‘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.
‘Joe,’ she said, a warning edge to her voice. ‘Now’s not the time. She’s upset. She has 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.
Chapter Nine
Heidi
Now
Alex sits on the edge of our bed, taking off his shoes. They 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 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.
‘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 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.
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.’
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 petulantly – and I’m immediately annoyed at my childishness. ‘Did you know she has a baby now?’
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 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 obvious she’s never tasted your soup before!’
‘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 him a few he had reserved behind the desk. I’d jumped at the chance. Of course I didn’t think that in doing so I’d have to listen to the simpering librarian behind the desk wax lyrical on what a wonderful man he was and how he must be a great father. I nodded, made relatively non-committal noises. She’d become misty-eyed.
‘A terrible tragedy. He’s so young still, and such a good man. They say God takes the good ones first,’ she said. ‘You must be beside yourself at the news.’
I’d been so, so tempted to tell her that I wasn’t beside myself at all at the news. That I’d spent more time than I’m proud of wishing he was dead. A wicked voice inside me wanted to scream: ‘The sooner the bastard is in the ground the better.’
I didn’t, of course. And for now I’m doing what my mother wants me to do. I am being there for him. Smoothing waters, even though I know no matter how calm the surface, there is an undercurrent threatening to drag me down at any moment.
I take a deep breath. I won’t let that undercurrent win today. I plaster something akin to a smile on my face and carry the tray into his room, where he’s sitting up in bed, reading a newspaper, his glasses perched on the end of his nose. He needs a shave, but I’ll not be offering to help with that. He looks much brighter than he did when I first saw him three days ago. There is some colour back in his cheeks. He smiles back at me. Or leers. It strikes me that there has always been something about his smile that makes me feel uncomfortable.
‘Here’s your lunch,’ I say, sitting it across his lap and making sure he has everything he needs.
I don’t want to be in this room with him any longer than I need to be, so I turn to leave.
‘Ciara?’ His voice is thin and reedy – thinner and reedier than it probably needs to be. ‘Come and sit with me. Just while I have my lunch. Then you can get back to hiding downstairs again. Or you can go home. But just give me five minutes of your time, please.’
‘Okay,’ I say, instantly wishing I had the guts to say no.
‘Why don’t you sit down, instead of standing there and growing tall? You’re tall enough already.’
‘I’ll go get a chair,’ I say.
It might be a good idea to have one here anyway, for visitors. Not that there have been many, by all accounts. Despite his supposed status in the community, the house has been remarkably quiet according to Heidi. All those people who he holds court with, chats to in the street, in the library. They’re not really his friends, are they? Where are they now?
‘Sure, there’s no need for that,’ he says. ‘You can sit at the bottom of the bed.’
I hesitate. I remind myself that I’m an adult now and I have my own voice.
‘I’d rather just get a chair,’ I say, clenching my fists tightly to try to stop myself from shaking. Without giving him the chance to argue further, I go and get a chair from the spare room, place it just far enough to the right of his bed that he can’t reach it, and sit down. I’ve left the bedroom door open. I can leave at any time I want, I tell myself.
I watch and listen as he slurps spoonfuls of his soup into his mouth while he tries to make small talk. It’s all inconsequential babble that infuriates me. He wants me here, he says, but he doesn’t seem to have any intention of saying the things I need him to say.
As soon as he takes his final mouthful and washes it down with the last of his milk, I lift the tray from him and walk from the room, not looking back.
‘Would you not just stay another few minutes?’ I hear him ask, but this time I find my voice.
‘No. I’ve done what you asked. I have to leave now.’ I don’t wait to listen to any response – I just get down the stairs and out of the house as quickly as I can.
Chapter Eleven
Heidi
Now
Joe’s not getting better. Not the way the doctor’s hoped, anyway. I mean, of course, we know that ultimately he is going to die. But they did expect him to recover from his surgery well enough to enjoy some sort of quality of life, for some amount of time.
He’s still confined to his bed, six days after coming home from hospital. He doesn’t even want to try to manage the stairs, to sit in the living room and maybe watch some TV. He complains he is in pain. He complains he feels sick. He complains he is too tired. He complains he can’t sleep. He complains his cup of tea is too hot. Or too milky. Or he wanted coffee instead. He complains the room is too stuffy. Or it’s too cold.
It’s a constant barrage of complaints, which I feel I have to swallow down. Because he’s sick. Because he’s dying.
I’ve tried – I’m still trying – to rally the troops, so to speak, to get help. I’ve spoken to some of Joe’s friends. Asked them if they could maybe take a shift on, a morning or afternoon, or an hour even of looking after him.
They’ve mostly been too busy. They work. Or they mind their grandkids. Or they have plans but they’ll ‘see what they can do’ and disappear off the radar.
With every ‘Sorry, I’d love to but can’t,’ I feel myself crumble a little.
This house has started to make me itch. I only have to get to the bottom of the drive and I can feel my skin prickle. Everything here is heavy and there are shadows everywhere.
We have, at least, managed to secure a care package for Joe. From next week, carers will visit for fifteen minutes each morning and fifteen minutes each evening to help with personal hygiene and the like. It’s not much, but it’s something, and I cling to it.
So far Alex has been on hand to help Joe shave every second day. We’ve put a stool in the bathroom, where he can sit while he brushes his teeth, and each morning I bring a basin of warm water, soap and fresh towels to Joe’s room and he washes himself as best he can.
He needs a shower. I know that. But he’ll have to wait for that.
Ciara has visited twice. Stayed for a few hours. Seemed to be in the foulest of all moods while she was here. It doesn’t help with the atmosphere, so I tend to avoid her. Use the time she’s here to get outside and breathe in some fresh air. I walk the length of the quay along the river over and over again with Lily in her pram, waiting for the peace and calm to wash over me that’s supposed to come with getting out and about. I’m still waiting.
‘Look,’ Dr Sweeney says as he sips tea from a good china cup, the kind kept for company. ‘He’s feeling a bit down, you know. That could be what’s hindering his recovery in and of itself. I know the prognosis isn’t good, but we need to do what we can to get him to make the most of what time he has left.’
I’d nodded, because it was expected. But ‘we’ all know that ‘we’ means ‘me’.
‘He says he gets panicky at night, in case he’s unwell and there’s no one here to help him,’ Dr Sweeney, who has been our family doctor for as long as I can remember, says.
‘There’s always someone here ’til gone eight,’ I say defensively. ‘And then I’m here before nine in the morning again. He has a phone. He can call if he needs me.’
I want to add that I’m doing as much as I can. I don’t actually want to do any of it. I’d spent the bare minimum of time with him before this illness and I’d very much like it if it was still that way. But of course, I keep quiet.
‘Maybe, but he’s a frail, sick man. I’m not one to tell you all what to do, but it might be worth talking with other family members about a rota for overnight care. Even in the interim, until he rallies a bit.’
I can’t help but roll my eyes. ‘Other family members’ – as if there’s a queue. As if I haven’t been spending the last few days calling everyone I know remotely connected with Joe to try to ease the burden on my shoulders.
‘I’ve a young baby to consider, you know,’ I tell him. ‘But I’ll mention it to Ciara. There aren’t many more options.’
‘You’re a good girl,’ Dr Sweeney says, a master at being patronising. ‘And for what it’s worth, babies are very adaptable at this one’s age. As long as they’ve a bed to sleep in at night they don’t mind too much disruption to their surroundings.’
I resist the urge to tell him to piss off.
Thankfully he leaves a little later, after eating the better part of half a packet of biscuits and dusting the crumbs onto the floor. As I close the door behind him I hear Joe call from the bedroom and I climb the stairs, each step feeling heavier and harder than the last.
‘Yes, Joe?’ I ask, opening the door just slightly and peeking in.
‘Was that Dr Sweeney talking to you about night-times?’ he asks, his face a picture of perfect misery.
‘It was.’
‘I don’t want to cause you girls any more trouble,’ he says, ‘but it’s so hard here being on my own, with only my thoughts to keep me company after you all go home to your happy families.’
‘It must be,’ I tell him.
‘I’ll not be round to be a burden on you all for much longer,’ he says.
‘I’ll talk to Ciara,’ I say.
‘Kathleen said she might come over from England,’ he says. ‘Maybe you could call her for me. Tell her I’d like to see her. She might listen to it better from you. Come sooner, you know?’
‘I’ll do that, Joe,’ I say, putting my hand to the door to leave.
‘Heidi …’ His voice is soft, setting my teeth on edge. ‘Could you pray with me?’
I grip the door handle a little tighter, feel the beginnings of the fight or flight fear set in.
‘I’ve things to do,’ I tell him.
‘Just a wee decade of the Rosary,’ he says. ‘It won’t take long and it would mean the world.’
I glance out of the door, I don’t know why. In the vain hope, perhaps, that someone will come and rescue me. There is no one there, of course, just as there has never been anyone there.
‘Please,’ he says.
I nod, cross the room and sit on the chair close to his bed. He lifts his red rosary beads and starts to pray, stopping only to encourage me to speak up when I’m too quiet.
I parrot the words, the rhythm and familiarity of them providing no comfort at all. Tears are sliding down my face.
‘Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death …’
Chapter Twelve
