The Confession

by Jessie Burton

  ‘Shara seemed a bit strange,’ Elise said. ‘She seemed annoyed with Matt.’

  ‘She hasn’t been out that much,’ said Connie.

  ‘Oh? Why?’

  Connie continued to stare out of the taxi window. ‘She had a miscarriage last year,’ she said. ‘The baby was six months.’

  ‘Oh my god.’

  ‘It wasn’t good. Matt couldn’t handle it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Connie sighed. ‘I don’t know exactly what happened. But he wasn’t there for her.’

  ‘But why should he be able to handle something like that any more than she could?’

  Connie was quiet for a moment. ‘True. But from what I gather, he didn’t try to understand what it did to her. Shara . . . closed down and he didn’t persist. And now I think she’s punishing him for it.’

  ‘You would never know, from the way she is.’

  ‘Guess Barbara’s not the only good actress,’ said Connie. She put her arm round Elise and Elise nestled into her shoulder.

  ‘Neither of them are to blame for something like that,’ said Elise.

  ‘No, of course not. It must have been awful. But it’s how you handle it afterwards. She’s my age, El. She’s thirty-eight. He’s got light years ahead of him. Reading between the lines, I think this pregnancy was a rare occurrence.’

  Elise closed her eyes and thought about how, at dinner parties, there are always other conversations not being shared. Matt and Shara and their unseen baby, lost like a ghost inside their marriage. Elise wondered whether there was any pain left in Shara’s body now, or whether it was just in her head, an occasional guest who led her down a staircase that only she could tread.

  11

  The next day, Elise sat by the pool of their bungalow with her legs in the water, and thought about her mother. She was seven when Patricia Morceau had leant against their kitchen counter and told her daughter she had a funny lump in her brain. The surgeons cut it out along with the power of speech, and although Patricia did learn to speak again, it was erratically, not as her former self. She had no guard on her tongue any more. Neither Elise nor her father knew what might come tripping; poison words or sweetness.

  A few weeks after the operation, the family attended a party to celebrate the end of a show for which Patricia had designed the costumes. The change in Patricia was not immediately obvious, until she looked straight at Elise. Her eyes were different. They had always been a dark blueish grey, and now they were pale, as if someone had bleached them. Her pupils were tiny, and didn’t seem level. Her mother had gone.

  Elise dragged her legs back and forth in the bright blue water, remembering how Patricia had kept pinning her with those pale eyes at the party, as if she had to impress upon her daughter this change she didn’t want. Elise had not known how to respond to her mother, who now held the murk of a drained rock pool inside her skull. She had been wanting for some time to be able to say something – anything – helpful, but Patricia made it harshly clear that there was nothing to be said or done. The removal of the tumour had blown the hinges off the maternal gate. There was no small talk, all that was pointless. Elise became the one at a loss for words, and all she could do was keep her undesired sympathy to herself.

  Whenever Connie asked Elise about her dead mother – and she did so quite frequently – Elise felt she could tell Connie the truth, which she had never told anyone else. She told Connie how the tumour had grown back two years later, and that the second time it was too damaging, too much, and it had killed her mother. I’m so, so sorry, Connie had said. You must miss her.

  At this point, Elise had lied and said you got used to it. She said everything was OK now, these things happened. To Elise’s astonishment, Connie seemed to have accepted these statements, allowing their flimsiness to remain in place.

  I must be a good liar too, she thought, kicking her legs in the water.

  ‘My mother would have liked it here,’ she said out loud. As soon as she said it, Elise felt her voice wobble. What was happening to her in this place?

  Connie who was hiding her pale skin under a parasol and writing in a notebook at the table looked in Elise’s direction. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I was just thinking about Shara,’ Elise said.

  ‘Poor Shara,’ said Connie.

  ‘Did she want the baby very much?’

  ‘Yes, I’m certain. Her sister has about four, I think.’

  ‘Do you ever think about babies?’ said Elise.

  ‘You mean my own babies?’ Connie put down her pen. ‘Not so much now. Once, I did. I’d quite like my periods to stop so that it can never even be an issue. Where’s all this come from?’

  ‘I told you,’ Elise snapped. ‘Shara.’

  ‘OK,’ said Connie, gently. ‘Well, seeing as you’ve asked. I don’t want to be a mother, El. I don’t have time. It seems like a lot of hard work. I’m not that interested. I never have been, really. I do like their little feet and their little ears. I like the beauty of them. But they grow up, and their whole purpose is to leave you. It’s how it has to be. Quite frankly, El, I find that devastating. To think someone might do to me as I’ve done to my own parents.’

  ‘So really, you’re a softie who doesn’t want her heart broken.’

  ‘Ha. I don’t know.’ Connie paused, as if she was thinking. ‘There’s another thing, that’s not so easy to explain.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Well, from what I’ve seen of it, from the people I know who’ve had children – certainly when the children are young, it’s that one very much has to live in the present. It’s a sort of constant vigilance. You are very focused on the moment, on the matter in hand.’

  ‘I guess that’s right.’

  ‘And I’m sure they do think about the future. But the thing is, writing is sort of the opposite. I live in different temporal spaces. I live in a fabricated present, and I’m constantly making up a future as well – and reimagining the past.’

  ‘Don’t you think people with children do all that too?’

  ‘Maybe. But they do have to hop back to a mundane present. I don’t, or at least I don’t have to do it as much. And I’ve spent such a long time where I live, in my head, that I don’t know whether I’m prepared to give up my citizen’s rights.’

  She is so brilliant, thought Elise. And she would be a good mother.

  ‘Also,’ said Connie, ‘I like the beauty of many things. The beauty of children doesn’t, for me, outweigh the beauty and reward of other things.’

  ‘Would you ever say any of that publicly?’

  Connie pulled a face. ‘God, no. I’d never be able to talk about anything else. Same as them not knowing about me being gay. Can you imagine? Not fucking worth it.’

  ‘It makes sense you don’t want them.’ Elise slipped into the water and began swimming lengths. She did breast-stroke, keeping her head above the surface.

  ‘I don’t know whether to be offended or pleased,’ said Connie. ‘Why does it make sense?’

  ‘Because you’re you.’

  Elise went under and opened her eyes. The world beneath was bulbous and blurred, even more bright blue. She imagined being able to breathe underwater. Would she live there if she could – not here, in a trapped chlorine rectangle, but out in the ocean like a mermaid, huge-finned, moving between reefs? Her lungs were hurting; and she came up. Connie was kneeling by the side of the pool, wearing a concerned expression. ‘Do you?’ she said.

  ‘Do I what?’

  ‘Do you want to have children?’

  ‘I don’t know, Con.’ This was true.

  ‘You’re too young, anyway,’ Connie said.

  ‘I’m not.’

  Connie sighed, which irritated Elise more. ‘You shouldn’t say things like that to me,’ she said. ‘That I’m too young. You say it a lot. I’m nearly twenty-three.’

  Connie looked like she was going to say something, but stopped herself. Then she said: ‘You are young, but you�
�re not too young. I’m sorry,’ she added, and went back to her notebook in the shade.

  12

  They decided to stay on in West Hollywood whilst all the interior shots for Heartlands were being filmed. Another fortnight had passed; they had now been in Los Angeles for six weeks. In that time, they’d spent three days in San Francisco and a long weekend in Monterey, including a trip to Salinas because Connie wanted to see where Steinbeck had lived. ‘Are you going for inspiration?’ Elise asked.

  ‘No, I’m going because I’m nosy,’ said Connie.

  The places they saw were mind-blowing. The size of the redwoods, the clifftop ocean views, the sun a July goddess, gilding the tips of waves and human shoulders, before the night fell and the owls and other creatures came calling. Elise wanted to stay longer in the woods, but they followed a motor route, staying in motels, and Connie drove them everywhere, fast. Elise imagined they were a pair of frontierswomen, panning for gold despite the opprobrium from the menfolk who’d also come to make their fortune.

  Sometimes, when Connie was writing, Elise would take out a notebook too, and try to write. Nothing came. This fact almost physically hurt. How did Connie do it? She was doing so well here, writing all the time, probably about that green rabbit, but she’d never say. She’d even become actual friends with Barbara Lowden. The two women would meet – to discuss Barbara’s character, Connie said. She intimated that it was, at times, exhausting, but when Elise said she didn’t have to pander to the film star’s every whim, Connie said she wasn’t pandering at all.

  ‘Don’t you find it weird,’ Elise said. ‘Looking at her?’

  Connie laughed. ‘No. She’s a human being. A very funny one. She’s been so famous for so long that she behaves differently to other people. I find that fascinating.’

  They had not yet agreed as to whether they would decamp with the film production to the Catskills, but the stay in Los Angeles, in America as a whole, certainly seemed open-ended. They often went out to Malibu to see Shara and Matt. The four of them would sit round a fire, their faces warm from the flames, shawls round their backs as the stars pricked the sky, and Elise would watch the married couple, imagining their secret pain.

  It was Matt who suggested that they make an overnight outdoor stay in Joshua Tree Park. ‘It’s only three hours,’ he said. ‘You wait for those stars. And the rocks.’

  Elise listened with admiration as he spoke about the shapes they formed, their colours changing in the setting sun.

  ‘No way,’ said Connie. ‘I don’t want to die in the jaws of a coyote.’

  ‘Don’t you like the tranquillity of forests, Con?’ asked Shara.

  Connie made a face. ‘It’s like space. No one will hear you screaming if you die.’

  ‘That’s a bit of an exaggeration,’ said Matt.

  ‘There’s nothing to do in nature, essentially,’ said Connie. ‘Except be horribly aware of how easily you get bored.’

  ‘I’d love to go,’ said Elise. But the conversation had moved on, and no one seemed to hear her.

  *

  Elise had noted that Connie and Matt barely talked as a pair – when they did, it was never frosty or difficult, as such, but Connie seemed to cauterize his attempts at generating conversation.

  ‘Have you got a problem with Matt?’ she asked Connie, on the way home from Malibu one day. They’d hired a car on a long-term basis by this point, and the footwell carpet was full of sand that shook off Elise’s soles and seemed impossible to get rid of.

  ‘Matt? He’s fine,’ said Connie. ‘I just don’t think Shara should have married him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s mediocre.’

  ‘He is?’

  ‘Don’t you think? What does he ever talk about except places we should visit, or that he’s visited himself? I hate that.’

  ‘He wants to share it, Con.’

  ‘He wants to show it. I can go to bloody Joshua Tree without him.’

  Connie, Elise thought, had become more unforgiving in their new social situations: impressive and dazzling, yes, but too critical of others’ foibles. Maybe it was the other company she was keeping – some sort of confidence transplant from Barbara Lowden, via osmosis. Or possibly it stemmed from Connie’s belief that Matt didn’t support Shara enough after the miscarriage. Perhaps she was right, thought Elise: perhaps peace was not to be found in the centre of the peyote plant, but rather in looking after your wife. But what about Matt? What had he felt, during that time? Had anyone bothered to ask him?

  ‘Did you know that Shara’s name is actually Sahara, but she took out the first “a” to annoy her hippy mum and try and seem more normal?’ said Connie, laughing. ‘She was a shock to Manchester as an undergraduate, I can tell you.’

  ‘Why the hell did she go to Manchester to do her degree?’

  ‘Her dad’s work. She grew up half the time in England. But here is where she belongs.’

  ‘And does Matt belong here?’

  Connie gave her a wry look. ‘You tell me.’

  Connie hadn’t needed to spell it out. There was a tangible fracture line between Matt and Shara – Elise could see it, as the child of a difficult marriage so often can. Shara was hard and fixed, and Matt seemed restless, forcibly eager, over-invested in plans that ranged from watering their cacti under a full moon to planning road trips. Then he would become moody, meditating on the unfairness of the world, of the difficulties in being alive. Elise could sympathize; she felt Matt was out-smarted by Connie, like she herself often was – and neither could she connect much with Shara. She liked Matt’s enthusiasms, and the fact he made an effort with her when so few did.

  One day, Shara invited Elise and Connie into her studio to see her paintings. The women walked in with some trepidation. The space was large and light-filled, and canvases were propped up everywhere around the walls. They were large, abstract in the main, often covered with a semi-tangible amalgam of circles.

  ‘These,’ said Shara, pointing. ‘I wanted to make a comment on the immanence of motherhood.’

  Elise didn’t know what to say, but Connie nodded. What the fuck does Connie know about the immanence of motherhood? Elise wondered, but then remembered that half of Connie’s job was to be curious and the other half was to give the appearance of authority.

  ‘That one, Shar,’ said Connie. ‘I love that one.’ She pointed at one of the largest pieces. Elise stared at the endless shading of the circles, like eyes staring back at her, but avoiding her scrutiny at the same time: a void luring her in.

  ‘Have it,’ said Shara.

  ‘Get away with you,’ said Connie. ‘I’ll buy it.’

  ‘No,’ said Shara. ‘I want you to have it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  Elise mooched around the studio, feeling she should leave them in peace. She thought about when she’d turned twenty-one, and she and Connie had had a picnic on the Heath, near the spot where they’d first laid eyes upon each other. Among a pork pie and cold sausages from the butcher, Connie had even made a chocolate cake. Elise recalled the unprecedented sensation of being cared for, finally – mixed with an overflowing lust despite the Blytonesque picnic hamper and bottles of ginger beer that Connie had packed. For her next birthday, Connie had bought them tickets to see Much Ado About Nothing at the National Theatre. ‘So you can have a night off and be ushered to a seat yourself,’ Connie had said. Penelope Wilton had played Beatrice and Michael Gambon was Benedick, and Connie and Elise had laughed and held each other’s hands in the dark.

  Elise felt, now, an irrational surge of hate for Connie, to be so trapped by her. She would like to be thirty-eight, and be given paintings by American friends. She would like to go driving off in a car towards West Hollywood. She would like to live by the beach in Malibu. Instead, she was watching it all happen. None of this was hers. And Connie could take away the little she had, in an instant.

  2017

  13

  I sat in the l
iving room of our flat, staring at the scrunched-up Post-it note where I’d written the number for Deborah Clarke’s literary agency. Hi, I’m a huge fan of Constance Holden! That wouldn’t work – that was the last sort of person Constance’s representatives would let anywhere near her. I didn’t imagine Deborah Clarke was still working, given the amount of time that had passed, and I thought that might play in my favour – but nevertheless, whoever now worked for Constance was unlikely to pass on any details. Hi! I think Constance may have had a hand in my mum’s disappearance, I’d love to talk to her – think she’d be free?

  I thought, briefly, that I could tell the truth. Give the name of my dad, say that I just wanted to put the pieces of my early life together. Imagine that – just being honest. I never seriously considered it. All I could think of was my dad telling me to go carefully with her, that she was strong where my mother had been weak, and that Constance might not even want to talk to me about Elise Morceau.

  I would make up a name, I decided. A quiet, simple identity, that could easily be lost on the Internet. Laura and Brown, a ubiquitous enough pair of bookends between which a real life could hide. Of course, it was tempting to give myself an exquisite alias, Miranda, Isabella, Penelope, tied up with a surname like Storm or Montgomery, but that would have been rather risky. I looked up the agency website. They had one assistant, Rebecca Forrester, and luckily, in these days of such transparency, her email address and phone number were right there.

  I was Laura Brown, and I wanted to write a letter to Ms Holden. Where might I send it? I pressed the digits on my phone and waited. After three rings, someone picked up. ‘Clarke and Davies, Rebecca speaking, can I help?’ said a woman with a flustered voice.

  ‘Hi, Rebecca.’ I sounded foolish, informal. I panicked, and my mind went blank. ‘It’s about Constance.’

  ‘Oh, thank god you rang me back,’ she said breathlessly.