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Chapter Four
Ciara
Now

‘Dinner’s ready,’ Stella calls from the kitchen.

I don’t answer. I’m staring at my phone, trying to process the conversation I’ve just had with Heidi bloody Lewis. The golden child. It had to be her to tell me, didn’t it? It couldn’t have been anyone else. He couldn’t have spoken to Mum and got her to break the news. No, he was always one to go for maximum impact. Maximum distress.

The bastard.

Anger wells in me and I throw my phone at the sofa, watch as it bounces off the cushion and hits the solid wooden floor with a crack. I’ll have broken the screen, in my anger.

‘Good enough for him,’ I’d said to Heidi. It had been my gut reaction, to feel angry and shocked and think fuck him for getting her to contact me only to tell me he was dying.

He is dying.

My father, for all that word really meant to me, is dying.

‘Ciara,’ I hear Stella, ‘are you still on the phone, only the pasta …’

She walks into the room, glass of white wine in hand, and looks from me to the phone on the floor and back to me again. The glass is put down on the table and she is across the room beside me before I can figure out what to say to her.

‘What is it?’ she asks, her eyes searching my face for information that I’m still trying to process.

‘He’s dying,’ I say, thinking about how the words feel on my tongue. How they sound in my voice. Alien. Weird. Melodramatic.

Her eyes on mine, her blue eyes, deep and dark and able to see the real me. ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ she says, one hand gently caressing the side of my face. It’s her sympathy, not the news of my father’s terminal illness, which brings tears to my eyes.

‘The bastard has cancer,’ I tell her.

One tear falls and she brushes it away with the pad of her thumb.

Stella knows I have a complicated relationship with my father. Or had. We haven’t had much of a relationship at all in at least ten years. I’ve been more than happy about that.

‘He wants to see me,’ I say as she leads me to the sofa. All thoughts of dinner, or glasses of wine or the movie we had planned to curl up on the sofa to watch, are gone. ‘He asked Heidi to call me. Not enough balls to even call me himself.’

That angers me. Maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe he is now just a frail old man facing a death sentence and I should give him some leeway; but then again, when did he ever give me leeway for anything? He walked in and out of my life, leaving damage in his wake without so much as looking back. So much damage.

‘Do you want to see him?’ Stella asks.

Only she could ask that question and not have me bite back at her. She understands me in a world where it feels like no one else does.

I shrug. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe I’d like to tell him exactly what I think of him.’

‘Or maybe it would help you find your own peace and move on a bit?’ Stella asks. ‘But, you know there’s no right or wrong in this? You do what you want to do. If you want to see him, I’ll come with you. If you want to tell him to go to hell, I’ll hold your hand while you do it.’

I brush away a second pesky tear, take a deep breath. I’ll be damned if he can force me to make a decision like this quickly. Who does he think he is to get his mousey little minion to call me and ask me to come over?

‘Is there much wine left in that bottle?’ I sit back and ask Stella.

‘Not much,’ she says. ‘But there’s a second bottle in the fridge and I’m sure there’s another bottle of something in the rack.’

‘Okay,’ I say, sniffing and sitting up straight. ‘That dinner we spent all of fifteen minutes cooking is going to be absolutely ruined if we don’t eat it now. So, I say we eat. I don’t want to waste any more energy today thinking about that man.’

Chapter Five
Ciara
Then

I was an only child and I was deliriously happy in my only-child status. I was never lonely. I had lots of friends. We lived in a busy street in the Creggan Estate – a proudly working-class area on the west bank of the River Foyle.

There was always someone to play with. Come rain or shine we would be riding up and down the streets on our bikes, or on scooters or roller-skates. We would play ‘padsy’ or ‘tig’ and occasionally a gang of us would disappear en masse into one of our friends’ houses to watch a movie and eat crisps and biscuits.

I’d seen how friends with a houseful of siblings didn’t get the same treats that I did. Or the same attention from their parents, either. I was the apple of both of my parents’ eyes – but at heart I was always a daddy’s girl.

Right up until the day he left.

At thirteen years old, I experienced the worst, most painful, heartbreak of my life.

It didn’t make sense. I thought my daddy loved me. I was his special girl. I trusted him never to hurt me. But then he left – on a Thursday afternoon. I came back from school to find my mother perching on the edge of the sofa, a cigarette in her hand and a tautness to her posture that screamed that something was wrong. Being thirteen, my first thought was that I was in trouble. I braced myself for her to launch into some rant about my messy bedroom or the three pounds I’d nicked from her purse that morning. I expected her to use my full name and though my heart sank at the thought of the rollicking I was about to receive, I was already preparing my best eye-roll and ‘But, Mammy …’ response.

‘Sit down, pet,’ she said.

It was the ‘pet’ that threw me. She was hardly going to give out yards to me if she was using ‘pet’. I felt a knot in the pit of my stomach.

‘Look, there’s no easy way to tell you this, Ciara, so I’m going to come right out and say it. I want you to know that I love you very much. And your daddy loves you, too. You’re not to doubt that, ever. Okay?’

There was a strange buzzing sound in my ear. I could feel something build up inside of me, a burst of adrenaline that made me want to fight or run. I dug my fingernails as hard as I could into the palm of my hand to try to ground myself. I’d seen enough corny movies to guess where this was going.

‘Daddy has moved out,’ she said, the shake in her voice belying her true feelings. ‘It was a mutual decision and it’s just that we don’t make each other happy any more.’

‘Where has he gone?’ I asked. I needed to know where I could see him. When I could see him.

My mother’s face coloured. She sagged momentarily before straightening her back again. ‘He’s gone to live with a friend,’ she said.

Of course it wasn’t long before I found out that friend was another woman, and that woman had a daughter.

My father had left us to go and be with another family. A family he’d known for less than a year. A family with a daughter for him to love.

My teenage heart hurt so much that I cried until I threw up.

Chapter Six
Ciara
Now

It’s two days since Heidi called and I’m now standing, with Stella, outside the front door of my father’s house. It’s less than ten minutes’ walk away from our riverside apartment, but it might as well have been another country for all these years.

I have avoided the shops I know he frequents. Stayed away from the library where he used to work, and where he still liked to spend his mornings drinking strong tea from polystyrene cups and reading over the day’s papers.

He holds court there, talks to everyone who comes in. Shares his stories of old Derry and snippets of local history. It’s laughable for the man who barely looked at a book when he lived at home with my mother and me. Once he left, he transformed himself. Discarded his working-class persona entirely, lost himself in books. Went back to college. The few old friends he still deigned to spend time with gave him the nickname ‘The Professor’ because he was considered so learned. He enjoyed feeling superior to them. He enjoyed revelling in their new-found respect for him.

Learned and respected. It galls me to this day.

I feel Stella give my gloved hand a little reassuring squeeze.

I see lights on through the stained-glass panelling of the front door. It might be the middle of the day but it’s dull and dark, and January has us firmly in its grip. The darkness is as oppressive as this house looming over us. Semi-detached. With a big back garden. There was a wooden swing set there when I first visited all those years ago – a sure sign of wealth, along with a phone in the hall that didn’t have a lock on it to stop anyone from running up a big bill.

I’d felt intimidated then, but that was nothing compared to how I feel now.

‘I’m not sure I can go in,’ I say to Stella.

‘You know you don’t have to, but you’ve come this far. And look, if it feels all wrong, you never have to come back again. Focus on that.’

I squeeze her hand. There’s no way I could be here without her by my side. ‘Okay, then,’ I say. ‘Here goes nothing.’ I reach up and rattle the brass knocker, and it’s not long before I hear footsteps clacking along the tiled floor and see the shadow of a person approach.

I’ve not seen Heidi in as long as I’ve not seen my father. She was only a teenager the last time our paths had crossed, in her second year at university. She’d come home for the Christmas break – wherein my father had made a disastrous attempt to have us all round for drinks. I shudder at the memory.

Looking at Heidi now, she looks as if more than ten years have passed. Her face is pale. Tired-looking. There are dark circles under her eyes, and her hair, which clearly could benefit from a wash, is pulled back in a tight ponytail, which does her no favours. Her roots need touching up, I notice. There’s a lot of grey there for a woman still in her twenties.

She pulls an oversized grey cardigan around her small frame, wrapping her arms tightly around herself as she does. Her body language screams that she is deeply uncomfortable with this situation.

She blinks at me as if it is taking her some time to put a name to a face. I know I look different now – but not that different. And she had been aware that I was coming.

‘Heidi?’ It is Stella who breaks the silence – coming to my rescue as she always does. ‘We spoke on the phone. I’m Stella, Ciara’s partner.’

I watch for any sort of reaction on Heidi’s face at the realisation that I’m gay. It has never been something I’ve advertised. It’s no one’s business but my own, and Stella’s, of course.

Heidi barely blinks. She looks from Stella to me and then takes a step backwards to allow us in. ‘Please, come in, both of you,’ she says, her voice quiet. ‘It’s nice to meet you, Stella,’ she says. ‘And it’s good to see you again, Ciara.’

I smile at her because it is what is expected. We both know that what she has said is a lie. It’s not nice to see each other at all. I think we could have quite happily existed without ever seeing other again and been perfectly happy.

I hear the cry of a baby, look to Heidi.

‘That’s Lily,’ she says. ‘My baby. She’s due a feed. If you’ll excuse me. Joe’s sleeping just now, but I’m sure he would be okay with you waking him.’

‘Maybe we’ll just wait a bit,’ I say.

She nods, looks anxiously towards the living room door where the cry is becoming more persistent. ‘Well, you know where the tea and coffee are, why not make yourselves a cup?’ she says, and with that she scurries, mouse-like, into the living room, closing the door behind her.

I lead Stella to the kitchen.

‘So that’s Heidi,’ Stella says as she sits down and I switch the kettle on to boil.

‘It is indeed. Although she is much more mouse-like than before. And she was pretty mouse-like then.’

‘It must be hard for her, with a new baby to look after and Joe to be minding,’ Stella says as she looks around the room, taking in the slightly dated décor. I bristle. I do not want to be any part of a ‘poor Heidi’ narrative. I saw and heard enough of it over the years to be done with it for good. I’m not so much of a bitch that I don’t accept she had it rough to lose her mother at a young age, but she has led a life of privilege, and him – my father – he chose her over me. Not just once. But time and time again.

I don’t answer Stella. I just make the tea, rattle around the cupboards for sugar. This house is familiar and yet it isn’t. It’s quieter. Darker. Colder. I think briefly of the angry teenager I had once been. I can almost hear echoes of her stomping up the stairs or slamming the front door. My heart aches for her a little. I wish things had been different.

I turn to hand Stella a cup of tea. I see her shudder.

‘Are you okay?’ I ask.

‘Hmmm, uhm, yes, I think so,’ but she doesn’t look it.

‘You know you’re a terrible liar, don’t you?’

‘Never mind me. It’s nothing. I’m being silly.’ But I notice she is holding on to the mug of tea for dear life.

‘Stella?’ I raise an eyebrow.

‘Honestly,’ she says, ‘it’s nothing. Someone just walked over my grave. If you could find me a biscuit I’d feel much better.’

I look at her for a moment, sure it’s more than that, but I know her well enough to know she won’t be drawn any further, so I start to rummage for biscuits in this house that has never been my home.

This has never been a place where I was made to feel particularly welcome.

As a teenager it had felt as if every time I’d visited here I was reminded of just how much I was no longer the centre of my father’s universe.

I’d asked him once if I could put some posters up in the spare room – the room I slept in every time I visited. He shook his head. It wouldn’t be right, he’d said. He didn’t want Natalie to think he was making assumptions. It was still her house, he said. He was just a guest. I didn’t understand it, not really. Not at the time. Natalie was always so welcoming. Annoyingly so. She was desperate for me to like her, but that was never going to happen. Not when she had taken him away from me.

I’d left my pyjamas there once, about six months after my father moved in. It was shortly after Natalie took sick, I remember that. I remember I felt, momentarily, sorry for her. I wanted to help more. To do more. I folded them and stashed them under the pillow, waiting for me to pick them up and put them back on. When I came back the following week they were folded and neatly placed in a plastic carrier bag on the end of the bed.

‘Now’s not the time to make changes,’ my father had said. I always wondered who decided that. Was it him? Or was it Natalie? Regardless, I felt a renewed hatred towards them both.

I find a pack of Bourbon creams, pass them to Stella and sit down, the only noise around us being the ticking of the big clock in the hall.

‘Do you want me to come up and see him with you?’ Stella asks, splitting the biscuit in two.

I think of all the things I need to say and want to say and shake my head. ‘I need to do this on my own.’

His room smells of dust and stale breath and illness. The curtains are drawn tight and an electric radiator is pumping out heat into a room that feels oppressively warm. I feel myself break into a sweat.

He is small in that bed of his. So small that for the briefest of moments, I question if he is there at all. I look behind me, half expecting to see him come out of the bathroom larger than life, as imposing as he ever was. Tall, sturdy, full of bravado and his own self-importance.

As my eyes adjust to the darkness, his new shape becomes more apparent. Illness has shrivelled him. He’s curled on his left-hand side, his duvet and blankets folded up to his chin. The cancer has carved hollows in his face. His skin sags limply over his bones, grey, thin, wrinkled. His hair is now more salt than pepper.

I step forwards. Slowly. Quietly. As if he might jump up at any moment to shock and surprise me. He doesn’t shift. I contemplate leaving. I could close the door. Lie to Stella that I’ve spoken to him and we have nothing more to say to each other.

But I can’t lie to Stella. I don’t want to. It’s not what we’re about. She knows almost everything about me.

He shifts, just a little, a loud sigh accompanying the movement followed by a small groan of pain. My heart quickens. I should let him know I’m here, but what do I say? Do I say ‘Daddy’, or ‘Joe’, or ‘You bastard’?

I feel tears prick at my eyes. I have to hold in a low groan of pain myself. I’m not sure who I want to cry for most right now. Him, or the little girl I was, who was so hurt all those years ago.

‘Dad,’ I say softly. ‘It’s Ciara.’

He should know, of course. I’m the only person who has ever called him ‘Dad’. Despite their many years together, Heidi has never given him that title. He stirs. I can almost hear his bones creak as he does so. He’s still a relatively young man, only in his early sixties, but the way in which he tries to pull himself to sitting in his bed is more fitting to a man much older. I wince at the sight of him – the thinness of his hands as he reaches out to lift his glasses from the bedside table and put them on.

‘Ciara?’ he mutters. ‘Open those curtains. Let me see you.’

I fall into the role of dutiful daughter quickly, to my annoyance, and pull open the curtains. Not that it makes much difference. The gloom outside is such that the light barely lifts in the bedroom. I reach over and switch on the bedside lamp instead.

Then I sit at the bottom of the bed. Far enough away that he cannot touch me. I have drawn my lines. I have to. Self-preservation is everything.

‘I didn’t know if you would come,’ he says, his hand shaking as he reaches for a glass of water from the bedside table.

I lift it and hand it to him, watching him take a few sips before I take it from him again.

‘I didn’t know if I would come, either,’ I say. There’s a harshness to my voice that makes me feel both proud and ashamed of myself.

‘Well, I’m glad you did. And Heidi told you, did she? My news?’

‘That you’re dying? Yes.’

He winces a little at the word dying, as if my uttering it will summon the Grim Reaper sooner.

‘If I can get over this operation, I might get back on my feet again,’ he says. ‘For a while anyway.’

I nod. I don’t know what he expects me to say.

‘Ciara, I don’t have much time, but I wondered if I might have enough time to make things right with you. We’ve wasted so many years. If there’s any chance at all that we can even start to reconcile … it would mean more to me than I can say.’

I wait for him to say he’s sorry. I will him to say it. I’ve wanted him to say it for twenty years. Surely now, when time is running out, when he says he wants to reconcile – when he wants that more than he can say – surely now he can force those words out.

Maybe, if he does, I can think about a reconciliation. He’s scared now – I can see that in his eyes – in the way he looks at me. I need to know if he is really interested in acknowledging the pain he caused, or if he’s just scared of the judgement he’ll face from his God.

‘Heidi says you have maybe three months. Six at most,’ I say, picking imaginary fluff from the blanket on the bed.

‘I’ll not see six,’ he says. ‘I feel it. I can feel it getting closer. The cancer’s spreading.’

I look at him. There’s so much I want to say that I don’t know where to start. I could quip that the cancer started to spread a long, long time ago. But I don’t.

‘I’m scared, Ciara,’ he says, his voice weak. Pathetic.

I close my eyes. Just once, Dad, I think. Just say sorry once.

I can feel tears prick at my eyes. A well of emotion I know wants a release rises up in me. It’s a mixture of anger and grief and fear. I’m that thirteen-year-old again having her heart broken, asking her daddy to say he loved her enough to stay and that he was sorry that he ever hurt her.

I swallow them down and look him straight in the eyes. He will not see me cry. He will never know how much he hurt me, or how scared I was.

‘I’m not sure what you want me to do about that,’ I say, not caring in that moment about the icy tone in my voice.