I wonder what her granny would have made of her. What she would think of me as a mother. My heart aches for her. Then again, my heart always aches for her.

Chapter Thirteen

Heidi

Then

I was nine and three quarters when time ran out and my mother died.

I remember her death in snapshots. Like looking at old pictures. Moments in time captured forever in my mind, the minutes and hours between just a blur.

It’s as if I hear a click of some imaginary camera and I’m in my bedroom listening to a raised voice from the room two doors away. It’s not an angry voice. It’s something else – something that makes my stomach tighten and my heart hurt. It belongs to my granny, I think, or the smiley nurse who has been visiting each evening. She always gives me lollipops. The taste sours in my mouth.

Click.

‘Mammy’s in heaven now.’ The nurse isn’t smiling any more, but her face is soft, sad. Her mouth downturned.

Granny’s face looks strange. Twisted. Changed. Her eyes are red – so red that the blue of her pupils looks almost too bright, like there are lights shining on them or something. She doesn’t look like herself any more. I don’t think she’ll ever look like herself again.

Joe wanders around the house, lost. He seems to stand a lot. Like he has forgotten how to sit down. He looks so sad. He looks how I feel. As if a part of him has died, too.

Click.

I’m on the stairs and I can’t understand it. They say Mammy is in heaven, but I know she’s in the living room. Lying in that box. I’ve seen her through the door. It’s definitely her. I want to ask how can that be her if she is in heaven, but I’m afraid to. I don’t want to make my granny cry again.

Click.

‘Who’s going to mind me now?’ I ask.

Granny is crying. She pats my hand.

‘Am I coming to live with you and Grandad? You’ll have to get a new house with a bedroom for me.’ I’m momentarily lost, wondering what my new bedroom will look like.

‘Well, here’s the thing,’ she says. ‘You know how Joe has lived here for the last year helping your mammy and you?’

I nod.

‘And he loved your mammy for a year before then?’

I nod again.

‘Well, he loves you so much that he is going to stay here and look after you,’ Granny says with a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. ‘Your mammy talked a lot about it, you know. With me and with Joe, and we all thought it would be easier for you if you were able to stay here. In your own house, in your own room with your own toys.’

I don’t want that. He’s not my daddy. I don’t even like him. Not really. I was nice to him for Mammy. He’d moved in a year ago and everything with Mammy had changed. She spent less time with just the two of us. More with him. And then she got sick.