The Confession

by Jessie Burton

  ‘I—’

  ‘Hold on a sec.’ There was a rustling sound on the other end of the line. ‘Have you got anyone yet?’ said Rebecca. ‘She’s getting quite impatient.’

  ‘Impatient?’

  ‘Well, don’t say I told you that,’ this Rebecca went on. ‘But she’s turned down all your other candidates and we don’t really know what to do next.’

  ‘No, of course,’ I said, feeling vertiginous.

  ‘So have you got anyone? We need someone urgently.’

  My mind was working as fast as it could. I had no idea what this Rebecca was talking about, but I knew that to deny her what she wanted could lead to myself being denied too. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Fantastic. Can you send me her details?’

  ‘Can I send you her details?’ I repeated, trying to buy time to get my thoughts in order.

  ‘Ye-es?’

  I tried to pull myself together. ‘Sure. Sure. I’ll email you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rebecca, sounding slightly impatient. ‘Are you able to do it now?’

  ‘Of course I am. One thing – I’m working from home. It’ll come in from my personal email. From—’ I stopped. On the small dining-room table was a bottle of McIntyre’s Hot Sauce, left there because Joe hadn’t tidied it away. ‘It’ll come from mcintyre0553@gmail.com.’ My head was pounding. ‘Is that OK?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Rebecca. ‘I’ll look out for it. Call you back after I’ve read it. I’ve got to jump into a meeting now.’

  ‘Actually – would you be able to reply by email instead? It’s just, I’ve got a sleeping baby here and she wakes if the phone rings.’

  Fuck, I thought. What the fuck am I doing?

  ‘No worries. Let’s be in touch soon,’ said Rebecca. She was sounding more and more harried, as if she had fifty-five other things to think about that day. She hung up the phone.

  I’d started something, but I wasn’t sure what. It needed water and light. I was astonished at how quickly I’d made up the lie. I flipped open my laptop and began to construct a CV for Laura Brown. I couldn’t believe I was doing this, but here I was, fluently making it all up.

  Laura Brown was my age. She’d studied at the same university as me, same subject. As tempting as it was to give her an unusual, high-flying career history, I figured it would be better to keep as much as possible in the non-fiction realm so I didn’t get caught out as a physics graduate who’d won a junior Nobel Prize, or as someone who knew how to translate Russian novels.

  That said, I upped her degree class to a first.

  Then it dawned on me that in my shock at how quickly I’d concocted this charade over the telephone, I didn’t even find out what the candidates were candidates for. I’d have to guess, in which case everything might come crashing down before I’d even started. Care work for Constance? Secretarial? This was ridiculous. I took a deep breath. Let’s go for a mix, I thought, feeling more alive than I had in months.

  Laura Brown had done some charity work and volunteering, three years working in a bookshop, and she’d worked as a teaching assistant in Costa Rica. It was astonishing to me how quickly my fabrications came. I could find adjectives to describe Laura quicker than I could for myself. She was diligent, enthusiastic, positive, had great attention to detail. And yet she took long walks in her spare time, just like me.

  In the end, the fake CV wasn’t the problem, it was making the fake email account. I was heading deeper into the forest towards Connie, this would look terrible if I was caught – but I didn’t want to leave a trail of breadcrumbs. I prayed that no one already owned the mcintyre0553@gmail.com account. I was in luck, if anything about this scenario could be called lucky.

  From: mcintyre0553@gmail.com

  To: rebecca@clarkeanddavies.com

  Rebecca,

  Thanks for taking my call. Herewith, as discussed, the CV for Laura Brown. Laura’s very keen to meet Constance for this position, and to discuss all the requirements Constance has. She’s a fabulous candidate, only recently become available for new work, as her previous employer has moved country. He was very sad to lose her! Laura is extremely dependable, personable and an all-rounder, and we think she’d make an excellent, adaptable fit for your client.

  Kind regards, and looking forward to hearing from you.

  I didn’t sign it. Rebecca might put it down to distraction on my part thanks to my fictional fractious baby, and before I could back out of it, I pressed send. What easy madness. I pushed the laptop shut and went out for a walk, as if to leave the incriminating equipment behind might exonerate my deception and desperation. I wandered round the small park at the end of our road for fifteen minutes, and when I got back to the flat, Joe was sitting on the sofa, flicking through a monthly food magazine. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Have you got any thoughts on dinner?’

  ‘Hello,’ I said, sitting next to him and giving him a kiss on the cheek. ‘Nope.’

  Joe didn’t react. ‘Did you meet up with Kelly?’ he said. ‘Is she going to stream the birth on Instagram?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said. But then I wondered. ‘Mad she’s having another baby. They always say it happens at thirty. But I definitely didn’t want a kid at thirty.’

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ said Joe.

  ‘You didn’t either.’

  ‘They,’ said Joe. ‘Who are they? It happens when it happens.’

  I knew he didn’t understand what I was talking about, not really. Joe’s body had never truly changed for him. Yes, it had got hairier, bigger – but inside and out, it had more or less stayed the same. For me, who had been shocked by the first, unfamiliar melting ache in my lower abdomen when I was twelve, by the blood that came, completing my A-levels five years later, bent double in agony – I, who had waxed and waned like the moon, month in, month out, who knew the differing levels of wetness inside her could supposedly predict her fertility – I knew the inside of my body so much better than he knew his. Strangers on the street hadn’t scrutinized his body like they had mine. And now I was at a point where my body might fail in its performance of the act of producing another person before it was too late.

  ‘I miss the passion, Joe,’ I said suddenly. ‘Between you and me.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he replied, but I couldn’t tell whether in agreement, defeat, or both. ‘But you can’t keep that up.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I don’t know how anyone does.’

  ‘People do, though,’ I said. I wondered what a lot of sex actually was, in terms of quantity.

  ‘If you had a baby, what would you call it?’ Joe said, closing the magazine.

  We’d had this conversation before, and usually it was very abstract in its tone, hypothetical, distant. But there was something in his voice that alarmed me.

  ‘It’s hard thinking of a name when you haven’t met the person,’ I said. ‘But it would have to be something that wouldn’t get them teased. Something that isn’t about me. I just don’t get why people give weird names to their kids. Giving your child a batshit name is so unfair.’ Joe looked amused. ‘What? I feel strongly about it.’

  ‘So I see.’

  ‘Oh, people can name their kids whatever they want. Yellow, Hamburger, Dandelion. Who am I to judge?’

  ‘Hamburger’s nice.’

  ‘Hammie! Get off that swing!’

  ‘It’s got a ring to it.’

  We laughed. We could get on. We did. Anyone looking at us right then, on our sofa, might have thought, Yes, they’ve got it nailed. And maybe we had. Maybe the perpetual acts of compromise and the feelings of frustration, a chronic sense that somewhere round the corner – or behind you on the path where you missed the turning – your real life was waiting, was simply a condition of being alive, and moreover, trying to be alive with someone else?

  If you’d asked me, Do you love Joe? I would have answered yes. But I did not love the person I was when I was with him. I did not like how I’d . . . slid, over the years. I was convinced that the
re were many other selves belonging to me that were locked inside and would be forever locked if I stayed on this path – this steady path, my hand in his. My dad had never put himself to any long-term test before Claire, so I had no precedent of how people negotiated the peaks and slumps of an entire lifetime together – the dulling acts, the imperative to find grace in repetition, in flaws, in boredom.

  I loved my past with Joe, but inside this present we’d reduced ourselves in order to fit its shape. I felt the tinge of sabotage in my blood. If I let it, would it spread? And at the same time, I wanted to apologize – for not being enthusiastic any more about Joerritos, for never knowing what I wanted, for not being someone even a bit like Kelly.

  ‘Joey, how are you feeling about the whole baby thing?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. He paused. ‘Is it a good time?’ he went on. ‘With me and the business?’

  What fucking business? I wanted to scream. I couldn’t believe how deep we were into the delusion. It felt like there was no way out.

  He looked hard at the carpet, as if to divine his future in the microscopic tufts. ‘How are you feeling about it?’ he said. ‘Do you want to have a baby?’

  I looked at him. I knew that I had begun to play a guessing game with Nature, like a walk on Escher’s staircase, where you might wander and never end up anywhere concrete. Older women would often say to me, You can’t mess with Nature! as if Nature was a prickly colleague called Janet, with pernickety rules, but who they grudgingly admitted was good at her job. Those women could afford to be complacent, old-wivey, slightly hectoring. They saw it as the right of those who were stuck with their decisions, wanted or otherwise, and had done their best.

  ‘A baby is the one thing I can’t take back to the shop, Joey,’ I said. ‘The one thing I will have done in my life which is utterly irreversible.’

  ‘I know that, babe.’

  ‘It’s also expensive. We’re lucky, with the fact that we have the flat, but it’s only got one bedroom.’

  ‘You can put a baby in a drawer,’ he said.

  ‘Be serious. London costs a fortune.’

  But cost was not the reason I was worried. When I was a schoolgirl the talk was determinedly not about babies. It was about other kinds of achievement, those from outside the body. Degrees, usefulness, wings attached with wax, soaring up towards the sun. Most of my friends had been like me, mythical women, wax-winged. But one by one they’d become pregnant and had their children – so beautiful, all of them – and they had used the old feathers on their wings for nests. I had never felt jealous or sorrowful when the news came. I’d always felt delight and excitement – and a not insubstantial relief that this time, it wasn’t me. I could enjoy these children and then go home at the end of the day.

  I was intelligent enough to know you could never be certain of the body’s next twist, but also optimistic enough to think it might be possible, in one’s mid-thirties, to arrive at a sense of solidity. But I had not. I didn’t want to talk about it any more. I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. I probably wanted him to express the desire and conviction that was required for both of us, which was unfair, I suppose. Instead, I opened my laptop, and there, shiny and new, was an email from Rebecca.

  ‘Oh, my god,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ said Joe.

  ‘I applied for this job.’

  ‘Were you applying for jobs?’

  ‘Hold on.’

  I opened the email, my heart thumping. Joe tried to read it too but I moved off the sofa and went to the bedroom. ‘What’s going on?’ he called after me, but I didn’t reply.

  Laura sounds great! Rebecca had written. I’ve discussed with Deborah, and she chatted with Constance. Could Laura get to Constance’s for an interview tomorrow at 2pm?

  Holy mother of god.

  Hi Rebecca. Yes, I typed – she should be free most of this week in the daytime. I’ll just confirm this time with her and get back to you. Could you send me the address again?

  Risky, but I had no choice.

  Sure, Rebecca emailed back. Clearly she was rushing this one through, keen to impress her boss, or simply to get the matter off her desk. It’s 17 Dacres Road, NW3 5RP.

  Perfect, I wrote.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and texted Zoë. Hi Z, can we swap shifts tomorrow? Sorry for last minute. I’d be so grateful.

  Zoë texted back immediately. Sure thing x.

  Thanks, I wrote back.

  I waited for five minutes to pass on my watch. I opened the laptop again and replied to Rebecca’s last email. Laura can do tomorrow at 2pm, I wrote. Let me know any feedback, and we can take it from there.

  Thanks, wrote Rebecca. Fingers crossed!

  And that was it. I lay back on the duvet. This cannot work, I thought. It simply can’t. At some point, the literary agency is going to be in touch with whoever was suggesting the candidates to them. I cannot get away with this.

  But at the very least, I reckoned I had about twenty-four hours before I was caught out. And before that happened, I was going to make sure I got inside 17 Dacres Road, and put myself in front of Constance Holden.

  14

  Not having lived north of the great dividing river, I never much went to Hampstead Heath. If I wanted vast open space, I went to Richmond Park, revelling in its huge skies and autumn golds, thinking of Henry VIII hunting his deer – their descendants still grazing underneath the oaks. But here I was, striding over Parliament Hill. I made my way to the famous view of central London, the whole of the sky from east to west, Gherkin, Walkie-Talkie, Shard, the dome of St Paul’s, the hollow of the Eye – a witch’s broken incantation into Soho, the modern geography glinting in the sun. It was a warm October; people walking in shirts and sunglasses, with a carelessness that belied the fact that in eight weeks we’d be deep in the grip of a London winter. In a daze, I passed small cloudy poodles, and watched a blue-eyed husky drag a woman along, her thin arms jerking on the lead with a hint of savagery. I saw men, their white legs in sports shorts; children on scooters, whizzing.

  I was there on that hill, and I was not. I felt as if I was floating above myself, watching the fast pace of my own feet as they made their way off the Heath. I was Rose Simmons, and I was Laura Brown. I was north, I was south, and I was no point on the compass. Somehow, I was walking down the hill that led to Dacres Road, to meet a person who’d known my mother. A woman who my father said might have something to tell me. I tried to gather myself together, to remember all the things Laura Brown had achieved in her life.

  I hadn’t told Joe what I was doing. I didn’t want his opprobrium or doubt. I wanted to do this entirely on my own. And yet, it occurred to me as I turned into Dacres Road, that no one knew I was here. What if Constance recognized my mother’s face in mine, and made a prisoner of me, feeding me through a cage, fattening me for her stove? I would die here, answerless, and no one would know how to find Rose Simmons ever again.

  *

  The houses on Dacres Road were four storeys tall, with little gable windows at the top and basements visible if you looked down as you ascended the steps to the raised front doors. Their brickwork was good quality, and had endured well over a hundred years of London air. They were deep reddish brown and neatly built, and the window bays were painted in creamy white. Trimmed tight hedges and plump rose bushes complemented the ivy that tumbled over stained-glass porches. Expensive serenity – although by the looks of them, many were now divided into flats. There seemed something inevitable that Constance, a writer, lived in one of these grand Hampstead houses – but actually I was glad of it, because this would probably be the only manner by which I would ever get to see inside one.

  Numbers 11, 13, 15 – I was nearing her house, my pulse racing. Just knock on the door, I said to myself. What’s the worst that can happen?

  I thought – in fact, I was convinced – that she would open the door and recognize me immediately, that the traces of Elise Morceau would be so obvious to h
er. I pictured Constance, taking me to New York, finding the apartment I’d spent my early days in. A closing of a circle, to find my mother’s story: that was worth this risk.

  I reached number 17. The front of the house was covered with ivy, which cloaked the lintel of the porch. The tiles beneath my feet were small black and white diamonds, cracked here and there with age. The door was a dark bottle green, with two panels of glass in deep red and yellow, blue and violet. The knocker was a cast-iron shape of a woman’s hand, emerging delicately from a cuff. I lifted the hand and dropped it on the iron ball beneath, and waited. After a good ten or so seconds, through the warped glass panes I saw a figure moving down the hall, tall and dark, mutating as it came forward, its outline like a ripple of black water.

  You could run, I thought. You could pretend none of this ever happened.

  But I was sick of pretending. I wanted to know the truth.

  Then Constance was before me, the door wide open, her face and body framed by the mouth of her house. She stopped short when she saw me. Her eyes rested on mine fractionally too long.

  Now, I thought. Now! Everything’s going to fall into place.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she said.

  I’d been expecting someone slightly haggish, I’ll admit. A reclusive novelist was supposed to be an old lady, a wyrd sister with poor personal hygiene, hoarding cereal boxes, a mad oestrogen-deprived biddy with her hair matted on her head, but the brain inside it a work of genius. Constance Holden did not look like that.

  She looked hard, I would say: her body looked hard. Her body was a lesson. There was no spare flesh on her, jumper tight and neat about her, black trousers fitted yet loosening out towards the ankles. A single gold bangle on her wrist. White hair, up in a chignon. Tortoiseshell half-glasses hanging round her neck. Her eyes were light, her cheekbones broad. Those eighties headshots flashed past like a series of matryoshka dolls rising up from within her.

  In the flesh she was more upright. Had she really known my mother, kissed her, held her, hurt her? Had she ever wondered what had happened to the child that Elise once had? My breath stopped in my throat; I couldn’t speak. I shifted on the tiles, trying not to grab her by the arms and say, It’s me, Rose. I grew up. I remembered what my father had told me; that I needed to be careful.