I shouldn’t have had that third cup of coffee. I’m jittery now and my heart is thumping. I wish I still smoked proper cigarettes, not these pathetic vape devices. I wish I could have a drink right now. God, I wish I could smoke a joint. I wonder if anyone would notice if I rifled through my father’s meds and found something to give me a suitable hit.
I’m not a drug user. Not really. Cannabis doesn’t really count, or the odd discreetly acquired prescription med. And I need something to take the edge off.
The police had walked in and turned everything on its head. ‘We will be here to support you,’ they said before leaving and offering absolutely no support, just the fear that they would find out ‘foul play’ had been involved in my father’s death.
Dr Sweeney had been happy to sign the death certificate. That should’ve been the end of it. He knows what he’s doing, after all. We thought we’d just move on to the wake and the funeral and then with the rest of our lives.
But now everything has changed.
I’d love to just block it all out, but I’m sure it wouldn’t look good if I was stoned out of my head either. I suck on my e-cig, hoping for a hit of something it can’t give me, and pinch the bridge of my nose. I’m tired. Really tired. Maybe Heidi had the right idea of going for a sleep, but I sense Kathleen is on the point of unravelling and I feel it’s my responsibility, for my sins, to support her. To contain her.
I should probably eat something, I think. I’ve not had anything since last night. I’ve not been hungry, but now my stomach is growling and I realise if I don’t at least try to eat something there’s a good chance I’ll be sick.
I can’t face the vat of vegetable soup Kathleen has made, so I decide to make some toast and put on a pot of tea as well. The panacea for every ill, it seems.
Comfort food, I realise. I need comfort food.
I hear someone come into the room and turn to see Alex walk in, looking just as pale as the rest of us. He’s an attractive man, I suppose. Not my type, of course, but I can see he is handsome. Tall, thin – possibly a little too thin – with thick dark hair that he wears just long enough that it has started to curl a little at the ends. He wears glasses, a modern dark-rimmed pair, and is in need of shave. He’s not quite rugged, but he screams ‘nice guy’. He has a decent job, dresses well. He’s fairly sociable. I wonder what he sees in Heidi. How he fell in love with her. She has never had any redeeming qualities, in my eyes. Quite plain-looking, quiet, spoilt. I very much doubt he knows all about her past. I’d seen the fear flash in her eyes when I’d mentioned it earlier.
‘I was just going to get myself a glass of water,’ Alex says. ‘Heidi’s still sleeping.’
‘I’m putting on a pot of tea. Making some toast, if you’d prefer that?’
‘I think I’ve reached tea saturation levels for the day,’ he says. ‘And I grabbed a burger when I was out earlier. Walked as far as McDonald’s.’
‘Oooh, a Big Mac would hit the spot right now,’ I say with a wry smile, relieved to have just a hint of a normal conversation.
‘I’ve brought the first-aid kit back,’ he says and I notice for the first time the blue box in his hand. ‘Can I get past you to put it back in the cupboard?’
‘First-aid box? Did you hurt yourself or something?’
He sighs. ‘No, it was Heidi. She cut her hand.’
I raise an eyebrow, wonder if she’s up to her old tricks. Alex looks weary again.
‘One of the dolls in her room was smashed. She cut her hand trying to clean it up.’
I have the good grace to blush and thankfully he doesn’t seem to notice.
‘She’s very upset about it,’ he says. ‘It was one of the dolls her mother got for her.’
‘God Almighty.’ I hear Kathleen’s voice from outside of the room. ‘The man who raised her is dead and she doesn’t shed a tear, but she’s in bits about a doll. That girl! There was always a want in her.’
‘I’m sure she is upset about Joe,’ Alex stutters. ‘It’s just, you know, her link with her mother?’
‘He was a parent to her longer than her mother was,’ Kathleen declares before sitting at the table.
Alex doesn’t respond. He just looks extremely uncomfortable with her outburst.
‘Is it a bad cut?’ I ask. ‘Did you find what you needed in the first-aid box, because I can always take a run out to Sainsbury’s and pick up anything else you might need? It might do me good to get out of here for a bit.’
‘I don’t think it’s particularly deep. But it did bleed a lot,’ he says. ‘It seems okay now and she’s sleeping. I think it will do her good. She’s getting herself so wound up, which is understandable, but you know, it’s not good for her.’
I raise an eyebrow, wonder if Alex does know just how bad things can get when his wife gets wound up. Does he know what she is capable of?
‘I think we all need to keep a special eye on her,’ I say. ‘She’s very vulnerable, isn’t she?’
The look on Alex’s face tells me this is news to him. I wonder if I’ve said too much.
‘In what way?’ he asks.
‘You mean you don’t know?’ Kathleen says incredulously. ‘She must’ve told you.’
Alex bristles. ‘If she’d told me I wouldn’t be asking questions now.’
‘Your wife was a very troubled young woman,’ Kathleen says. ‘But maybe you should ask her about it. I don’t think it’s our place to say.’
Alex looks to me. ‘What does she mean?’ he asks.
‘As she says, it’s something you probably need to talk to Heidi about. And, you know, it was a long time ago and she’s been stable for a good while now.’
He looks alarmed. ‘Stable?’
‘That probably makes it sound worse than it was,’ I say, aware that it was actually that bad. ‘She struggled a lot, you know, after her mother died. It was to be expected, I suppose. And maybe we should have seen the signs faster, but she was just so angry and paranoid and didn’t want to talk to any of us …’
The last bit wasn’t exactly true. She may well have wanted to talk to us, but we – and especially me – didn’t want to talk to her. She was a freak who’d stolen my father. I thought he deserved the hard time she put him through.
Just as I think she deserves to have that stupid doll of hers smashed to pieces. I’m not proud of myself for that, but it was either that or take my anger, grief and fear out on her.