Claire Allan - The Liar’s Daughter

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2020

Copyright © Claire Allan 2020

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2020

Cover photograph © Rekha Garton / Arcangel Images

Claire Allan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008378356

Ebook Edition © January 2020 ISBN: 9780008321956

Version: 2019-12-13

To my children,

who make me want to be the best person

I can be every single day.

I love you both so much.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue: Now

Chapter One: Heidi

Chapter Two: Heidi

Chapter Three: Heidi

Chapter Four: Ciara

Chapter Five: Ciara

Chapter Six: Ciara

Chapter Seven: Joe

Chapter Eight: Heidi

Chapter Nine: Heidi

Chapter Ten: Ciara

Chapter Eleven: Heidi

Chapter Twelve: Heidi

Chapter Thirteen: Heidi

Chapter Fourteen: Joe

Chapter Fifteen: Ciara

Chapter Sixteen: Heidi

Chapter Seventeen: Heidi

Chapter Eighteen: Joe

Chapter Nineteen: Heidi

Chapter Twenty: Heidi

Chapter Twenty-One: Ciara

Chapter Twenty-Two: Heidi

Chapter Twenty-Three: Heidi

Chapter Twenty-Four: Heidi

Chapter Twenty-Five: Heidi

Chapter Twenty-Six: Heidi

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Heidi

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Heidi

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Ciara

Chapter Thirty: Heidi

Chapter Thirty-One: Heidi

Chapter Thirty-Two: Heidi

Chapter Thirty-Three: Heidi

Chapter Thirty-Four: Heidi

Chapter Thirty-Five: Ciara

Chapter Thirty-Six: Heidi

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Ciara

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Heidi

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Heidi

Chapter Forty: Heidi

Chapter Forty-One: Heidi

Chapter Forty-Two: Heidi

Chapter Forty-Three: Ciara

Chapter Forty-Four: Heidi

Chapter Forty-Five: Heidi

Chapter Forty-Six: Heidi

Chapter Forty-Seven: Ciara

Chapter Forty-Eight: Heidi

Chapter Forty-Nine: Heidi

Chapter Fifty: Heidi

Chapter Fifty-One: Heidi

Chapter Fifty-Two: Ciara

Chapter Fifty-Three: Ciara

Chapter Fifty-Four: Ciara

Chapter Fifty-Five: Ciara

Chapter Fifty-Six: Ciara

Chapter Fifty-Seven: Heidi

Chapter Fifty-Eight: Ciara

Chapter Fifty-Nine: Heidi

Chapter Sixty: Heidi

Chapter Sixty-One: Ciara

Chapter Sixty-Two: Heidi

Chapter Sixty-Three: Ciara

Chapter Sixty-Four: Heidi

Chapter Sixty-Five: Alex

Chapter Sixty-Six: Ciara

Chapter Sixty-Seven: Heidi

Chapter Sixty-Eight: Ciara

Chapter Sixty-Nine: Ciara

Chapter Seventy: Heidi

Chapter Seventy-One: Ciara

Chapter Seventy-Two: Heidi

Chapter Seventy-Three: Heidi

Epilogue: Kathleen

Keep Reading …

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Claire Allan

About the Publisher

They’ve told me I’m dying. A doctor in a white coat, and a blue shirt with a stripy navy tie that had a coffee stain on it, had perched on the end of my bed and adopted a very serious expression on his face.

A nurse – who I had heard give out to her colleagues about the lack of resources on the ward and how she was getting ‘sick, sore and tired of working her arse off’ for too much responsibility and not enough money – had pulled the clinical blue curtain around my bed to afford me some privacy.

Her sombre expression mirrored that of the doctor, although it was clear it was a front. It was almost the end of her shift. This was a life-changing moment for me – the moment I heard I was condemned to die despite all the chemotherapy and surgery that they had been able to offer. For Katrina the nurse, with her short brown hair and ice-blue eyes, it was just the end of another shift. And she was tired. She had to do this final grim task before she clocked out and went home. She’d get a cup of tea, or coffee, or maybe a glass of wine (she seemed the type). She’d kick off her shoes and watch something mindless on the TV. She might even laugh if it was funny.

I doubted she’d think about me and the fact that I was dying. That no more could be done for me. I was already in the past tense for Katrina.

I was feeling sorry for myself, but that was allowed, wasn’t it?

I wasn’t that old. This shouldn’t have been happening yet.

I didn’t deserve this.

I wanted to scream that I didn’t deserve this.

But it was like there was a tiny voice, or a chorus of voices, whispering in her ear that this is exactly what I did deserve. In fact, I deserved much, much worse.

The back seat of my car is full to bursting. Lily is bundled up in her car seat, asleep and blissfully ignorant of the strained atmosphere between her fellow passengers. A weekend bag, filled with pyjamas and underpants to be laundered, a toilet bag containing a razor, toothbrush, soap and shaving foam sits beside her.

A plastic ‘Patient’s Property’ bag sits in the footwell. It’s loaded with boxes of medication, dressings, instructions that I will have to will my postpartum brain into reading and understanding once we are back at Joe’s house.

I won’t call it home. It ceased to be my home the moment my mother died – also from cancer. Unlike Joe McKee, the man who has played the role of my father for the past twenty-one years, she didn’t deserve it.

‘Did you lift my slippers?’ Joe asks as I help him ease his seat belt on. He is still sore – still tender from the operation to try to remove the tumour found in his lung. Except that they found it had company, all through his body. ‘Riddled with it,’ he said, sadly, when he told me.

‘Yes, I lifted your slippers. They’re in your bag, along with your pyjamas and dressing gown.’

‘There was a book in the locker. Did you …’

‘Yes, I lifted it as well. And packed it. Along with your prayer book and your reading glasses.’

He nods. ‘I wonder how many more books I’ll read,’ he says, to himself as much as anything.

‘You know what the doctor said,’ I tell him. ‘Take it one day at a time.’

‘Those days are still numbered, though, aren’t they? I doubt I’ll see the spring.’

He looks out onto the bleak, grey car park of Altnagelvin hospital, on the very outskirts of Derry, Belfast in one direction and the city centre in the other. The sky is almost as dark as the tarmac below us. Heavy and angry-looking. It seems apt.