She looks at me as if I’ve just come out with the most ludicrous statement of all time.

‘Well, it was hardly me,’ she says, turning the phone away from me again.

She’s dialling the number. I can hear the phone ring at the other end and I snatch it from her quickly, throwing the phone as hard as I can to the floor so that it smashes.

‘I won’t take the fall for you. Or for anyone else,’ I tell her.

She is glaring at me, her eyes dark, enraged. For the first time in days, anger is not my primary emotion – fear is.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Ciara

Now

Heidi has knocked the phone out of my hand. It’s in bits on the floor. I look at it, then look back to her. Why did she do that? And she thinks maybe I’m the one covering up for my actions.

She’s actually suggesting I did it. That I killed my own father. She is delusional and dangerous.

‘Why did you do that?’ I ask, stepping towards her. ‘Why would you be so stupid to do that? I only wanted to help!’ I’m so angry now. Why won’t she let me help her?

‘You’re not listening to me,’ she says, but all I’ve done is listen.

Over the last few days that’s all there has been to do. To listen to everyone gather round and talk about this man who was the ‘salt of the earth’. How he ‘deserved more than he got’ and would be ‘greeted at the gates of heaven by the faithfully departed’. Every single thing I’ve heard has made me want to throw up.

But I haven’t. I’ve stayed because my mother needs me. And Kathleen, too. And here is Heidi and I’m offering to help her and she’s acting like a woman possessed.

Why can’t she see that all I want to do is help?

I get that she’s scared. I get that she might not want to admit what she did. I get that she might even actually believe that it was me who did it …

‘Why are you being so stupid? Why are you being so stubborn?’ I’m shouting and she’s hugging that baby to her in the way she used to hold that stupid, ugly doll of hers. ‘I’ve said I’ll help. I’ll help make them believe.’

She shakes her head and my frustration grows stronger. I know that maybe I’m rambling a little bit, tripping over my words.

‘Everyone has to know,’ I say. ‘And we have to tell them. You have to tell them.’

Heidi looks like a rabbit caught in the headlights. For every step I take towards her, she takes a step back. She is holding that baby of hers so tightly that Lily is starting to protest.

‘Put the baby down,’ I say, moving towards her.

‘Ciara, back off,’ Heidi says, taking another step backwards, straight into the wall.

‘I’m only trying to help,’ I tell her again. ‘That’s all I’m trying to do. If we can prove he hurt us, hurt both of us …’ I want to cry, or shake her or find some way to get through to her and make her understand.