The Liar’s Daughter (ARC) Read online

  THE LIAR’S DAUGHTER

  Claire Allan is a former journalist from Derry in Northern

  Ireland, where she still lives with her husband, two children,

  two cats and a hyperactive puppy.

  In her eighteen years as a journalist she covered a wide range

  of stories from attempted murders, to court sessions, to the

  Saville Inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday right down

  to the local parish notes.

  She has previously published eight women’s fiction novels. Her

  first thriller, Her Name Was Rose, was published in 2018 and became a USA Today bestseller, followed by Apple of My Eye in 2019.

  When she’s not writing, she’ll more than likely be found on

  Twitter @claireallan.

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  Also by Claire Allan:

  Her Name Was Rose

  Apple of My Eye

  Forget Me Not

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  CLAIRE ALLAN

  LIBBY CARPENTER

  THE LIAR’S

  99 RED BALLOONS

  DAUGHTER

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  Published by Avon

  A division of HarperCollins Publishers

  1 London Bridge Street,

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  A Paperback Original 2019

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  Copyright © Claire Allan 2019

  Claire Allan asserts the moral right to

  be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue record for this book is

  available from the British Library

  Canadian ISBN 978-0-00833-625-7

  UK ISBN 978-0-00832-194-9

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

  The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are

  the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

  actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

  entirely coincidental.

  Set in Bembo Std by Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

  in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior

  permission of the publishers.

  This book is produced from independently certifi ed FSC™ paper

  This book is produced from independently certified FSC™ paper

  to ensure responsible forest management.

  to ensure responsible forest management.

  For more information visit: www.harpercollins.co.uk/green

  For more information visit: www.harpercollins.co.uk/green

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  To my children,

  who make me want to be a best person

  I can be every single day.

  I love you both so much.

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  Prologue

  Now

  Joe

  They’ve told me I’m dying. A doctor in a white coat, a blue

  shirt with a stripy navy tie that had a coffee stain on it, had

  perched on the end of my bed and adopted a very serious

  expression on his face.

  A nurse – who I had heard give out to her colleagues about

  the lack of resources on the ward and how she was getting

  ‘sick, sore and tired of working her arse off ’ for too much

  responsibility and not enough money – had pulled the clinical

  blue curtain around my bed to afford me some privacy.

  Her sombre expression mirrored that of the doctor, although

  it was clear it was a front. It was almost the end of her shift.

  This was a life-changing moment for me – the moment I heard

  I was condemned to die despite all the chemotherapy and

  surgery that they had been able to offer. For Katrina the nurse,

  with short brown hair and ice-blue eyes, it was just the end of

  another shift. And she was tired. She had to do this final grim

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  task before she clocked out and went home. She’d get a cup of tea, or coffee, or maybe a glass of wine (she seemed the

  type). She’d kick off her shoes and watch something mindless

  on the TV. She might even laugh if it was funny.

  I doubted she’d think about me and the fact that I was dying.

  That no more could be done for me. I was already in the past

  tense for Katrina.

  I was feeling sorry for myself, but that was allowed, wasn’t

  it?

  I wasn’t that old. This shouldn’t have been happening yet.

  I didn’t deserve this.

  I wanted to scream that I didn’t deserve this.

  But it was like there was a tiny voice, or a chorus of voices,

  whispering in her ear that this is exactly what I did deserve.

  In fact, I deserved much, much worse.

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  Chapter One

  Heidi

  Now

  The back seat of my car is full to bursting. Lily is bundled up in her car seat, asleep and blissfully ignorant of the strained atmosphere between her fellow passengers. A weekend bag, filled with

  pyjamas and underpants to be laundered, a toilet bag containing

  a razor, toothbrush, soap and shaving foam sits beside her.

  A plastic ‘Patient’s Property’ bag sits in the footwell. It’s loaded with boxes of medication, dressings, instructions that I will have to will my postpartum brain into reading and understanding

  once we are back at Joe’s house.

  I won’t call it home. It ceased to be my home the moment

  my mother died – also from cancer. Unlike Joe McKee, the

  man who has played the role of my father for the past twenty-

  one years, she didn’t deserve it.

  ‘Did you lift my slippers?’ Joe asks as I help him ease his seat

  belt on. He is still sore – still tender from the operation to try to remove the tumour found in his lung. Except that they found

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  it had company, all through his body. ‘Riddled with it,’ he said, sadly, when he told me.

  ‘Yes, I lifted your slippers. They’re in your bag, along with

  your pyjamas and dressing gown.’

  ‘There was a book in the locker. Did you . . .’

  ‘Yes, I lifted it as well. And packed it. Along with your prayer

  book and your reading glasses.’

  He nods. ‘I wonder how many more books I’ll read,’ he says,

  to himself as much as anything.

>   ‘You know what the doctor said,’ I tell him. ‘Take it one day

  at a time.’

  ‘Those days are still numbered, though, aren’t they? I doubt

  I’ll see the spring.’

  He looks out onto the bleak, grey car park of Altnagelvin

  hospital, on the very outskirts of Derry, Belfast in one direction and the city centre in the other. The sky is almost as dark as

  the tarmac below us. Heavy and angry-looking. It seems apt.

  Joe always has liked spring. More so as he grew older and

  found comfort in God. ‘A time of renewal,’ he would say as

  the evenings stretched and the temperatures crept up.

  I know as well as he does, there’ll be no renewal for him

  this year.

  ‘You never know,’ I say, even though we do know. Odds are

  he’ll be gone before the seasons change.

  He shakes his head slowly, looks ahead. ‘Some things you feel,

  Heidi.’

  I switch on the engine, nudge the car into first gear.

  ‘It’s not a lot of time, is it?’ he asks. ‘To do all the things I

  need to do or to make things right.’

  Joe McKee could have a whole other lifetime to live and it

  wouldn’t be long enough for him to make things right. There’s

  a time in a person’s life, if they are truly, truly wicked, when

  they move beyond the point of redemption.

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  I stay quiet. If he’s looking for some sort of absolution, he’s looking in the wrong place.

  Ten minutes of a silent drive home later, we pull up outside

  his house. The house my mother owned, which in turn will

  belong to me when he is gone. This is where the first almost

  ten years of my life were blissfully happy. My mother created

  a loving, warm and magical childhood for me.

  Then she died.

  Even all these years later, there are times when that realisation

  hits me like a punch to the gut.

  The world has never seemed fair or right since.

  ‘Will we get you inside?’ I ask Joe.

  He nods. ‘I’m tired.’

  He looks pale, his eyes red, dark circles around them. The

  effort of the short journey has worn him out. He looks wretched.

  It’s almost, but not quite, enough to make me feel sorry for

  him.

  ‘Sure, we’ll get you in and to bed then,’ I say. ‘Just let me take Lily in first. I don’t want to leave her here in the car on her own.’

  He nods. ‘Of course not.’

  I open the door, carry Lily, who is thankfully still sleeping,

  through to the living room in her car seat and allow myself a

  few seconds to take some deep breaths. I’m shaking, I realise,

  but it’s not from the cold. I count my breaths in and out until

  the shaking lessens. I tuck Lily’s blanket around her, stroke her

  cheek. Note how she is filling out, changing. Only five months

  old and already I can see shades of the little girl she will become.

  I do not like being here with Joe. Even in his frail condition,

  I still feel scared to be close to him.

  I’ve tried to have as little as possible to do with him, espe-

  cially after I moved away to university at eighteen. But somehow,

  and much to my shame and self-hatred, I still find myself unable

  to cut him from my life entirely.

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  It will be nigh on impossible now, not without appearing to be cold and uncaring. Not without telling people all the things

  that happened. The things I’ve tried so hard to bury.

  The thought of how much he will rely on me over the

  coming months make me feel sick to my stomach.

  ‘It must be nice in a way,’ the nurse at the hospital had said,

  ‘to care for him now. After all he did for you after your mother

  died. There aren’t many men who would take on the respon-

  sibility of someone else’s child like that.’

  Joe had told her he had only done what any decent person

  would do.

  But Joe McKee doesn’t have a decent bone in his cancer-

  riddled body.

  The sweat is lashing off me by the time I have helped Joe

  upstairs and into bed. I do not like the feel of him leaning his

  weight on me as I help him up the stairs. I do not like helping

  him slip off his shoes and socks and lift his feet into bed. He

  is complaining of the cold, even though the heating is on full

  and the extra oil-filled radiator in his room is pumping out a

  dusty, dry heat.

  I pull an extra blanket from the airing cupboard and put it

  over him, offer to make a cup of tea. ‘It might bring you round

  a bit,’ I say. I feel I’m speaking the words from a script of what a good daughter should say to an ailing parent.

  ‘It might, aye,’ he replies. ‘That would be nice, Heidi.’

  He makes a move as if he is going to pat my hand and I

  pull it away quickly. The gesture makes him flinch, but I won’t

  have any physical contact with him that isn’t strictly necessary.

  I catch him looking at me, his face sorrowful. I wonder if

  he’ll say it, now. The words he’s never said in all these years.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Maybe . . .’ he starts. ‘When I’ve had a rest, maybe you call

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  Ciara for me? She should know how ill I am. Or maybe you’ve spoken to her already?’

  Ciara. Joe’s daughter. His real daughter. The one tied to him

  by biology. The one he left behind when he moved in with

  Mum and me all those years ago. She has never forgiven him.

  Or me, for that matter. We don’t speak. I can’t remember the

  last time I saw her face-to-face.

  ‘I’ve not spoken to her yet,’ I tell him. I understand why he

  thinks it would be easier for her to hear from me first, so I

  know I’ll have to do it. Regardless of the state of her relation-

  ship with her father, she has a right to know he is dying. ‘But

  I will. When you wake up. You look exhausted.’

  ‘That’s what dying will do to you,’ he says with a sad smile.

  I don’t return it, I just nod and leave the room, head for the

  kitchen, where I disseminate his various medicines into boxes

  and baskets for easy access while waiting for his tea to brew.

  I’ve long since given up any idea of religion, but while I’m

  waiting for the kettle to hiss and rattle, I wish there was a

  godlike figure who I could pray to for the strength to get

  through the next few weeks without wanting to throw myself

  off a bridge or put a pillow over his face.

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  Chapter Two

  Heidi

  Then

  I first met Joe when I was seven years old. He was already

  sitting at the table in Fiorentinis Ice Cream Parlour on the

  Strand Road, looking around him at the old photos and pictures

  on the wall, when my mother and I arrived.

  ‘I’ve someone I’d like you to meet,’ my mother had said.

  I remember that
she looked happy. That her eyes seemed to

  sparkle. She’d put on make-up and I could smell she was

  wearing her favourite perfume – the kind she saved for special

  occasions. She’d even let me have a little spritz on my wrists.

  I remember that I was happy for her. Her excitement was

  contagious and yes, I was a little nervous, too. But that was

  okay, my mother had told me. It’s okay to feel nervous about

  meeting new people.

  I liked the cocooned world my mother and I shared. Just the

  two of us, with Granny and Grandad popping in occasionally

  to check on us. To fuss. To ask if we had everything we needed.

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  My mother’s response was always the same. ‘Sure we have each other and that’s all that we need,’ she’d smile.

  My grandmother’s eyes would tighten so that I could see the

  fine lines of wrinkles spread out across her face. ‘You know I

  worry,’ she would say.

  ‘There’s no need to,’ my mother would reply.

  And there wasn’t. We were happy. We had what we needed.

  A small house with a garden big enough to play in. Food in

  the cupboards. And if I needed new shoes or a new school

  coat, or sometimes just because Mum thought we deserved a

  treat, she would reach into the tin tea caddy on the top shelf

  of the corner cupboard in the kitchen, lift out some money

  and treat us.

  Occasionally, the topic of my father would come up. Usually

  around Father’s Day, or after we’d watched some schmaltzy

  family movie. My mother would tell me, as gently as she could,

  that my father had moved away before I’d been born. ‘He wasn’t

  ready to be a daddy just yet,’ she’d say, and sometimes there

  would be a sadness in her eyes about it. ‘But that was everything

  to do with him and nothing to do with you,’ she’d tell me.

  I suppose I knew she was lonely sometimes. She would read

  romance novels and sigh, and I knew most of my friends had

  both their parents living together. I suppose it was understand-

  able my mother might want to find a partner too, even if she

  said that we had all we needed to be happy between the pair

  of us.

  But if I was nervous that day in Fiorentinis, it was nothing

  compared to how nervous this man, Joe, appeared to be. He

  was fidgeting in his seat and, as he stood up to say hello, he

  almost knocked over his teacup.

  I was as shy then as I am now. I stayed close to my mother,