Guilt, or a sense of duty, or a sense of not wanting to make things worse with Alex, brings me back to Marie’s house. I’ve been AWOL for two hours, enough time for the small number of mourners who came back to the house to have had their fill of tea and sandwiches and gone home.
I’ve seen our car outside, so I know Alex is there. He will be angry with me. I know that. Angry and worried. I’ve seen the missed calls on my phone, but I couldn’t bring myself to call him back. What I need to say to him can’t be said over the phone.
I’m sure I hear Alex’s voice from the living room, so I pop my head around the door. Two sets of eyes, neither of them belonging to my husband, stare back at me.
‘Are you feeling better?’ a woman with a mass of messy red curls and too much make-up on her face asks me.
I don’t know who she is. I nod and thank her for her concern.
I hear Alex again, realise his voice is coming from the kitchen, so I walk that way.
‘I don’t know why she would say that,’ I hear Ciara say.
Her voice is thick with emotion. I press myself close to the wall to listen, even though there is no way they would be able to see me from where I am anyway.
‘I know this is really distressing,’ I hear Kathleen speak. ‘But try not to let it, or her, annoy you. The poor girl hasn’t had it easy. Losing her mum so early. And whether we like it or not, Joe was the only father she ever knew, so here she is without the pair of them and with a new baby to deal with, too. She might be finding it very hard to cope.’
I hear Ciara sniff. ‘But she’s not the only one who’s had it tough. It’s almost as if she’s trying to make out I have some sort of vendetta against her. That I’m trying to make her life hard. And I swear to you all, I’m not.
‘She wants everyone to think I did it, I know that. She wants everyone to think I was capable of killing my own father. I think she’s losing the run of herself and is determined to drive us all mad in the process.’
I bristle. I’ve done no such thing. I’ve not tried to heap blame on her at all. If anything, she has been setting me up for a fall. I’m disgusted, angry at the tone in her voice. If I didn’t know categorically that she was lying then I might even be convinced myself. If there was an Oscar for best performance at a family funeral, I was sure she would be a contender. I roll my eyes, anger making me immune to her sniffs and sobs.
But then I hear it. An unmistakably male voice. Alex.
‘I know,’ he says. ‘I’m really starting to worry about her,’ he continues. ‘Only for her granny calling me to say she was okay, I’d have had the police searching for her. I think I need to get her some professional help. Especially given her history.’
My stomach tightens. I haven’t told Alex of my mental health history, which means someone else has. Someone who never really understood it in the first place.
‘That might be a good idea.’ Marie’s voice this time, firm and decisive. ‘And I wouldn’t wait too long. I really don’t think she’s herself and you know, you’d want her to be right in the head if she’s at home with Lily.’
‘She wouldn’t hurt Lily,’ Alex says, but his voice doesn’t sound as confident as I would like.
‘Not normally, no, and I’ve no doubt she’s a great mammy and she loves that baby with all her heart. But she’s been very erratic lately. Not herself. If it were me, and Lily was my baby, I’m not sure I’d want to take the chance. I know I couldn’t live with myself if something awful happened.’
There’s a pause. I start to wonder if she’s done, but then I hear her speak again.
‘You know about the fire, don’t you?’