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