Chapter Twenty-One

Ciara

Now

My teeth are chattering. The room – his bedroom – is still much too warm. It’s not the temperature that is making my teeth chatter, or my body shake. I’m sitting on the bed – his bed – the bed I refused to sit on over the last few days, and I am looking at this familiar face before me.

It has changed. Slackened in death. Even though he is still warm, I can see the colour, what little of it there was, leave his face in front of me.

Alex said he looked like he was sleeping. He doesn’t. He looks dead. What he was, who he was, is gone.

I hear voices downstairs. Cries from Kathleen. I’m aware Stella is hovering, unsure what to do. She puts a hand on my shoulder and I shrug her away. Probably too harshly.

‘I just … need a moment. Please,’ I say. ‘On my own with him.’

She says ‘of course’ and she leaves, pulling the door behind her until it’s almost closed tight.

I look at my father’s face again. See traces of me there. The same shape of nose. Pointy chin. I think of all the things I inherited from him. Not just his looks, I think. Or his love for books.

I think – no, I’m pretty sure – I inherited some of his badness. Because while I know I’m in shock and I know he’s gone, I know there’s a justice to it.

Joe McKee never should’ve had a chance at a bucket list. He never should’ve had anyone sitting around his bedside, trying to figure out how to support him.

He didn’t deserve to be waited on. To be able to creep his way back into our lives. To guilt us into feeling sorry for him when he never, even once in his sad and miserable life, felt sorry for the pain he inflicted.

He’d been given time to say sorry. I’d waited for him to speak up, but he hadn’t. He’d only tried his old tricks all over again. Manipulating me. Us.

My father deserves to be dead, I think as I see how he lies in his bed, seemingly peaceful. There is something so false about it all.

I hope wherever his soul is now, and I have my suspicions about that, it is in torment. It deserves to be. He should’ve died all those years ago, in the fire that Heidi started. He should’ve burned. I look at his body, the warmth draining from it, and I whisper, just as I hear the front door open and the tramp of paramedics on the stairs, that I hope he never finds a moment’s peace.

And suddenly, all of this is outside of my control. Paramedics are in the room. Followed by Dr Sweeney, who takes my hand and solemnly offers me his condolences.

Questions are asked and I answer them. As best I can. People come and go. Auntie Kathleen, who sits rubbing my father’s hand as the paramedics fill in their paperwork. Stella makes tea. Alex hovers. The one person who doesn’t come near the room is Heidi.