The Confession

by Jessie Burton

  ‘There isn’t an endpoint,’ I said to them. ‘No arrival.’ At this, the expressions on their faces ranged from perplexed to despondent. ‘But you’re all so brilliant, and you’ve got so much going for you. And if you haven’t got to where you wanted to get by the time you’re twenty-five, you should probably thank your lucky stars. Seriously. Because if getting there is hard, holding on to your dream is possibly even harder. Nothing ever stays the same.’

  They looked at me slightly blankly, and I realized it might be hard to appreciate the idea that all your goals, once achieved, might slip through your fingers. That they might not make you happy.

  ‘So what are you going to do now?’ said Jacob.

  ‘I’ve got an idea or two,’ I said. And then I realized it was true.

  *

  By ten p.m. I was desperate to go to bed. All the talking was exhausting, but being pregnant was draining me immensely. I didn’t want them to be disappointed in me, so I stayed up till midnight watching Clueless, which I realized Jacob, Gabi, Lara and Zoë were viewing like a museum piece, and I was watching as a comforting return to my adolescence.

  My airbed was surprisingly comfy. Zoë loved lavender oil, and had sprinkled some drops on my pillow. When I went to the bathroom, Zoë and Lara were in the kitchen clearing away the last of the washing-up.

  ‘Rose is so cool?’ Lara was saying.

  ‘I know,’ said Zoë. ‘She’s real.’

  ‘I want to be like that when I’m older. You know? Like, really knowing yourself?’

  Heat emanated in my stomach like a glow. They would never know what hearing those words meant to me. Back on the airbed, I drifted off quite easily, out of my usual life. But this is my life, I thought, just before I fell asleep.

  42

  I stayed with Zoë for a week, rising when she did and making sure I was out of her flat as long as possible in the day. I went to galleries. I walked endlessly along the Embankment, from Cheyne Walk as far as the Tower of London. I thought constantly about two things: Connie, and the pregnancy. I wondered whether I should ring Connie. I began to worry about money. This situation of living with Zoë could not go on. I needed to get a job, a place to live, and soon. I could ask for my job at Clean Bean, I supposed, start making cappuccinos again – but I had begun to feel nauseous so much of the time, and going to the cafe felt like a regression. I wanted to be in Connie’s house, making our dinner, working out our next moves. The book was coming soon, and then what? The thought that I might have blown it for ever with Connie was a bit like the pregnancy: not something I was quite fully able to acknowledge. It felt too cataclysmic. Nevertheless, something was holding me back from calling her. When, five days into being with Zoë, my phone rang, I knew what I’d been waiting for.

  ‘Rose?’ said a voice.

  ‘Connie,’ I replied. It felt so good to hear her voice. ‘How – are you?’

  There was a pause. ‘I’m fine,’ she said neutrally. She hesitated again. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m leaning against a river wall looking at the Tate Modern.’

  There was silence again, but Connie was still on the line. I could almost hear her mind working, the battles at play between her desire to berate me and her need to talk to me. I knew that this time, I couldn’t say anything. Connie had to dictate how this went. Connie had to be the one who made this call. One false move and I might lose her for ever. She had to feel like she was in control.

  ‘I’m still angry,’ she said. ‘You were sly.’

  ‘I’m really sorry, Connie.’

  ‘I told you things I haven’t spoken about for years.’

  ‘I know.’

  She didn’t say anything. She’s going to tell me to come and pick up the rest of my stuff, I thought. ‘I should have told you who I was,’ I said. ‘But I was scared you wouldn’t want anything to do with me.’ Again, Connie said nothing and I wondered if I’d hit on an awkward truth. ‘I only called your agency in the first place because I just wanted to write to you. But things got out of control. I thought I could make it work.’

  ‘Well you got that wrong, didn’t you?’

  ‘I did. But I didn’t see any other way. I couldn’t – I still don’t know what happened between you and my mum. You never really wanted to talk about your past.’

  ‘And that’s my right!’

  ‘I know it is. Of course. So I didn’t know what your reaction would be if I told you who I really was.’

  She fell silent again. I didn’t know what to do, what to say. I felt old, and tired. I just wanted the story to change, but I felt it couldn’t until we’d got through this one. ‘My dad’s told me hardly anything,’ I said.

  ‘Really? I find that extraordinary.’

  I stared at the Thames, huge and deep and dangerous, this ancient river I’d lived by my whole life without ever really paying it much attention, still silting up its treasures from centuries past. ‘He said you two knew each other. He said that for a while, you were inseparable. He said it ended badly.’

  ‘Did he now?’

  Silence again.

  ‘Who’s making your sandwiches, Con?’ I said.

  ‘No one. I don’t need a home help.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘But I do need you to come over.’ I felt my heart lift, a sick flutter of excitement in my stomach that wasn’t the baby. ‘There’s something I want you to see.’ Connie’s voice was expressionless; she wasn’t giving anything away.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Well, it can wait, obviously, but—’

  ‘I’m coming now,’ I said.

  ‘Fine,’ said Connie, and she put down the phone.

  *

  Heading towards St Paul’s Station, I thought I’d played it as well as I could have. I just had to hope that Connie’s natural curiosity and her need to know as much as possible about other people would win out against her pride and pain. She had to be the one to summon me back to her court, and I had to show willing.

  As I descended into the station I realized something else: she’d called me Rose as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

  *

  I walked towards Connie’s house, by now such a familiar path for my feet to tread. My phone buzzed with a text from Joe. I’m selling the van, he wrote.

  I texted back immediately. Why?

  About thirty seconds later, he replied, You know why.

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I thought of the rusty doors. The way that bits of grated cheese would always get stuck in the join between the old chipped worktop and the interior. Are you OK about it? I wrote.

  Well, mum’s delighted.

  Lol, I typed back, then worried I was being too flippant. I added a van emoji and then a broken heart.

  Joe sent three dollar emojis. I’m giving you half, he wrote.

  What? No.

  You deserve it Rosie.

  It’s your van. You don’t have to do that.

  No, I do. When I get the money, I’ll put it in your account. Look out for it. X

  Joe, this is so generous. Thank you.

  He didn’t reply. I slipped my phone back into my bag.

  *

  I still had my key to Connie’s house but I didn’t use it. I knocked and waited. Nothing happened. It seemed like a dead house, a numb place where no one existed. ‘Con?’ I called through the letterbox, but no answer came. My skin prickled: what if this was a trap set by Deborah, and the police were going to swoop to arrest me? What if Connie was spread-eagled on the floor, the stress of my revelation proving too much for her heart? What if she’d killed herself? I told myself to be reasonable. She had called me a mere hour ago. She had not committed suicide on her carpet. The police were not coming.

  I thought about what to do. Call her back? I didn’t want to appear too vigilant, too persistent. I knocked again.

  I was about to give up when I saw the familiar winnowing figure through the mottled glass, coming up from the kitchen. Had Conn
ie not heard me the first time? Was she making me wait? Maybe she was testing me, to see how long I was prepared to pine outside her house, to see how much I really wanted what it was she had. Or perhaps she was just moving slower. I realized my mind was jumping too fast and I tried to focus. I’d been waiting on the doorstep for at least ten minutes.

  Connie was struggling with the latch, but eventually, she got it open, and pulled the door back to survey me. She was still as imposing as ever, upright and hard – five days were not going to change that – but there was fatigue in her eyes, and a certain wariness. We looked at each other. I really wanted to sit down. ‘Hi,’ I said.

  ‘I must have been blind,’ said Connie.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I see it in you now.’

  ‘It?’

  ‘Her.’

  ‘Connie,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to upset you.’

  ‘You won’t upset me,’ she said. ‘You’ve already done your worst. You’d better come in.’

  She turned into the house. I stepped gently over the threshold, and Connie shut the world away.

  *

  We went into the front room. Connie stood in the middle, facing me. ‘I don’t owe you anything, you know,’ she said.

  ‘I know you don’t.’

  ‘I paid you for your services. To do a job.’

  ‘I know. And I’m so grateful.’

  ‘Were those questions you were asking me – about why I hadn’t written for so long, what happens to Margaret after The Mercurial ends, whether Christina and she were based on people I knew – was all that because you thought you’d find your mother?’

  I thought it best to be honest. ‘At first, yes. I think I wanted very badly for that to be the case.’

  ‘And what is your conclusion?’

  ‘I didn’t find a conclusion. I don’t know enough about what really happened to be able to find it in a book.’

  She nodded, appearing to be satisfied. ‘You coming here and helping me shouldn’t mean I have to hand my life over to you, Rose,’ she said.

  ‘I know that.’

  She sighed and sat down slowly on the edge of her favourite armchair. ‘So,’ she said. ‘Rose Simmons. Does your father know you’re here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He wouldn’t approve. But perhaps you know that. What did he tell you about me?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘I’ve told you. Not much.’ Connie rolled her eyes. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘He did mention that you were strong and my mother was weak.’

  ‘Did he,’ said Connie.

  ‘That there was a woman called Yolanda. She was my mum’s friend in New York.’

  At the name, Connie visibly flinched.

  ‘He told me that you and Elise were a couple before he got together with her,’ I went on. ‘He says Elise left him, and took me with her. She was staying at Yolanda’s apartment. Then you turned up and she disappeared.’ I paused. ‘He says you were the last one to be with her before she disappeared.’

  At this, Connie closed her eyes. ‘And did he tell you whether Elise was alive or dead?’

  I swallowed, determined to keep this conversational and free of drama. ‘No.’

  Connie sat back in her armchair and stared into the distance. ‘Did he bring you up OK?’

  Tears came into my eyes and I blinked them away. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I love him.’

  ‘Apart from your inclination to impersonation, deception and the like,’ said Connie.

  To my surprise, her eyes seemed to gleam – with amusement, approval or acceptance, I couldn’t tell.

  ‘Deborah’s furious, you know,’ she went on. I feared she was changing the subject.

  ‘I can imagine,’ I said. ‘But are you?’

  Connie ignored this. ‘She thinks you’re after something.’

  ‘I am. My mother.’

  Connie laughed. ‘And you thought you’d find her here.’

  ‘It was as good a place as any. My dad didn’t elaborate, but the way he talked about you and her—’

  ‘I see,’ said Connie, chewing her lip. She seemed to be cogitating on something. ‘Come with me,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want you to come with me.’

  *

  We were heading for her bedroom, right up to the attic, her rickety wrists on a narrow balustrade. It was a neat room, a small room. The first thing I saw was a Deco-style dressing table with neat Bakelite handles. Connie’s make-up and hairbrush were laid upon it, and a silver frame which held the faded colour photo of a cat. I had not seen this cat in any other photo frame in the house. It was slung like a baby in someone’s arms, a handsome animal, tortoiseshell and enormous with a cream belly and green eyes. A slender hand supported its neck, but the focus of this photograph was most definitely the cat.

  I followed Connie inside.

  The bed was made neatly, the plain pale blue duvet straightened, pillows plumped, a soft-looking shawl scrunched like a woollen nest in the middle. There were two bedside tables both piled with books, but only one had a pair of reading glasses on it, a blister pack of pills and a half-drunk glass of water. There were so many titles it would be hard to tell which one was current. By the dressing table was a row of shelves. A quick glance told me it was filled with nineteenth-century classics in paperback, and collections of Plath and Rich, Keats, Lorca, their spines deeply cracked. Virginia Woolf and Angela Carter had made it, but the rest of Connie’s more modern tastes were downstairs in the living room.

  ‘This is what I want you to see,’ said Connie. ‘Look.’

  She was pointing at the wall to the left of the door. It was the only artwork up here – if that’s what you would call it, a small painting in a frame, hanging above a chest of drawers. It was the rough outline of a rabbit, expensively framed but executed on cheap notepaper. The paper was yellowed, but the patterns inside the rabbit were a painted chaos in forest green, made up of tiny dots, everywhere. It was not expert nor was it beautiful, but it had a sort of concentration to it that I liked.

  ‘Look,’ said Connie.

  I moved closer. The two ears were on different levels to each other, the little tail was ludicrous – but such intensity, all in that green. Then I realized that the tiny dots all over the body of the rabbit were made up by the repeated pressure of a miniature fingerprint.

  And along the bottom in the corner: For Connie, love Rose.

  *

  I backed away. I had to sit on the bed for a few seconds. Gingerly, Connie lifted the picture frame off the wall, and walked towards me holding it in outstretched palms, like a Wise King bringing the myrrh. ‘A green rabbit, for a woman called Rabbit,’ Connie said.

  I eyed the picture. I couldn’t speak.

  ‘You made this,’ said Connie. ‘Well. Not strictly speaking. Your mother did. She took your finger, which was so tiny, because you were such a little baby at that point – and she dipped it in a pot of green paint, and prodded it all over the rabbit.’

  A pain came into my eyes, and I couldn’t stop what was coming. The idea of my mother holding a tiny finger – my tiny finger – and dotting it carefully, lovingly, unstintingly all over the paper, until this rabbit’s entire pelt was covered in the evidence of our joint effort, probably our first and only effort, ripped something apart inside me. I began to cry.

  ‘I want you to have this,’ said Connie gently. ‘I think you should have it.’

  I don’t know how long I sat on the edge of Connie’s bed, or when I eventually managed to stop crying and take up the picture from where Connie had left it by my side. She sat down next to me and put her hand in mine. ‘Oh, Rose,’ she said. ‘I always wondered if this day might come.’

  *

  I realized, now everything was out in the open, what I hadn’t understood before – that this couldn’t all be explained to me in an hour, or two, or even an afternoon. It might take another lifetime. I’d wanted a neat, quick bucketload of information, and I wanted to process
it in situ, but life is not like that, no person’s story is like that, and Connie knew that better than most.

  Instead, she asked me to go downstairs and put the kettle on. She’d be down in a minute, she said. I obeyed, drained of tears and energy, yet charged up with the greatest, most human revelation about my mother I’d ever had. That one day, she’d probably walked to a store to buy a pot of green paint. It was such a tender image – so banal, really – a woman walking down a New York street. But also so touching, because she didn’t know that thirty-four years later I’d be thinking of her like that. Had I been with her, in a pram? Or had I been left in the apartment – and with who? I rubbed my index finger, imagining her holding it, guiding it across the paper. In a daze, I put the kettle on, reaching for two of Con’s terrible mugs. I dropped teabags in each one, and stared out of the window. I felt a whole new side to myself opening up, and I could do nothing but let it happen now. This is what I had sought.

  ‘Tea’s ready,’ I called up the stairs.

  ‘Coming,’ Connie called back.

  I fetched a Penguin bar from her biscuit tin, unwrapped it for her and put it on the table on a small plate. When had Connie framed that painting? Had she always kept it close? Why did she cherish it so much that she would have it on her bedroom wall? Her decision to do that told me something that I didn’t dare hope: that I might mean something to her.

  *

  Connie sat down opposite me. She had come into the kitchen with something in her hand, and she now pushed it across the table. It was a flimsy perspex photo frame containing a picture of about twenty people, grouped haphazardly together in front of a swimming pool, bordered by a wall of cacti. Men and women of different ages, smiling happily. Judging by their hairstyles and clothing, it was from some time in the eighties. I held it close, scanning the faces. There was Connie, so much younger but unmistakable, near the centre of the third row. That sharp nose and fine face, her hair in a wild bob, big earrings, wearing a pantsuit of all things, in a shade of orange. Its loudness was at odds with the woman I knew, but I recognized that upright posture, that confidence. Then more faces, the terrible baggy shirts and hair gel, the double denim, the sequin sheaths and shoulder pads.