My Last Confession

by Helen FitzGerald

  When she got home to the house at Ballon she went to bed. She just lay there, body oozing.

  Bridget’s mother became increasingly worried about her daughter’s mental health as the days passed.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ she would suggest, opening the curtains each morning. ‘Or would you like to go to the movies? Bridge, please. Look at me. Talk to me. I’m sorry you’re hurting, my little girl. I’m so sorry.’

  For weeks, months maybe, Bridget lay in her bedroom with the lights off and the door shut, hoping for the healing that her mother insisted time would bring. But time did not heal. Instead the emptiness of a seven pound eight ounce child who had nuzzled into her ribcage grew – as if she were really there; it grew larger and heavier until it weighed on her so painfully that Bridget’s mother realised she’d made a big mistake.

  But it was too late. Something had been signed and someone had double-checked while Bridget had lain waiting for time to heal, and it was too late. The baby was someone else’s, the life of motherhood, of watching and knowing and loving, was someone else’s. A winning ticket thrown away.

  Bridget put her name on a list and started her time. Eighteen years minimum, it would be. It was up to the little one she’d named Jenny. A sing-song simple name. Jenny.

  As time wore on, there were many things that cushioned the sadness of losing her child. Bridget buried herself in her degree, and excelled. She chose a specialism that excited her, and loved her job. She chose to work and live near her family and friends, which meant she had the support of people who understood her loss.

  And she had Hamish.

  Bridget refused to see him for many months. But he persevered, ringing her daily, and knocking on the family door at least once a week.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said when she finally let him in. ‘I’m so sorry. I love you.’

  He was a kind and honest young man. They could never just be childhood sweethearts. In Hamish’s arms, the burden of Bridget’s grief seemed to halve. She loved him and she needed to be with him for the rest of her life.

  It took years before they could contemplate having another baby, and they never discussed it. But one day Hamish didn’t put a condom on and Bridget didn’t complain. Afterwards, Bridget cried.

  ‘I can’t. I shouldn’t. It’s wrong to want this,’ she said.

  As usual, he told her what she needed to hear. They were so young when it happened. It was a terrible mistake, but they had to move on. Little Jenny was with a good family. They must try and be happy.

  As Bridget’s period arrived each month for the next year, her guilt and self-loathing turned to desperation and excitement. She wanted and needed to get pregnant. And eventually, she did.

  Rachel. A blessing from God. A different girl. A fresh start.

  But sometimes the pain returned and Bridget felt as if she was just going through the motions of life, getting into the routine of it, taking turns with the rubbish, ferrying Rachel to athletics, shopping in B & Q on the weekends, and all within the Ochil Hills that would be her cell walls for at least eighteen years.

  29

  Drink never makes things better for me. If things are bad, it makes them worse. I can only drink when a hundred per cent absolutely happy, and on the night of the party I wasn’t even close to ten per cent happy.

  Chas and I had not spoken since Fight Three. We’d played home tag. I’d come in, he’d go out. He’d sleep on the sofa, I’d sleep in the bed. He’d take Robbie to the park, I’d watch television. I’d take Robbie to the soft play area, he’d go to the studio. It was a terrible period of fear, loathing and very poor party planning, which resulted in a last minute dash to Marks & Spencer’s and Oddbins and Mum and Dad’s and about seventy phone calls to friends I’d lost touch with since my life had been sabotaged by two males and a prison.

  The other problem on the night of the party was my nerves. I was really worried about our oddball mixture of friends milling about my house not getting on. I drank three vodka and tonics to ease the worry and by eight o’clock I was drunk.

  Which made me more miserable and more nervous, especially when the oddball recipe of friends arrived:

  There were the Posh mums with low-cut jeans, ironed hair and new kitchens just installed or just about to be; the Hippy mums who’d read very good books lately; the working mums who wished they had time for kitchens and reading; the school friends who wanted to talk about Sarah’s death, which I didn’t; the ones who were surprised at how well I’d turned out, and those who smirked at how badly.

  Then there were the Uni friends of Chas’s who’d completed the medical degree he’d abandoned and who could never drink enough to disguise how boring they were; one very attractive female sculptor from the studio in Hillfoot; a ragtag assembly of Scottish socialists still wearing the same sort of clothes they wore in first year; a scattering of ex-Scottish socialists now living in very big houses; one gay cousin; an ex-shag from downstairs and his psychotic musician friend; the chick I cleaned with at the leisure centre during Uni holidays who liked me in my uniform and still liked me, I could tell; three heavy smokers from the New Gorbals netball team that I’d accidentally joined that morning; a colleague whose blindness made several mums (from category one, especially) ill at ease; two neighbours whom I’d never talked to before; social workers who had a lot to say about the demise or not of multiculturalism and that murder in the Borders and hill-walking at night wearing nothing but a hat and that new hot hunnies bikini car-wash in the deepest darkest East End and baking cakes with real butter and staplers and Robert Frost and was it okay if they took another teeny line of speed in the bathroom?

  And Billy Mullen, who arrived just as I’d started dancing to music that was not cartoon- or nursery-rhyme-related. After Chas welcomed him, Billy Mullen honed in on Marj (ex-colleague) almost immediately, even though she was married, admittedly unhappily.

  Gradually, the vodka started doing its stuff, fuelling the mind with truths that had to be acted upon – now.

  ‘We’re not talking!’ I said, walking up and putting my arm around my man after he’d talked for too long to the good-looking sculptor.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ she said.

  ‘It is a shame, isn’t it, Chas?’

  He didn’t answer, though he did touch my hand.

  ‘He’s not talking to me because I talk too much,’ I said.

  Chas’s hand gripped mine a little tighter than it had been.

  ‘He’s got a very big cock,’ I said to the speechless sculptor girl who wasn’t so good-looking up close. She had a strawberry nose, needed microdermabrasion.

  ‘What do you sculpt, then?’

  ‘I’m working on a large ball made entirely of wire.’

  I laughed so hard it nearly killed me. A large ball made entirely of wire! I couldn’t believe it. When I finally stopped laughing, I felt distinctly left out, so much so that I wondered out loud …

  ‘You’ve had it in your mouth!’

  ‘Sorry?’ asked the wire-ball girl.

  ‘His cock!’

  ‘That’s enough, Krissie!’ said Chas, dragging me away.

  ‘You have!’ I slurred. ‘And the worst of it is, that he’d have seen your nose from up there, with all its huge fucking craters! Serves you right, you fucking wire-ball cunt!’

  Chas slammed the door and we were on the close where the old bag woman called Mrs McTay from across the landing was perched for the evening’s entertainment.

  ‘It’s my fucking party!’ I started, not to be pacified by Chas, who was such a stranger to me now.

  ‘Krissie, calm down. Stop and look at me. Eyes, into mine. I want to tell you why I organised this party.’

  ‘Because you’re bored with me.’

  ‘Listen to me.’

  ‘Leave me alone, let me back in.’

  I pushed past him.

  ‘Do you promise to be civil?’

  ‘Not only do I promise to be civil, I promise to make a proper effort wi
th your little friend Bobby.’

  ‘Billy,’ Chas said, taking the bottle of vodka from my hand and then moving away from the door.

  I searched all over the flat for Billy Mullen and eventually found him in the shower with Marj. I turned the shower off to extricate them and they screamed and then laughed, and then Marj got out not worrying about the fact that you could see her hugely erect nipples through her wet white dress.

  ‘I want to be your friend!’ I said to him.

  ‘Good,’ he said to me, and that was it. We were friends.

  Friends who had nothing more to say to each other whatsoever.

  I skittered around after that and Billy Mullen got people posing for the new Sony digital camera he had probably stolen earlier that day.

  Peeping in on the mothers, I was in time for the following exchange:

  ZACH’S MUM: Yes, well Zach did a full length with Euan, who’s very good, doesn’t take any nonsense, like the one you still use, Amelia.

  PETER’S MUM: Peter’s improved, you know. He can do fifty metres freestyle now and tumble turns.

  ZACH’S MUM: Tumble turns? That’s an odd thing to be teaching a three-year-old.

  PETER’S MUM: He’s four.

  ZACH’S MUM: He’s gorgeous, such a lovely boy.

  PETER’S MUM: He’s very well behaved in the pool.

  ZACH’S MUM: No more of that pooing on the fountain then?

  PETER’S MUM: That wasn’t Peter!

  I found myself impelled forwards, pressing my finger over the defensive mouth of Peter’s mum and saying, ‘Shh! Stop talking about fucking swimming lessons for fuck’s sake. It’s more boring than being dead. Haven’t you got anything else to talk about? Fucking hell, it’s like your minds are heavy sodden nappies and all you can talk is fucking pish.’

  Thanks to me, the mothers now had something other than their children to talk about.

  I grabbed another drink and found Robert, who was doing a line of speed in the bathroom with Billy Mullen and Marj. I waited my turn, snorted a line, and then moved even faster around the party to the mothers, who were leaving and not saying goodbye; the doctors, who were dribbling on about Tuscany; the socialists, who were not sharing so much as a conversation; and Chas, who was sitting on our bed with his knees almost touching the wire-ball girl’s.

  I saw red, literally, and then I saw Danny making his way along the corridor and I raced after him.

  ‘Touch it!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My face, go on. You know you want to.’

  He was a bit pissed too, so he smiled and put his hands in the air. I took hold of them and placed them on my face and then I wondered what should happen next.

  ‘DJWOOO GHWANNA NETT JOO NOO?’

  I was asking him if he wanted to let go now and his hands were over my mouth and I may have wet his fingers a little, but he got the drift and let go, leaving us both dangling there, in the hall.

  ‘I’m off,’ he said, and I looked into the bedroom again and saw that Chas and his girl were huddled together, unaware of anything but each other. I grabbed Danny and I kissed him.

  ‘You’re a fucking idiot, Krissie.’

  The funny thing was, this didn’t come from Chas, or wire-ball-girl – they hadn’t budged, and had no idea I’d just thrust my tongue in someone’s mouth – but from Danny, who walked towards the door, opened it and left.

  30

  The honeymoon got worse and worse for Amanda. She’d spent two nights alone, and Jeremy was still in London hoping to see his sick mother. She had no car. And the families in boats grated on her to the point that she’d considered pulling one of the lock levers while no one was looking. What was she supposed to do? Read all those political histories? Watch a kids’ DVD? Walk up the wet green hill in the pouring rain only to walk back down again? Think?

  Amanda took the last option. She sat and thought for many hours, the last few of which were spent hovering over the payphone with her forehead lines at their deepest.

  ‘Good morning, Family Finding,’ came a chirpy voice.

  She hung up and rang Jeremy instead. He sounded grim. He’d been down in London two whole days and his mother was still refusing to see him. And he was still refusing to give up.

  ‘Do you want to come down here with me?’ he’d asked last time she phoned. ‘This is silly. We can have the honeymoon another time.’

  ‘They might discharge her today, yeah?’ said Amanda.

  ‘That’s what they said. I’ll phone as soon as I hear anything,’ he said.

  Amanda returned to her staring position above the phone. It was looking at her, beckoning, saying, You’ll be leaving forever.

  To a new life.

  Gone from Scotland.

  Last chance.

  Pick me up. Go on. Do it.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t want to leave Scotland – she did. She loved Jeremy. He made her feel happy and they had fun together. But coming home made her realise that it is okay, good even, to understand who you are. She still didn’t entirely understand who she was, not fully. Getting married and coming home and contemplating having children for the first time had awakened a desire to find out more about her parents. Was her wildness nature or nurture? Did she have siblings or half-siblings? Was there any history of mental illness in her family? Were her family all ginger (God forbid, she and Jeremy had admitted to each other).

  All she knew, as told to her by her very kind and sensible mum and dad at the age of six, was that she was adopted and no less loved for it.

  She picked up the phone and dialled again.

  ‘Good morning, Family Finding.’

  This time she didn’t hang up.

  ‘My name’s Amanda Kelly,’ she started, hardly able to believe she was actually making the call. Her voice trembled as she explained her situation. Her whole body trembled as she waited for the social worker to check things out and call her back.

  She jumped when the phone rang.

  ‘You should come in,’ said the social worker. ‘I’ve got a space tomorrow afternoon.’

  *

  Afterwards Amanda phoned Jeremy but couldn’t reach him. She was going to tell him all about what she was doing. He’d known it was on her mind anyway, had even suggested they go through it together, but his home number rang out and his mobile went straight to voicemail. He was probably at the hospital, she thought. Shit, she could really do with hearing his voice.

  So she didn’t talk to anyone about what she was doing before the appointment. She felt too guilty to tell her parents. They wouldn’t discourage it, but it would upset them. When Amanda had brought it up ten years ago, over dinner, she could tell by the look on their faces that it was best not to.

  That night, she lay awake wondering what the appointment might mean for her. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.

  In the morning, she drank three cups of strong coffee, filed her nails and got dressed. Jeremy had taken the car, so Amanda got the bus to Oban, which wriggled around the coastline for hours. Under any other circumstance it would have been spectacular, but Amanda didn’t give a shit for views at the best of times, and especially not that morning. She arrived in Oban and walked to the car hire place on the outskirts of town, her adrenalin working its way up for each leg of the journey. And by the time she arrived at the Family Finding Office in Glasgow her heart was pounding so hard it hurt.

  She stood at the front of the large ugly council building and took a deep breath. Did she really need to know? What would she find out? How would she feel afterwards? Taking another deep breath, Amanda put aside these questions – ones she’d asked over and over in her head for many years – and walked into the building.

  It flipped her out afterwards how easy it would have been, for years, to do it. Her mother’s name was on a database, had been since Amanda was twelve months old. Her birth mother had wanted to see her for the longest time.

  The counselling was lengthy and forgettable. A matter-of-fact social worker tol
d her about the ongoing support they could offer her. She explained that a reunion would be difficult and confusing, and suggested she should talk to someone close to her about it before deciding what to do.

  ‘You shouldn’t rush into anything,’ said the social worker, handing over leaflets and website addresses. ‘Think, talk, prepare yourself for all possible outcomes.’

  Amanda’s head was all over the place, and all she wanted to do was get the piece of paper from the woman with the name of her mother, the details of her current address, and run out of the door and …

  Finally, after a lot of nodding and pretending to be completely cool about it all, she was out of the door, the piece of paper in her hand, with no idea of what to do next. She sat in the car for several minutes just holding onto it, and the words that would tell her what she needed to know.

  Then she looked.

  Her birth mother – Bridget Garden then, Bridget McGivern now – had been seventeen when she was born. There were no details of the father. Bridget was five foot eight, the same as Amanda, and had red hair, shit. She’d been a medical student at the time of her birth. Her address had been 24 Wood Street, Ballon, when she’d given her up, and she was now living at 87 King Street, Stirling.

  Amanda held the paper in her hand and looked at the fine black print that was the definition of her mother and herself all those years ago. Little black letters put together on a page, meaning her. She didn’t cry. It would have been a relief to, but it didn’t come.

  What she did instead was to drive.

  To Ballon.

  31

  That went well! I thought, hiding my face in my hands when I came to on the sofa the morning after the party. There were several people lying on the living-room floor, red wine stains on the carpet, left-over cigarettes and joints in saucers all over the place, bottles and empty crisp packets and about twenty foil containers with half-eaten lamb bhoona and chicken tikka masala, and no Chas.