It was Christmas and I was back at Aberfoyle Crescent. I didn’t want to be there, having escaped for the last three months to university in Dublin.
I hadn’t come home at any time in those three months, not even for a weekend. My newly made friends, especially those also from Derry who went home at least once a month and certainly for the Halloween festival, couldn’t really understand my insistence on staying in Dublin.
Our student digs could become quiet at the weekends and on a student income heading out partying wasn’t always within my budget. Not that I was a party girl anyway. Still, I preferred it to travelling up north and spending time with Joe.
If I could’ve stayed there over Christmas I would have, but I knew I had to go home, if for no other reason than I wanted to see my grandparents. That was the hard part of staying away.
A bit of distance had maybe mellowed me. That and I was eighteen and could see a life free from reliance on Joe open up in front of me. My phantom text-message stalker had given up after about eighteen months of messages. They tapered off at the end. Just like everything. The abuse had become a thing of the past. The nasty messages.
Yes, I still carried my scars – physical and emotional – from what I’d been through. I still had times when it all felt too much, when I’d wake screaming, a nightmare having put me back in my room, scared and defenceless and still a child. There were times when I still had to score at my skin. But slowly, I believed, I was healing. I believed that I could heal. I even started to think that maybe one day I would be able to find a partner. To take a chance on finding love. To consider being physical with someone. To believe that I deserved to be loved and cherished properly.
It was hardly surprising that my nerves were in flitters by the time I got back to the house. I refused, even at that point, to call it home.
Joe was in a jovial mood. He had made a half-hearted attempt to put up some Christmas decorations and there were a handful of presents underneath the tree.
‘I want us to have a nice Christmas,’ he said. ‘Do you think we could manage that?’
There was something in the way he spoke that led me to believe that he thought I was the problem. I was the troublemaker. He took no responsibility for his own actions. The hell he had put me through.
But I didn’t want to let him drag me down, not then. Not yet.
‘I’ve invited Ciara over for dinner on Christmas Eve,’ he said. ‘You’re both adults now. Maybe we could start moving on. I’ve asked Marie too, and your grandparents.’
I could think of nothing that would be more awkward, but I consoled myself that at least Granny and Grandad would be there.
‘I’ll do all the cooking,’ he said. ‘You just have to show up. Do you think you could do that?’ he said. ‘I’ve missed you, Heidi. I just want things to be better between us.’
He looked so earnest. His eyes were sad. I could almost convince myself that he was feeling sorry for what he’d done. But maybe he was just feeling lonely. People may have talked to him on the streets. He may have been able to hold court at the library, but when he closed the door to this house, the house that should never have been his, he was all alone.
Still, I agreed because I was tired of the constant warring, too. I even spent some of my money on presents. Silly little things. A brooch for Marie. An ornament which, in hindsight, was ugly as sin for my grandparents. A hand-made notebook wrapped in delicate tissue paper for Ciara. I wrapped them, along with a bottle of red wine for Joe, and added them to the pile under the tree.
Christmas Eve arrived and Joe was true to his word. He busied himself in the kitchen, shooing me away every time I popped my head around the door. Instead, I did what I could to make his sorry excuse for a Christmas tree look a little less haggard, and when that was done I set six place settings in the small dining room. I showered and dressed and even put on a little make-up. I was nervous, but also excited. It would be lovely to have my grandparents here.
Marie was first to arrive, in a fug of Chanel No. 5, impeccably made up and carrying a bottle of Moët & Chandon. Eighteen-year-old me was impressed. Real champagne! It felt decadent and grown up.
‘You look lovely, Heidi,’ she said, hugging me so tightly that I got a lungful of her perfume mixed with her hairspray. ‘It’s lovely to see you. Is Joe in the kitchen?’
I took her coat and soon heard peals of laughter as they chatted. I liked Marie. I always had. Unlike Ciara, she hadn’t taken her hurt about Joe leaving out on me. She’d always been kind when we met, looking at me with sympathetic eyes. Sometimes I wondered how someone who appeared as kind as she did raised a daughter as cruel as Ciara. Then I’d remember, of course, who Ciara’s father was.
My grandparents arrived next, dressed in their Sunday best. I helped Grandad through the door and to the living room. He was looking well. Feeling great, he said. He’d left his wheelchair at home and was managing with his walker. My heart was aglow with love for them. Granny even agreed to take a small glass of sherry while Grandad remained a traditionalist with a bottle of beer I poured into a glass for him. Marie and Joe joined us and we were making polite conversation when the doorbell rang again.
Ciara had arrived. Very much in the party spirit. I could smell wine on her breath and her eyes were glazed. Still she grinned.
‘So, where is it?’ she asked, looking directly at Joe.
He shrugged. ‘Where’s what, sweetheart?’
She rolled her eyes in a dramatic fashion. ‘The fatted calf? Surely it should be on the spit by now? Celebrating the prodigal daughter’s return from Dublin.’
‘Ciara.’ Marie’s voice was low and stern. She was firing off a warning shot.
Ciara pressed her index finger to her lips and shushed. ‘I know, I know,’ she said. ‘We have to be good. Keep quiet. Don’t say what we all want to say.’
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.
‘Right,’ Ciara said, ‘where can a girl get a drink around here?’
‘Ciara, you’re twenty-three years old and acting like a brat,’ Joe hissed, which was exactly the wrong way to try to endear Ciara to him.
‘Oh, Daddy, you’ve noticed me! I didn’t realise you remembered I existed,’ she said, mouth turned down melodramatically. ‘Kudos to you for remembering my age! I am impressed.’
‘Ciara, please,’ Marie said, her voice more urgent this time.
My grandparents were both staring into their drinks, trying to avoid the scene in front of them.
‘Oh, Mum, why are you always on his side? Do you think he’ll leave you if you aren’t nice to him? Oops! That’s right – he already did, didn’t he? For some slut he’d only known a couple of months.’
I heard my grandmother gasp. My face blazed.
‘And not only that, when she popped her clogs what, two years later, he stayed to raise her mad brat, too.’
‘Ciara! That is enough!’ Joe’s voice was stern, angry.
My grandmother was crying. Grandad was shaking his head.
‘Why? Why is it enough? Why is it always about her? Be kind to poor Heidi! She lost her mother. Be kind to Heidi, she’s going through a tough time. Be kind to Heidi, she’s not right in the head. She might hurt herself. Poor fucking Heidi.’
‘ENOUGH!’ Joe was shouting now.
Marie was crying. I was mortified.
‘No!’ Ciara shouted back. ‘It’s not enough. It’s not even nearly enough.’
‘Ciara,’ I said, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘Please. Why don’t we all just try to calm down and have a nice evening. Your dad has gone to so much effort.’
‘Well, that’s nice of him. To go to some effort, for once. And of course it would be for you. For your big homecoming.’
‘We’re all here,’ I said. ‘We’re all invited.’
She sniffed. ‘Oh, Heidi, you know nothing. You’ve never known anything. You’re so wrapped up in yourself. No one gives a damn about what the rest of us have been through. Why haven’t you just pissed off by now? You should’ve pissed off by now. God only knows, I told you often enough. All those messages I sent. You never took the hint, though, did you? How stupid are you?’
I stare at her, my eyes wide. I knew Ciara hated me. Of course I did. But to have sent all those messages. To have told me, repeatedly, to kill myself? She’d almost, almost pushed me to it. She’d messed me up just as much as her bastard father had done.
‘I think we’re done here for tonight,’ Joe said.
‘I’ll take this one home,’ Marie said, grabbing a reluctant Ciara. ‘How could you be so cruel?’ she hissed at her daughter.
‘Being cruel was bred into me,’ Ciara hissed back.
After everyone had gone home, when what was meant to be dinner was wrapped in tinfoil or decanted into the bin and Joe went to bed, I sat in the living room and stared at the tree I had decorated earlier. And I looked at the presents underneath.
Any sense of hope, or belief that the worst was over, left me. If Ciara wanted me to kill myself, I would. Or I’d at least make a big enough scene that everyone would know just how bad everything was.
I lifted the matches from the fireplace, struck one and watched it burn until it threatened to singe my skin. Then I threw it in the direction of the delicately wrapped notebook and all the other Christmas presents, and I watched until they caught fire one by one.
It was only when the flames started to lick across the carpet that something in me, a survival instinct of sorts, kicked in and I panicked.
I screamed for help, rushing to the kitchen, grabbing a pan full of water that was wholly inadequate and throwing it at the fire. The smoke alarms were pealing at this stage and I saw Joe, his face stricken, at the top of the stairs.
‘What have you done this time, you stupid girl?’