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‘And Dr Sweeney,’ Kathleen says, her voice thick, trembling with grief.
‘It’s very late,’ I say. ‘And a bad night. I’m sure the ambulance
crew can do what’s necessary.’
‘Dr Sweeney won’t mind. He’s a friend of the family. Joe
would want him to be here. He would want to be here,’ Kathleen
says, her voice borderline hysterical.
‘Okay,’ I say, ‘I’ll make the calls.’ Anything to calm her down.
I half walk, half stumble through to the living room, dig my
phone from the changing bag I’ve carried in with me. The
same pale pink blanket still poking out of the top of it.
I make the calls. I hardly recognise my own voice as I speak,
and then I sit and wait to feel different.
I always thought the minute he was dead, my shame would
die with him. But I feel it niggle as I climb the stairs. It has
mutated, though. This time, some of it comes from the fact that
a tiny spark inside me feels alive for the first time in twenty
years.
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Chapter Twenty-One
Ciara
Now
My teeth are chattering. The room – his bedroom – is still
much too warm. It’s not the temperature that is making my
teeth chatter, or my body shake. I’m sitting on the bed – his
bed – the bed I refused to sit on over the last few days, and I
am looking at this familiar face before me.
It has changed. Slackened in death. Even though he is still
warm, I can see the colour, what little of it there was, leave his face in front of me.
Alex said he looked like he was sleeping. He doesn’t. He
looks dead. What he was, who he was, is gone.
I hear voices downstairs. Cries from Kathleen. I’m aware
Stella is hovering, unsure what to do. She puts a hand on my
shoulder and I shrug her away. Probably too harshly.
‘I just . . . need a moment. Please,’ I say. ‘On my own with him.’
She says ‘of course’ and she leaves, pulling the door behind
her until it’s almost closed tight.
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I look at my father’s face again. See traces of me there. The same shape of nose. Pointy chin. I think of all the things I
inherited from him. Not just his looks, I think. Or his love for
books.
I think – no, I’m pretty sure – I inherited some of his badness.
Because while I know I’m in shock and I know he’s gone, I
know there’s a justice to it.
Joe McKee never should’ve had a chance at a bucket list. He
never should’ve had anyone sitting around his bedside, trying
to figure out how to support him.
He didn’t deserve to be waited on. To be able to creep his
way back into our lives. To guilt us into feeling sorry for him
when he never, even once in his sad and miserable life, felt
sorry for the pain he inflicted.
He’d been given time to say sorry. I’d waited for him to
speak up but he hadn’t. He’d only tried his old tricks all over
again. Manipulating me. Us.
My father deserved to be dead, I thought as I saw how he
lay in his bed, seemingly peaceful. There was something so false
about it all.
I hope wherever his soul is now, and I have my suspicions
about that, it is in torment. It deserves to be. He should’ve died all those years ago, in the fire that Heidi started. He should’ve
burned. I look at his body, the warmth draining from it, and I
whisper, just as I hear the front door open and the tramp of
paramedics on the stairs, that I hope he never finds a moment’s
peace.
And suddenly, all of this is outside of my control. Paramedics
are in the room. Followed by Dr Sweeney, who takes my hand
and solemnly offers me his condolences.
Questions are asked and I answer them. As best I can. People
come and go. Auntie Kathleen, who sits rubbing my father’s
hand as the paramedics fill in their paperwork. Stella makes tea.
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Alex hovers. The one person who doesn’t come near the room is Heidi.
‘It’s probably better for him,’ Dr Sweeney says. ‘In the long
run. I know it’s an awful shock now.’
I nod and make the right noises and say the right things, but
I’m starting to wish they would all just get on with it. Take
him away. Load him onto a trolley and into the back of the
ambulance, or get the undertakers to collect him. I can’t escape
the reality that he is already starting to decay. With every minute that passes, I start to believe that this is real. That finally he is gone.
I want his physical remains to be gone, too.
I need him to leave.
‘It will be okay,’ Stella says, appearing beside me.
I want so much to tell her it already is.
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Chapter Twenty-Two
Heidi
Now
There’s a uniform for grieving. I don’t think I’ve ever thought
of it much before, but now, standing in front of my wardrobe
trying to find suitable items in black to wear over the coming
days, I realise that it exists.
I glance down at my stomach, still loose and flabby following
Lily’s birth five and a half months before. It’s hard now to
remember it swollen and tight. It’s hard to imagine the smiling,
wriggling baby lying on her play mat beside me ever living
inside me.
I find a simple shift dress, loose and forgiving, which I’d worn
to a friend’s granny’s funeral, and decide it will do for now.
Thick black tights, flat shoes and the grey cardigan from the
back of the door complete the look.
I wonder if I should put make-up on. I don’t think I’ve worn
make-up since Lily was born, but the black clothes will make
me look even more washed out. I resolve to put on a little but
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not too much. I pull my hair into a loose ponytail, aware that it is still falling out in clumps. The joys of a post-pregnancy
body.
I wish we didn’t have to go through this process. The Irish
wake. Two days and nights of mourning over a coffin sat in our
house. Several days of making sure he’s not left alone, bowing
to tradition and superstition. Several days of handshaking and
nodding and passing around cups of tea, snifters of whisky for
the ‘oul fellahs’, before we can bury him and I can start to bury
so much more.
I wish we could leave him in a funeral home. Visit only when
we want to – if we want to. Keep a distance from it all. I wish
I’d never have to think about Joe McKee again.
I glance at the clock. It’s twelve thirty. We’ve said we’ll
be
back at the house by two. There will be furniture to be shifted.
Someone will have to go to the community centre and see if
we can get a loan of some chairs for visitors coming to the
wake and a tea urn to keep the fresh cups coming. There will
be sandwiches to make . . .
I feel overwhelmed and sit down on the edge of the bed
and focus on Lily, who seems to be enraptured with the discovery
that she has feet.
The bed dips as Alex sits beside me and takes my hand. ‘We’ll
get through it,’ he says and I lean my head on his shoulder.
‘Do you think people will think we’re awful for not having
the wake here?’ I ask, looking around me.
‘In a boxy two-bedroom new build with a tiny baby to mind?
No, I don’t think people will.’
I take a deep breath. ‘I know I shouldn’t care what people
think, but I do.’
‘Do you think any less of Ciara for not offering to hold the
wake in her house?’ Alex asks.
I shake my head. Of course I don’t. But that’s different. Ciara
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is different. No one would expect it of her, even though she was his biological daughter. Me, though? I’ve been told for the
past two decades that I’m so lucky that Joe stayed to look after
me. That I must owe him a debt of gratitude.
Those people don’t know the truth, though.
I glance down at Lily again on the floor. Her eyes meet mine
and she breaks into one of her heart-melting smiles. I feel a
wave of emotion rise up in me and I start to cry, immediately
annoyed at myself for not holding it together. I can’t fall apart
– not at this stage. I just have to get through the next few days, then this whole ordeal will be over.
‘I’ll put some soup on,’ Alex says. ‘You need to eat something,
keep your strength up. I’ll take this little madam with me too,
so she doesn’t distract you further.’
He reaches for our daughter and lifts her tenderly into his
arms. Her smile is instant, her head curling in against his chest.
His love for her is so pure it makes my breath catch in my
chest. I reach over and stroke the soft, fair, fluffy hair on her
head. I know I’d do anything to protect her. To keep her safe.
The phone rings downstairs. It has been ringing all morning
and each time, I have jumped. I’m tired and it’s too loud. Too
shrill. The voices on the other end of the line too false. More
wanting to know the gossip than genuinely sympathising. The
news hasn’t taken long to spread. It never does. Not in Derry.
I want to pull the landline out. Most people I know don’t have
them any more anyway.
I hear the low tone of Alex’s voice as he answers. His words
muffled and indistinct through the closed door. I hear his feet
on the stairs, watch the door for him to open it and impart
whatever news he has. So and so sends their sympathy. If there
is anything they can do, et cetera, et cetera.
But his face looks different when I see him. It’s as if he has
faded in the few minutes we’ve been apart. He is pale. Looks
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shaken. I don’t like this. It reminds me of his face last night, when I saw him on the stairs.
He takes my hand. I fight the urge to pull it away. I know,
just know, something is wrong.
‘That was the undertakers,’ he says. ‘There will be a delay
with bringing Joe’s remains back.’
‘Why?’
‘He didn’t say exactly. Just that something had come up.’
An uneasy feeling washes over me. ‘And you didn’t ask what
exactly?’
‘He said they just needed to check some things. That’s all.’
I bite my tongue. It won’t endear me to Alex if I say what
is going through my mind, which is that there can’t be much
to check given that it’s pretty clear he’s dead.
‘Did he say how long?’ I say instead.
‘No.’ Alex shakes his head. ‘He said he’d be in touch.’
‘Well, what are we supposed to do?’ I snap. I feel fidgety. If
I have to endure his wake, I’d rather get on with the enduring.
I’d rather get to the ‘moving on’ part.
‘Do your best to relax, maybe. Enjoy the calm before the
madness of the wake starts.’
I immediately dismiss that idea. There’s no way I can relax.
Not when I don’t know what is going on. There is no calm
and there never has been when it came to Joe.
‘Maybe I’ll go over to the house anyway. Get a head start
on things. No doubt Ciara will be there already,’ I say.
The thought of her poking around the house I grew up in
makes me uncomfortable, even though it’s a long time since it
felt anything like a home to me.
‘It’s not a competition,’ he says gently.
The rational, adult part of my brain knows that. Another part
of me thinks that it is very much a competition and always
will be between Ciara and me.
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Chapter Twenty-Three
Heidi
Then
I remember holding my pencil. It was red. One of the thicker
ones they used to give you in primary school to help with
your handwriting. I’d done my homework. Written my sentences
using my best handwriting and finished my sums.
I had closed my copybook and slipped it back into my satchel.
I was sitting at the kitchen table and he was humming. I can’t
remember the tune exactly. I’m not sure I ever knew what it
He was doing a little dance as he set about making dinner.
As if he didn’t have a care in the world. As if nothing had
ever hurt him. I couldn’t understand how he could be happy.
I wondered if I’d ever feel happy again. Mammy was dead
more than a year but it still hurt as much as it did the day
she died.
I lifted the jotter my granny had bought me, just for scrib-
bling in, and started to draw. Dark streaks of deep grey lead on
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the paper. Pushing down so hard that I thought I might tear through several sheets at once.
It helped to release some of the anger that was inside me.
I gripped the pencil tighter – my knuckles white with the
effort – and flipped the page over and started to write:
I hate Joe McKee
I hate Joe McKee
I hate Joe McKee
I jumped when his hand landed, thick and heavy, on the
table beside where I was scrawling. I felt him loom over me
until I could feel his breath – warm and smelling of tea – on
my cheek. He was right beside. So close that even while he
wasn’t touching me, I could feel him as if he were.
‘You hate me?’ he asked.
I didn’t flinch. I was scared, but a defiance ha
d crept over
me that day and I refused to show it.
I didn’t answer. I just kept writing those four words over and
over again.
His hand moved, covered mine, pressed down so hard that
not only could I no longer write, but also so that I could feel
the pencil pressing painfully into my fingers.
‘You hate me?’ he said again, his tone more menacing.
I would not break. He would not break me.
I mustered as much bravery as I could and said ‘Yes.’ in a
voice that didn’t shake as much as I feared it might.
‘All I have ever done,’ he hissed, ‘is take care of you. And
love you when no one else wanted you. You’re just an ungrateful
little brat.’
He stayed close. His breathing heavy. I could feel the skin of
his palm turn clammy, could feel the sweat on my hand – a
hand that was pinned on the table.
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I was only a child. Only ten when that happened, but I wasn’t stupid. I promised one day I’d make him feel as trapped, as
helpless, as I did.
Eventually, he loosened his grip, took the notebook and tore
it pieces before dragging me through to the living room, where
I could watch it burn in the fireplace.
He couldn’t burn my feelings, though. He would never be
able to do that.
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Chapter Twenty-Four
Heidi
Now
It’s only been a few hours since we were last at this house but
it already feels as if everything has changed. The energy is
different. I can feel that he is gone. I stop for just a moment
– taking a deep breath, revelling in how fresh the air feels in
a house that has been oppressive for so long.
Alex must mistake my shivering for a wave of grief. He wraps
his arms around me, holds me and kisses the top of my head.
I stand still and let him believe what he needs to.
I hear the slam of a car door and turn to see Ciara walking
up the short drive towards the house, hand in hand with Stella.
Tiredness is written all over her face, I suppose, but then none
of us slept well last night.
‘Has the undertaker been in touch with you?’ I ask as she
walks through the door and slips off her coat.
She nods, fidgets a little, pulling the sleeve of her cardigan
down over her hand. ‘I don’t know what it’s all about. I thought