Ciara was angry and Joe was doing his best to mollify her.
Although she was thirteen – tall and lanky with a smattering
of teenage acne – she started to cry like a baby. To cry how I
wanted to cry at the sound of their raised voices.
‘You can’t make me be friends with these people!’ she howled.
‘You can’t make me like them. I don’t want to be here. I want
to go home. LET ME GO HOME!’
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She kicked him square in the shins and he let out a roar of pain, while she darted around him and made for the front door.
Quick as a flash he went after her, blocking her escape.
‘Ciara, pet, there’s no need to react like this. Natalie and
Heidi just want to meet you.’
‘Heidi! What kind of a stupid name is Heidi? Does she live
up in the mountains with her granda or something?’
I shrank into myself. I was all too aware of my literary name-
sake, but most people had told me how pretty my name was.
How unusual. They didn’t mock me – not like how Ciara was
mocking me.
‘She’s a nice girl,’ I heard Joe soothe.
‘I’m a nice girl, too,’ Ciara yelled, ‘but you’ve left us, me and
Mammy, for them. And they let you. Mammy says they’re
homewreckers.’
‘That’s enough,’ I heard Joe say. It was probably the first time
I’d heard real sternness in his voice. ‘I understand that you’re
angry, Ciara, but there’s no excuse for such rudeness. Things
aren’t as simple as your mother would have you believe. We’d
fallen out of love with each other a long time ago.’
‘That’s crap!’ Ciara blustered. ‘Mammy still loves you. She
told me. She cries all the time.’
I glanced at my mother, who was pale. She looked as if she
might be sick. I felt as though I might be sick too. I didn’t like that Ciara was calling my mammy names. I didn’t like that my
mammy was being painted as a bad person. She wasn’t a bad
person. But Ciara looked so sad and scared, and angry.
‘Loving someone and being in love with someone are two
different things,’ Joe said. ‘I’ll always love your mother, but I’m in love with Natalie now. And she needs me.’
‘We need you!’ Ciara wailed.
‘Not as much as Natalie does,’ Joe said and I felt my mother
stiffen beside me.
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‘Joe,’ she said, a warning edge to her voice. ‘Now’s not the time. She’s upset. She had a right to be upset.’ I saw her give
a small, reassuring nod to Ciara but her face was blazing as if
she was embarrassed, or ashamed. As if she had done something
wrong.
‘Sweetheart, they need to know. They need to know why I
have to be here with you,’ Joe said. His voice was thick with
emotion. ‘When you’re older, Ciara, you might understand more.
I love Natalie, and she’s sick. Very sick. And I need to be – no,
I want to be – here for her, and for Heidi, because we don’t
know what time we have left.’
I heard my mother sob as Joe crossed the room and took
her hand. I saw the shock and hate on Ciara’s face.
Mammy squeezed my hand tight. I heard a small groan, barely
perceptible leave her lips. ‘Joe!’ she said in an angry whisper
before nodding her head in my direction.
I felt as if the ground had just shifted under my feet and
things were never going to be the same again. My mammy was
sick. They didn’t know what time they had left. What did that
mean? Did that mean my mammy was dying? No, that was
impossible. It was unthinkable. I remember putting my hands
to my ears to block out the noise, but it was already too late.
The damage had been done. The words had been said and they
couldn’t be taken back.
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Chapter Nine
Heidi
Now
clunk to the floor and he kicks them out of his way before
standing up to undress.
‘That wasn’t as bad as it could have been,’ he says.
‘It wasn’t great,’ I say, stroking Lily’s head as I give her one
final feed before bedtime. ‘It was awkward.’
He pulls his T-shirt over his head, exposing the fine smattering
of hair on his chest, before he pulls back the duvet and climbs
in beside me.
‘It was always going to be awkward,’ he says, leaning over to
kiss me on the cheek and then to kiss Lily on the top of her
head. ‘You haven’t seen her in what, ten years? And when you
do, it’s not under the nicest of circumstances.’
‘I suppose,’ I say, unlatching Lily from my breast and putting
her on my shoulder to try to get her wind up.
‘She seemed upset after she saw him,’ he says. He’d arrived
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while Ciara was upstairs and had sat with Stella until I finished breastfeeding. ‘Do you think she’ll get involved in his care?’
I shrug. ‘I hope so, but I don’t know. And that girlfriend of
hers wasn’t giving anything away.’
‘Stella? She seems nice,’ he says. ‘They seem to be happy together.’
And they do. I saw how Stella had looked at Ciara when she
had come back into the room, how she’d held her hand and
mouthed ‘are you okay?’ before I had the chance to ask after
her. I saw how Ciara placed her head on Stella’s shoulder as
they sat together, letting her usually impenetrable guard down
for just a moment or two.
‘Are you okay?’ I had asked as if I hadn’t witnessed the
interaction between the two of them.
‘What do you think?’ Ciara had said. Or snapped. It felt like
more of a snap.
‘It must be a shock for you, all of this,’ I added, trying to be
polite.
‘That’s one way to describe it,’ she sniffed, looking around
the room. ‘This house hasn’t changed much over the years.’
Her judgement, even though it wasn’t the house I lived in,
and even though I had no say over the decoration of it, made
me bristle.
‘Joe’s very set in his ways, you know,’ I said.
‘Actually, I don’t know. The man’s a virtual stranger to me.’
I felt chastised again and with each answer from her I could
feel myself shrinking back into the little girl I was all those
years ago who was afraid to speak.
‘I’m sorry things have been difficult for you,’ Alex said, and
it took me a moment to register that he was talking to Ciara
and not me. I realised then, as she looked him up and down,
that I hadn’t even introduced them.
‘This is Alex, Heidi’s husband,’ Stella said, getting in ahead
of me with the formalities.
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‘Oh God, yes, sorry,’ I said. ‘I should’ve said.’
‘I was able to figure it out myself,’ Ciara said, looking at me
with something akin to disappointment on her face.
Why was I so useless, so socially inept?
Alex spoke, making up for my tied tongue and awkwardness.
‘Look, we appreciate this isn’t easy. But we want you to know
you’re welcome here any time you want. If you want to spend
more time with your father. We can get you a key. Heidi is
here most days at the moment, helping, but if you’d rather have
time alone with him then I’m sure Heidi wouldn’t mind.’
‘Can Heidi not speak for herself?’ Ciara asked.
‘I can,’ I answered, blushing at having my social ineptitude
called out so openly. ‘But what Alex has said, it’s true. Whatever you need . . .’
‘I don’t need any of this,’ Ciara had said, waving her hand around, signifying the house around her and the entire situation.
I watched Stella rub her hand, tenderly, soothing her. ‘I need
to think about it. I’ll be in touch.’
Now, with Alex beside me in bed, I can’t stop replaying the
entire conversation over and over in my head and forensically
picking it all apart. Her words. Her tone. The looks she shared
with Stella, and Alex, and me.
‘You don’t think Ciara was sharp? Nasty and bitchy?’ I ask
him just as Lily produces a momentous burp that rattles her
whole body.
‘Not overly, Heidi,’ he says. ‘Given the circumstances. I’m sure
she doesn’t know her right from her left at the moment.’
‘You really don’t think she was off with me?’
He shakes his head. ‘No, I don’t. Honestly. I think she’s a
person dealing with some pretty major stuff and it’s clearly
stressing her out. But I don’t think it’s necessarily aimed at you, personally. Try not to overthink it.’
He takes Lily from me and lays her in her cot before climbing
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back into bed and switching off the bedside lamp. ‘I’m worn out,’ he yawns, turning onto his side away from me. ‘Try to get
some sleep. It will all feel a little more manageable in the
morning.’
He drifts off within seconds – I listen to the pattern of his
breathing change. I wonder, how can he not have noticed how
she was with me? Her resentment dripped from her every word.
I’m not overthinking. I’m not always just overthinking.
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Chapter Ten
Ciara
Now
Mammy sits wringing her hands together. ‘I knew it. I knew
there was something wrong and he wasn’t telling me. I could
feel it in my waters.’
My mother has never stopped loving my father. She might
say she has, but her feelings are written across her face every
time she hears a mention of his name.
‘I didn’t think you saw much of him any more,’ I say.
She blushes, looks down at her hands, where she still wears
the plain gold wedding band he put on her finger almost thirty-
six years ago. ‘I don’t. Well, not much really, but I stopped
mentioning it to you because it only seemed to annoy you. I
can’t believe it, Ciara. He’s dying.’ Her voice breaks, but she
composes herself quickly, taking a deep breath. ‘And he wanted
to see you? That’s good, isn’t it?’
‘Mammy, he has always wanted to see me. It’s me who hasn’t
wanted to see him and I’m not sure that’s changed.’
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She bristles.
‘He’s a dying man, Ciara. I’m sure all he wants is to make
things right. You know he adores you. The pair of you were so
close when you were little. “Me and my shadow,” he used to
say. I’d be jealous of it sometimes, you know. You were my little
girl but you much preferred going on long walks out the back
roads with your daddy than you did baking with me or playing
with all the dolls I bought you.’
‘Well, I never have been a very girly girl,’ I say.
‘No, I suppose you never have been,’ she says, looking me up
and down as if she still can’t quite get her head around my gayness.
‘But I’ll tell you this, Ciara McKee, once he’s gone this time,
that will be it. There won’t be any more chances to say the
things you want to say, or hear the things you need to hear. Not
everyone gets the chance to know when their time is coming.
It’s hard, but it’s a blessing in its own way. Don’t spend the rest of your life wishing you’d said or done something differently.’
The only thing I wish I’d done differently was not to let
him have so much power over me and my happiness. Letting
him manipulate me and hurt me. And this? Now? The desires
of a dying man, this was a masterstroke in manipulation.
‘I know I raised you well, Ciara,’ my mother continues. ‘I
know I raised you to be the caring, loving woman you are now.
I can’t tell you what to do . . .’ Her sentence trails off.
She doesn’t need to finish it. She is right, she can’t tell me
what to do, I think. Not that it will stop her.
‘For all his faults, he’s family,’ she says. ‘And goodness knows
he doesn’t have much of a family around him what with your
auntie Kathleen being over in England. So maybe he needs us,
and he needs you most of all.’
‘He has the golden child,’ I say, petulant – and I’m immedi-
ately annoyed at my childishness. ‘Did you know she has a baby
now?’
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My mother nods. ‘I do. And I know as well as you, Ciara, that wee girl doesn’t do well under pressure. It would be cruel
to leave her to manage all this on her own.’
‘It’s not as easy as all that, Mammy,’ I tell her. ‘I have my own
pressures, too. Do you think work will be okay with me announcing
I’m taking reams of time off to care for an estranged parent?’
She sniffs, shakes her head. ‘You practically run the place for
them, Ciara. You’re owed time off. Take it.’
‘That’s the problem,’ I tell her. ‘I do practically run the place.
They need me there.’
‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ she says, in full flow now. ‘It’s only
an art gallery. It’s not like you’re CEO of a major company or
a brain surgeon or something.’
I bristle. It may not seem like much to my mother, but
running the small, independent gallery is my passion. Has been
for years. But now’s not the time to argue with her about the
importance of the arts. Nor is it the time to tell her that yes,
I may well be owed time off but I’ve things I’d much rather
be doing than spending that precious time off with a man who
I can’t stand to be near.
‘All I’m saying is, he’s your father.
He needs you. You need
to be the bigger person here.’ My mother cuts through my
thoughts, neither listening to nor understanding what I’ve been
saying.
I carry a tray laden with a bowl of chicken soup from a tin, a
slice of wheaten bread, a glass of milk and an apple. Mammy
has already expressed her disappointment to me over the phone
that I didn’t make the soup from scratch. I’d rolled my eyes so
hard I’d given myself a headache. Was it not enough for her
that I’d booked a few days off work after all, leaving a nervous
assistant to oversee the installation of a new exhibition?
‘He’s lucky he’s getting anything,’ I said down the line to
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Stella, my phone on speaker as I heated the soup and took a spoon from the drawer.
‘You know your mum. Always a little bit extra,’ Stella said,
trying to lift my mood. ‘It’s just as well saying she hasn’t tasted your soup.’
‘I make a lovely soup,’ I told her. ‘Just not for estranged family members.’
‘So I take it you won’t be sharing your lunch with Heidi, then?’
‘She’s out,’ I’d told her.
She’d scarpered out of the door with that baby of hers in a
buggy almost as soon as my foot had crossed the threshold.
‘Can’t say that I blame her,’ Stella said, who’d said the previous day there was something about the house that gave her the creeps.
‘It’s a feeling,’ she’d said when I pushed her to explain further.
‘It’s hard to put into words, but that house feels sad. Like bad
things happen there.’
‘Bad things do happen there,’ I’d said. ‘It’s never been a happy
place for me.’
‘I think it goes deeper than that,’ she’d said, ‘but look, never
mind me. I’m probably just away with the fairies again.’
I replay that conversation in my head as I reach the top of
the stairs. Stella has always been intuitive. She jokes that in
olden times she would most likely have been burned at the
stake for being a witch.
She’s right about the creepy feeling under this roof though,
especially in this dimly lit hall, the ticking of the clock echoing around the quiet house.
I’ve kept all conversation with my father functional so far
today. Did he need anything? Should I freshen his water? Plump
his pillows? Did he need anything picking up from the chemist?
He’d asked me to return some library books for him, pick