this to any one of us.

  ‘It would’ve gone away in its own time, but no, Alex has to

  come forth wi
th some big bleeding-heart confession and risk

  it all. I can’t go to jail,’ she says, her voice cracking. ‘I won’t go to jail. I was only trying to do the right thing!’

  ‘If you’re really interested in doing the right thing, you’ll tell the police. You’ll not let anyone else suffer because of your

  actions,’ Heidi says.

  ‘I’ve already told you, I’m not contacting the police. Not for

  you, or Alex, or anyone. My plan is to go back to England in

  a couple of days and I’m not going to change that.’

  I can hardly believe what she’s saying. How she is so cold.

  Maybe she is more like her brother than I ever thought before.

  ‘You really think it’s as easy as that?’ I ask her. ‘That we’ll

  just let you go without telling the police? Come on, Kathleen.

  You’re not a stupid woman!’

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  ‘Yes, I do think you’re going to let me, because at the end of the day, it will just be your word against mine, won’t it? And

  neither of you come across as particularly stable these days.

  Neither of you showed an ounce of compassion towards that

  man. You’d more reason to want him dead than I did. Everyone

  knew you both hated him.’

  ‘We’ll tell them what he did!’ Heidi says. ‘All of it. All the

  details.’

  ‘Don’t you think they’ll wonder why you didn’t tell anyone

  before now? Come on! Heidi, you were still visiting him and

  you want the police to believe he abused you? And as for you,

  Ciara, you didn’t even tell your mother. So tell them if you

  want. It will just make you both look even more like liars.’ She

  pauses. ‘In fact, maybe you’ve been lying all along. You made

  that poor man write those words. Those horrible, horrible

  words.’

  ‘How dare you!’ Heidi shouts and she is on her feet, storming

  towards Kathleen, and I have to stand up, grab her and pull her

  back, even though I’d love to reach for her myself.

  How dare Kathleen suggest we’re lying!

  ‘I’m just fighting my corner,’ she says. ‘Because out of all us,

  I’m the one person who deserves to go to jail least of all. I

  loved him.’

  ‘So much so that you moved away years ago and never came

  back?’ Heidi sniffs.

  Kathleen shakes her head. ‘I kept in touch. He knew where

  I was when he needed me. He knew I’d come to him when