The Confession

by Jessie Burton

  That was twenty years ago, and no one had bothered since.

  *

  I was re-reading the opening of The Locust Plague at Clean Bean, waiting for Kelly to turn up, when Kelly bundled herself and her daughter, Molly, through the door. My heart lifted at the sight of them, so familiar, so warm.

  Kelly had not been the most bookish at our school, but she was by far the most adaptable and smart. We were an odd couple, because I was very academic and much shyer, but we loved each other. She derived joy from my weirdness, and I from her capabilities. When the rest of us were having doom-laden panics about getting into the right university, Kel suspected that in ten years’ time those letters wouldn’t matter quite as much as what might follow after. But! as some of our other friends had pointed out when Kelly wasn’t there, it’s all right for Kel. She’s got CHARM.

  In fact, charming as she was, Kelly had worked very hard to keep her head above the water, no help from family, no connections. She climbed up and up, before landing on the paradise island that had been her working mid-twenties: job as a junior stylist, then art director on an influential magazine. Then she became an Instagram marvel – @thestellakella: taste queen, collaboration maven, with thousands of followers. Clothing shops and furniture stores started to look like the inside of @thestellakella’s house – it was hard to tell exactly how the line had blurred, but it had. Unlike so many chancers on the Internet, at least Kel had the weight of experience and proof behind her. And then came Dan, now her husband, one of those Instagrammable people who seemed self-motivated since he was five years old – although Kelly would always say that when she’d met him, Man couldn’t even cook a potato. And then came Molly. I’m never having another kid, Kelly said, when Mol was born. Ever again.

  Now Mol was four, and Kelly was due another baby next March.

  Mol settled herself into a chair, got out her pens and pad, and proceeded to descend into her own world. She was drawing a box of a house and filling it with merciless, ravishing streaks of fuchsia. She did not keep to the borders of the house, and the colour spilled out of its walls, every which way. We could easily have not been there, two adult women she was so certain of that we could have turned to pillars of salt without her noticing.

  ‘Been crotchety earlier,’ Kelly mouthed, taking a seat.

  ‘Would you like anything, Mol?’ I said. I’d already ordered two flat whites from Zoë, remembering that Kelly was on decaff.

  ‘No, thank you, Rose,’ Mol replied.

  I looked at Mol, her bowed head. I liked being with Mol – walking through parks in particular. Mol, always running ahead, squatting easily to pick up twigs splodged with lichen, or an especially splendid leaf. Her centre of gravity was so low, she was up and down like a pop-up toy. Already, she had Kelly’s eye; my friend had encouraged in her growing mind the power of observation, the wonder and pleasure to be found in looking for the interesting in the everyday, hauling them out of context, turning them into magic wands, fairy blankets, good fodder for a collage when they got back home. I knew these collages, because I followed them all on Instagram when I didn’t make it to the park. I’d seen leaves splattered in gold paint that got over 25,000 likes.

  Zoë came over with the flat whites and beamed at Kelly and her daughter. People often did that with the pair of them – they looked so wholesome, just how a mother and child should be. I went to pick up my coffee. ‘Hold on,’ said Kel, and I knew what was coming. Mol’s head was neatly positioned peeping between the two cups, and Kelly already had her phone out. ‘Just carry on drawing, love,’ said Kelly, but it was as if Mol hadn’t even heard her: she was so used to the phone as to be oblivious. The photo taken, Kel swiped through three or four filters before finding the one that clearly captured the moment more than the moment itself. ‘ “Brat whites,” ’ she said out loud as she typed these words in the photo caption, pressed send and slipped her phone back into her bag. I wondered idly if she had entered her location, and if she had, whether Clean Bean’s takings would see an uptick.

  Mol and Dan were regular, if passive, contributors to the addictive story Kelly wove online. Privately I still felt it was weird to monetize your child and partner, putting them in a place where strangers were looking at them every day, and all of it without Mol being able to give her permission – but Kelly was still my best friend, and doing a hell of a lot more with her life than Joe or I. And one thing was indisputable: Mol was superlative content. It’s a community, Kel would say – of support and interest! The girls who started following me a few years back are beginning to have kids too. It just works! Mol was sweetly, deeply, entertaining, and Kelly didn’t ever seem to be in the mood to discuss the philosophical, ethical angles of her decision. I guess it was just her choice, and there was no doubt, with her endorsement deals, her free hotel stays, the fact that I had seen several women in one week wear a jumper that Kel had debuted from a tiny line in Stockholm – @thestellakella was a pop culture phenomenon.

  ‘How’s Joe?’ Kelly said, drawing her cup towards her. ‘How’s Joerritos?’

  I sensed the weight in her words, but couldn’t tell their temperature. I knew, in many ways, that Kelly was fed up with Joe, but she still held it in.

  ‘He’s good,’ I said. ‘He’s talking to an investor.’

  Kelly stirred her coffee. ‘An investor,’ she repeated, leaching the word of any magic.

  I found it weird she was asking about Joe first, but I let it go. ‘And how’s it all going with you? You feeling OK?’

  Kelly looked down at Mol. ‘Yeah, it’s not bad. The morning sickness is wearing off, thank god.’

  I shook my head in wonder. ‘I don’t know how you do it.’

  She laughed. ‘You could do it too, Rosie, if you had to.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  She looked at me with surprise. ‘Course. Look, if I can do it, anyone can.’ We both knew this wasn’t true, but I let it go. ‘Oh yes, I wanted to tell you – I’m gonna ramp up @thestellakella into a double maternity thing. See how that goes.’ She waved her hands decisively in the air. ‘A journey of moving from being a mother of one to a mother of two.’

  Mesmerized, I watched my oldest friend. Kelly was so good at this kind of thing: making stories simple for the greatest number of people. Kelly was relatable yet confident; the reason her preposterous plans worked was because she believed in them, and because she understood that many people were lost these days, and needed a guide. Me included.

  ‘That sounds good,’ I said. ‘I wanted to ask you about something, actually,’ I went on. ‘About my mum.’

  ‘Your mum?’

  As with Joe, alarm entered Kelly’s eyes, but I carried on. ‘Do you remember, growing up, whether my dad ever said anything to you about her? Or ever mentioned anything, in your presence, about her?’

  Kelly turned her head to look out of the cafe window. I could see she was thinking how best to answer. She’d spent many hours in our flat after school or at weekends, sleeping over, my dad driving us to the cinema or dropping us off at the shopping centre. Kelly knew my life as well as I did, if not better. ‘Why are you asking now?’ she said.

  ‘When we were in France, my dad told me there was this woman my mum knew. I think they were lovers.’

  ‘OK.’ Kelly folded her arms on the table. ‘This is interesting.’

  ‘Listen. You were round the flat so much. Did my dad ever say anything about someone called Connie? Constance Holden? She wrote this book.’ I tapped the cover of The Locust Plague.

  Kelly looked at it with interest. ‘I’m sorry, Rosie. No. It was so long ago.’ She gazed at me tenderly. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes, I’m OK. I mean, I was a bit shocked.’

  ‘Have you told Joe?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, not everything. I told him Constance Holden was a writer that my mum knew.’

  ‘And?’

  I shrugged. ‘It wasn’t a big deal.’

  She sighed.

  ‘Anyway
. He doesn’t like it when I go on about my mum.’

  ‘Well, I guess it’s just ’cos none of us know what to say or do, Rosie.’

  I looked down at the table. I was sitting with my father again, on that Brittany beach. I closed my eyes, thinking I might cry.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ said Kelly.

  ‘Oh, god. Yeah,’ I said. I reached out and gave her hand a squeeze, feeling the tectonic plates of our love, shifting once again.

  ‘Mummy, when are we going?’ said Mol.

  I looked away towards the counter, where Zoë was cleaning the coffee machine, her young face set in concentration, the fine spray of acne on her forehead that only seemed to enhance her lovely, youthful beauty. My life felt insubstantial, yet my body was weighted and I was wading deep.

  *

  After we said our goodbyes, I decided not to go straight home. I left the cafe and sat down on a bench in a nearby park, thinking about the conversation with my father. I thought not of his ominous commentary on Constance Holden, but more of the way he had urged me to think of a language or a skill, as if what I was right now was not enough. I remember you were set for great things! was a refrain I’d often heard. In fact, only one seismic thing had ever happened to me. I hadn’t been enough for my mum to want to stay.

  The fact of this had finally caught up with me. It had been gnawing and gnawing at me until I couldn’t find the strength to fight the message that had wrapped itself around my heart for thirty-odd years. And now I didn’t know who I was any more, or what on earth I was supposed to do with myself. I felt no kindness towards myself. I was ashamed at my stasis and ineptitude – because the truth is, everyone has their losses, their shames, their obsessive thoughts, and these people seem to manage it. Somehow they do it – they get on, they make a life for themselves. I hadn’t managed it. I was in thrall to a ghost of a woman, and a boyfriend who seemed to live in his own fantasy, and I hadn’t made anything for myself. I didn’t have a Mol, or a gigantic Instagram following, or a book in my name, or a wife to live with by the sea.

  Fuck it, I thought. Fuck it. I got out my phone and typed into the search bar: Deborah Clarke, literary agent.

  Self-consciousness in a woman’s life is a plague of locusts.

  1982

  9

  Driving from the airport over the LA freeway in the taxi the film agency had sent, Elise, jet-lagged, longed to leave already. But the lifestyle there! people had said, so she remained by Connie’s side in search of lifestyle. Back in London, Constance had also claimed to be unsure. But looking at her now, in her sunglasses, gazing at the sprawl of LA, turning to Elise every now and then with a grin, Elise wondered quite how unsure Connie really was. They’d had a call from her agent, Deborah, shortly before they left England. Barbara Lowden – the Barbara Lowden, two-times Oscar winner, grande dame not just of this town, but of every cinema screen in the Western world – had said yes to playing Beatrice Jones. Connie and Elise had simply stared at each other agog at the news, before erupting into hoots and whoops and getting incredibly drunk at the pub at four p.m.

  Elise had read an article on LA in the hairdresser’s, which had described the city as ‘a place of strange dreams and drinks called Brain On, algae shots and reefer and blood-test diets, bungalow buildings hiding truths behind dark doors.’ Can I live there? she had wondered. She kept thinking of the scene in the novel The Godfather, when Tom Hagen comes to LA to see the head of a movie studio, and witnesses a prepubescent girl tottering from the man’s office like a broken fawn. She thought now of broken fawn legs, of Bette Davis, of Joan Crawford, how long eyelashes masked a starlet’s poverty, and how despite all that, the glamour never faded.

  Beyond, beach; yes, sunshine; yes, the sense of opportunity. But up close, Elise just wanted Connie. She wanted peace and calm, and small acts of living. Connie was strong at the moment: flying into LA with her famous novel embedded in both her physical body and her abstract self. Like an amulet, it would protect her in a place like LA, where once she would have felt so pointless. Elise did not have an amulet. She only had Connie.

  *

  Like all cities, parts of it they drove past looked abhorrent; there was the layer of smog, the air of enslavement, the endless streams of cars. Healtheeeeeeee 4 U! screamed a billboard. The taxi had its radio on: ‘Buy! Buy! BUY!’ it yelled. The advertisement seemed never to stop; the word threatened to overwhelm her. They drove past a huge metal ringed doughnut, erected outside a diner. The doughnut, ingeniously bulbous, easily the height of an average elephant, had rusted on its rotator. Paralysed but very present, it loomed past; Elise tried to take a photo, but the taxi had moved on, the doughnut diminished to a Polo mint. The taxi drove past another giant billboard, perched above the road. All you saw of it was a woman’s face, huge and immaculate, with ravenous eyes, and the words, THE PRESIDENT’S WIFE.

  ‘Oh my god!’ squealed Connie. Elise winced. She didn’t associate squealing with Connie. ‘It’s her. Can you believe it? It’s Barbara Lowden!’

  ‘Should we go and see her in it?’ said Elise.

  ‘We should,’ said Connie. ‘I can’t believe it. She’s – I mean, is there actually anyone more famous?’

  ‘The Queen. The Pope?’

  Connie grinned, readjusting her sunglasses. ‘I bet more people want to sleep with Barbara Lowden.’

  Barbara Lowden. Soon, they would meet her. How ridiculous it seemed.

  Silvercrest, the studio making Heartlands, had rented a bungalow for Connie. The taxi reached West Hollywood and meandered round silent floral streets, finally stopping at a low-slung building in a Spanish-colonial style, still and quiet, surrounded by jungle-like foliage discreetly tamed, sentinels of cacti adeptly lining the borders, the windows dark and unyielding. It astonished Elise how far away the house in Hampstead felt, which in turn had felt so far away from the tiny flat in Brixton. All the places she had called home, but which never really belonged to her.

  ‘Are you ready?’ asked Connie.

  ‘I’m ready,’ she said, although she didn’t know what she was ready for.

  Connie rang the doorbell and somewhere deep in the bungalow, they heard a chime. Within a minute, a woman answered, dressed as a maid. Her name, improbably, was Maria. Maria was shy and young, and nothing like Mary O’Reilly back home.

  *

  Elise knew, really, that the city owed her nothing. The mountains were there, the beach, the light. She liked the light, this lavender sky at dusk. She and Constance sat opposite each other in the front room as Maria organized them tea. They were slightly stunned, in silence. They had done this; they were here.

  Later, wide awake in the gigantic bed at the back of the house, Elise listened to the automatic watering of the grass. Connie slept deeply, but Elise was chilled by the recollection of Maria’s face, her mask of politeness that failed to hide the fatigue behind her eyes.

  10

  ‘Everywhere in Hollywood the marriages are breaking up,’ said Barbara Lowden. ‘The men here are monsters.’

  ‘Are they?’ said Elise.

  ‘We are,’ said Matt.

  ‘And the women,’ said Barbara, laughing.

  ‘That’s just not true,’ said Shara.

  ‘My friends say that Los Angeles will eat your brain,’ said Connie, tipping back her gin.

  ‘I know a dealer who’ll help you with that,’ said Matt and everybody laughed.

  Connie probably thought she was acting naturally in front of Barbara, but Elise thought she was just being weird. They were at a welcome dinner to celebrate the impending commencement of filming on Heartlands, in a restaurant called Gino’s, a legendary Beverly Hills spot high up on North Crescent Drive – a two-storey, white-stuccoed villa, with ruby-pink froths of bougainvillea climbing up the walls into the night. Candles lit the path towards the entrance, a plain green door which swung open as they’d approached, as if by its own volition. Their table was secluded, near a small courtyard pool, an illuminated l
ozenge of turquoise upon which stray petals floated with no direction.

  They were a party of seven. Connie, Elise; Connie’s American friend from university, Shara, and her English husband, Matt; then one of the movie’s producers, Bill Gazzara; the director, Eric Williamson, and the pièce de résistance: Barbara Lowden.

  Elise had said to Connie before they left the bungalow, that she couldn’t believe that Barbara was actually going to turn up.

  ‘I expect she likes to be seen,’ Connie had replied.

  And now that Barbara had actually turned up, was actually in front of them, Connie was feigning a coolness that didn’t convince Elise. For Elise – with all those nights she’d spent in the theatre, the practical, dignified, hardworking theatre, which should have immunized her to glamour – Barbara was everything she could have hoped for. The woman was miraculous, but not over-cooked. Not carved up, not just a pair of cheekbones walking on air, nor just the fact of her eyes, infamously dark and huge. She was more than beautiful: she was Barbara Lowden.

  Beatrice Jones, the character she was playing in Heartlands, was a mess of a matriarch. It was a part with wit and libido, fabulous set-pieces of cruelty, both inflicted and received, that would make all forty-something actresses weep with desire. These parts were all too few and far between.

  Barbara Lowden was not forty-something. She must have been in her early fifties, given the longevity of her career, the sweet and grainy nostalgia of her early films, but her elastic beauty had grown only more permanent as the decades passed.