Claire Allan - The Liar’s Daughter

Joe has always liked spring. More so as he grew older and found comfort in God. ‘A time of renewal,’ he would say as the evenings stretched and the temperatures crept up.

I know as well as he does, there’ll be no renewal for him this year.

‘You never know,’ I say, even though we do know. Odds are he’ll be gone before the seasons change.

He shakes his head slowly, looks ahead. ‘Some things you feel, Heidi.’

I switch on the engine, nudge the car into first gear.

‘It’s not a lot of time, is it?’ he asks. ‘To do all the things I need to do or to make things right.’

Joe McKee could have a whole other lifetime to live and it wouldn’t be long enough for him to make things right. There’s a time in a person’s life, if they are truly, truly wicked, when they move beyond the point of redemption.

I stay quiet. If he’s looking for some sort of absolution, he’s looking in the wrong place.

Ten minutes of a silent drive home later, we pull up outside his house. The house my mother owned, which in turn will belong to me when he is gone. This is where the first almost ten years of my life were blissfully happy. My mother created a loving, warm and magical childhood for me.

Then she died.

Even all these years later, there are times when that realisation hits me like a punch to the gut.

The world has never seemed fair or right since.

‘Will we get you inside?’ I ask Joe.

He nods. ‘I’m tired.’

He looks pale, his eyes red, dark circles around them. The effort of the short journey has worn him out. He looks wretched. It’s almost, but not quite, enough to make me feel sorry for him.

‘Sure, we’ll get you in and to bed then,’ I say. ‘Just let me take Lily in first. I don’t want to leave her here in the car on her own.’

He nods. ‘Of course not.’

I open the door, carry Lily, who is thankfully still sleeping, through to the living room in her car seat and allow myself a few seconds to take some deep breaths. I’m shaking, I realise, but it’s not from the cold. I count my breaths in and out until the shaking lessens. I tuck Lily’s blanket around her, stroke her cheek. Note how she is filling out, changing. Only five months old and already I can see shades of the little girl she will become.

I do not like being here with Joe. Even in his frail condition, I still feel scared to be close to him.

I’ve tried to have as little as possible to do with him, especially after I moved away to university at eighteen. But somehow, and much to my shame and self-hatred, I still find myself unable to cut him from my life entirely.

It will be nigh on impossible now, not without appearing to be cold and uncaring. Not without telling people all the things that happened. The things I’ve tried so hard to bury.

The thought of how much he will rely on me over the coming months make me feel sick to my stomach.

‘It must be nice in a way,’ the nurse at the hospital had said, ‘to care for him now. After all he did for you after your mother died. There aren’t many men who would take on the responsibility of someone else’s child like that.’

Joe had told her he had only done what any decent person would do.

But Joe McKee doesn’t have a decent bone in his cancer-riddled body.

The sweat is lashing off me by the time I have helped Joe upstairs and into bed. I do not like the feel of him leaning his weight on me as I help him up the stairs. I do not like helping him slip off his shoes and socks and lift his feet into bed. He is complaining of the cold, even though the heating is on full and the extra oil-filled radiator in his room is pumping out a dusty, dry heat.

I pull an extra blanket from the airing cupboard and put it over him, offer to make a cup of tea. ‘It might bring you round a bit,’ I say. I feel I’m speaking the words from a script of what a good daughter should say to an ailing parent.

‘It might, aye,’ he replies. ‘That would be nice, Heidi.’

He makes a move as if he is going to pat my hand and I pull it away quickly. The gesture makes him flinch, but I won’t have any physical contact with him that isn’t strictly necessary.

I catch him looking at me, his face sorrowful. I wonder if he’ll say it, now. The words he’s never said in all these years. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Maybe …’ he starts. ‘When I’ve had a rest, maybe you could call Ciara for me? She should know how ill I am. Or maybe you’ve spoken to her already?’

Ciara. Joe’s daughter. His real daughter. The one tied to him by biology. The one he left behind when he moved in with Mum and me all those years ago. She has never forgiven him. Or me, for that matter. We don’t speak. I can’t remember the last time I saw her face-to-face.

‘I’ve not spoken to her yet,’ I tell him. I understand why he thinks it would be easier for her to hear from me first, so I know I’ll have to do it. Regardless of the state of her relationship with her father, she has a right to know he is dying. ‘But I will. When you wake up. You look exhausted.’

‘That’s what dying will do to you,’ he says with a sad smile.

I don’t return it, I just nod and leave the room, head for the kitchen, where I disseminate his various medicines into boxes and baskets for easy access while waiting for his tea to brew.

I’ve long since given up any idea of religion, but while I’m waiting for the kettle to hiss and rattle, I wish there was a godlike figure I could pray to for the strength to get through the next few weeks without wanting to throw myself off a bridge or put a pillow over his face.

I first met Joe when I was seven years old. He was already sitting at the table in Fiorentinis Ice Cream Parlour on the Strand Road, looking around him at the old photos and pictures on the wall, when my mother and I arrived.

‘I’ve someone I’d like you to meet,’ my mother had said.

I remember that she looked happy. That her eyes seemed to sparkle. She’d put on make-up and I could smell she was wearing her favourite perfume – the kind she saved for special occasions. She’d even let me have a little spritz on my wrists. I remember that I was happy for her. Her excitement was contagious and yes, I was a little nervous, too. But that was okay, my mother had told me. It’s okay to feel nervous about meeting new people.

I liked the cocooned world my mother and I shared. Just the two of us, with Granny and Grandad popping in occasionally to check on us. To fuss. To ask if we had everything we needed. My mother’s response was always the same. ‘Sure we have each other and that’s all that we need,’ she’d smile.

My grandmother’s eyes would tighten so that I could see the fine lines of wrinkles spread out across her face. ‘You know I worry,’ she would say.

‘There’s no need to,’ my mother would reply.

And there wasn’t. We were happy. We had what we needed. A small house with a garden big enough to play in. Food in the cupboards. And if I needed new shoes or a new school coat, or sometimes just because Mum thought we deserved a treat, she would reach into the tin tea caddy on the top shelf of the corner cupboard in the kitchen, lift out some money and treat us.

Occasionally, the topic of my father would come up. Usually around Father’s Day, or after we’d watched some schmaltzy family movie. My mother would tell me, as gently as she could, that my father had moved away before I’d been born. ‘He wasn’t ready to be a daddy just yet,’ she’d say, and sometimes there would be a sadness in her eyes about it. ‘But that was everything to do with him and nothing to do with you,’ she’d tell me.

I suppose I knew she was lonely sometimes. She would read romance novels and sigh, and I knew most of my friends had both their parents living together. I suppose it was understandable my mother might want to find a partner too, even if she said that we had all we needed to be happy between the pair of us.