The Liar’s Daughter. Claire Allan

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      ‘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 summon the Grim Reaper sooner.

      ‘If I can get over this operation, I might get back on my feet again,’ he says. ‘For a while anyway.’

      I nod. I don’t know what he expects me to say.

      ‘Ciara, I don’t have much time, but I wondered if I might have enough time to make things right with you. We’ve wasted so many years. If there’s any chance at all that we can even start to reconcile … it would mean more to me than I can say.’

      I wait for him to say he’s sorry. I will him to say it. I’ve wanted him to say it for twenty years. Surely now, when time is running out, when he says he wants to reconcile – when he wants that more than he can say – surely now he can force those words out.

      Maybe, if he does, I can think about a reconciliation. He’s scared now – I can see that in his eyes – in the way he looks at me. I need to know if he is really interested in acknowledging the pain he caused, or if he’s just scared of the judgement he’ll face from his God.

      ‘Heidi says you have maybe three months. Six at most,’ I say, picking imaginary fluff from the blanket on the bed.

      ‘I’ll not see six,’ he says. ‘I feel it. I can feel it getting closer. The cancer’s spreading.’

      I look at him. There’s so much I want to say that I don’t know where to start. I could quip that the cancer started to spread a long, long time ago. But I don’t.

      ‘I’m СКАЧАТЬ