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.
Then
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.
But if I was nervous that day in Fiorentinis, it was nothing compared to how nervous this man, Joe, appeared to be. He was fidgeting in his seat and, as he stood up to say hello, he almost knocked over his teacup.
I was as shy then as I am now. I stayed close to my mother, my hand gripped in hers, my cheek pressed against the soft fabric of her coat.
‘Heidi, this is Joe,’ she said. ‘He’s a friend of mine.’
The man smiled, extended his hand towards mine. Dark hairs crawled from the cuff of his jacket. They looked like spiders. I cuddled in closer to my mother.
‘Heidi, say hello,’ she said, an urgency in her voice.
He withdrew his hand and sat down. ‘She doesn’t have to if she doesn’t want to. Isn’t that right, Heidi? I’m a little nervous, too.’ His smile was kind.
The tightness in my chest eased as he lifted his teacup and sipped from it. I dared to take a step away from the safety of my mother’s long, green woollen coat.
‘I know it’s cold and rainy outside, but maybe you’d like an ice cream anyway? Since we’re here?’ he asked.
‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Heidi?’ My mother’s voice was more relaxed again, too.
I nodded.
‘How about we get them to make you the biggest ice cream they’ve got?’ he asked and my eyes widened at the thought. There was little that seven-year-old me loved more than ice cream.
‘With jelly?’ I asked, because jelly came a close second.
‘Lots of jelly,’ Joe said with a wink, and I smiled at him and then at my mother.
The smile on my face was mirrored on her own. Then I noticed how she looked at him. How her smile was different when she was smiling in his direction. It was how those men and women smiled at each other on the front covers of her romance novels. She was falling in love. I knew it at once.
It was only when he came back from ordering and reached out to hand me the giant ice cream he was carrying that I noticed the glint of a gold ring on his finger.
I may have been only seven, but I knew what that meant. And I also knew he wasn’t married to my mother. He was grinning at me. Telling me he asked for extra sprinkles. I could sense Mum beaming at him from beside me. I knew she wanted me to smile, so I did. I remembered my manners just like I’d always been taught, and I thanked him and ate the ice cream. I pretended it didn’t suddenly taste a little sour.
Now