And no Robbie, who I was supposed to collect at twelve. Shite.
*
I rushed into my bedroom where, to my horror, Billy Mullen and Marj were lying naked. Then I rushed towards the bathroom where someone I didn’t even recognise was taking a bath.
I grabbed some clothes and scraped them on, then got a taxi to Mum and Dad’s house.
I hated myself. Drink had shown me to be an aggressive swearing blob of self-destructive obnoxiousness. I would never drink again. I was an idiot from hell with a hangover that throbbed and shrunk me to the size and mental capacity of a gnat.
As I poured myself into Mum and Dad’s, I resolved to be more like them: fresh and smiley and soup-eating; or like Robbie, rosy-cheeked, uncomplicated and lovable.
Dad chauffeur-drove us back to the flat, which I hoped to God was empty apart from Chas.
And it was, empty, thank God, but there was no Chas.
Noticing the flashing answering machine, I hit the button, panicking.
‘K, I’m going to stay at the studio till the opening. We need some space.’
The love of my life needed space. No wonder. Why would he be there? Why wouldn’t he run a mile?
What was there, on the wooden floor in the hall, was an envelope filled with photographs printed on A4 paper. Photographs of me at the party …
Smoking a joint (when did I do that? I couldn’t remember) …
Kissing Danny …
Snorting speed …
Underneath the photographs was a letter, from Billy Mullen, saying:
Hi Krissie,
I’m really glad we’re going to be friends.
xx
32
The drive took forty-five minutes. Ballon was a posh little commuter town with beautiful large houses and more restaurants than shops. It was late afternoon, and the place was empty apart from ladies who coffeed. Amanda wanted to see the place her mother had been living when she gave her up for adoption, to see the house she might have grown up in. Wood Street was just behind the main drag, and number 24 was a semi-detached blond sandstone house with a picture-postcard garden. The storm doors were locked. The owners, whoever they were now, were out.
Amanda’s mother, Bridget, had lived here when she was seventeen.
Amanda looked at the house as a child would look at a wrapped present found hidden upstairs. Those curtains might have been her curtains, with their rope ties and aubergine pelmets. That window might have been her window, and she might have popped out from it and yelled to a friend on her way to school, ‘Wait for me, wait for me!’ That tree might have been her tree, to climb, hide in and smoke behind. A smell she’d never smelt might have wafted from that kitchen, of a meal she’d never had on a plate she’d never chipped. She scrutinised her parallel life – that present she had never shaken, let alone opened.
Eventually, the tears came. The car trembled with them. Alone in a silver Polo in a commuters’ street on a Friday morning, she cried.
Amanda must have started the car at some point, and she wasn’t sure how it turned itself off. Did she forget what to do next, and turn it off herself? She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that she couldn’t leave that place, so she didn’t. All day she sat in the car, crying on and off, turning the car on and off (or not, she couldn’t remember), and discovering new things about the house. It became comforting almost, watching an empty place and imagining.
So she was a little taken aback when a car slid into the driveway quite fast and stopped.
As did her breathing.
She watched intently as the door opened and a woman got out. A good-looking woman in her late sixties with several shopping bags and heels not made for walking.
Without thinking, Amanda got out of her car immediately, and raced over to the woman who was struggling to open the storm door and who was, without doubt, her tall, elegant grandmother.
‘Excuse me!’ she said to the woman, scaring her to death. She’d opened the storm door, and was now struggling with the inner one.
‘My goodness! You scared me to death!’
‘I’m not selling anything.’
‘Good,’ said the woman, ‘’cause I’m not buying anything.’
‘Can I help you with the bags?’
‘No.’
‘I’m sorry, this is … My name’s Amanda.’
‘Uh-huh?’
I must have had another name, back then, thought Amanda.
‘Yesterday I went to the Family Finding place in Glasgow, and I got this address.’
Amanda had practised the words she’d use on meeting her blood relatives. Statements like I am your daughter or You are my mother or You gave me away … and the like. She’d also imagined the possible reactions. A phone hanging up on her. A door being slammed in her face.
Her words had not been dramatic, but the reaction was one she rarely dared to dream of. The woman dropped her bags, put her hand over her mouth, and then grabbed Amanda by the shoulders and hugged her with all her might, saying, ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’
She was welcome. It was going to be okay.
Eventually, Amanda extricated herself, tears in her eyes, and said, ‘You’re Bridget’s mother?’
‘Yes, yes. Yes,’ said the woman, holding into Amanda’s arms, tears streaming down her face. ‘I’m your grandmother.’
33
Bridget had been eating a salami and humus sandwich which was rather dry and had thrown the crusts in the bin because the days of feeling childish and guilty about not liking crusts had long gone. She was forty-five, and looked even younger. Reddish-blonde straightened hair and with perhaps a touch of Botox, or else a very lucky sun-deprived complexion. She wore suits all the time – skirt suits with well-matched shirts and jackets – and wedges. She was beautiful. Large blue eyes with a hint of sadness, a full well-glossed mouth and a slim physique. Her patients and her colleagues fancied her – men and women.
Bridget was about to take another sip of her orange juice when the phone rang.
‘Oh my God, Bridge, she’s here!’ her mother screeched.
‘What?’ said Bridget, bemused.
‘Sit down sit down,’ came her mother’s booming, over-excited voice.
‘I am sitting down. You sit down. Are you okay?’
‘Bridge, you’re not going to believe this. Your first daughter just walked up to the front door and she’s sitting at the kitchen ta–’
Bridget left the phone dangling, her orange juice half drunk, a bite of crustless salami and humus sandwich on her desk, and ran out of her office, down the corridor, out into the hospital car park, fumbled with her keys, started the engine, and drove as fast as she could around the infuriating one-way system in Stirling. She sped along past the university, through a traffic jam in the high street of Ballon, left past Somerfield, and then right into Wood Street.
Parking, she took a quick look at herself in the mirror. Her hair, blonder than God had intended, was okay. Her face was sandwich-free, and there was nothing she could do to impress this person anyway, so why was she bothering to look at herself?
She’d imagined this moment for so long.
Every child in every street after it happened could have been her Jenny.
Once she’d been on a bus in London and had spotted a woman bumping her pram down some steps. She’d raced to the front of the bus and asked the driver to stop NOW because she had seen a flicker of red hair in that buggy, and the child was tiny, could have been five months three weeks old, just like Jenny. When the driver stopped she ran towards the buggy, one of her shoes falling behind her in the process, and grabbed the woman by the arm and stopped her. Looking into the pram she saw …
… a boy, much bigger than she’d thought, a year maybe. And the woman walked off with her child-full life without pressing charges.
Then there was the honeymoon in Prague where a five-year-old girl was getting her portrait painted on the bridge and wouldn’t stay still, and she could see in the child’s eyes som
ething of her own. A faint vulnerability, a twinkle of good fun. The girl was American.
At the Science Centre in Glasgow. Rachel was five. Her first would have been fifteen. Was that her? Skulking behind a large group of children from Notre Dame with very bad acne but a well-put-together uniform?
She’d never know. All she’d do was wait, and on the fifth of May, every year on the fifth of May, post a birthday card, with no stamp and no address, ‘To my wee ginger nut’. Just pop it in the post, watch it disappear, and then walk away.
She spent night after night, especially on the fifth of May, wondering where her firstborn was, what she was doing, what she was eating, who was loving her. Twenty-eight years waiting for the results of a biopsy, waiting for Higher exam results, waiting for a pregnancy to become a life, for a drink of water …
And she was checking her face for food, the waiting over, somehow. How had she managed this wait? What would life be like without it?
*
For Amanda, too, inside that house, the half-hour seemed longer than the years she’d wondered. Wondered how her mother could have given her away. And why. What had stopped her from keeping her?
She looked at the clock in the glamorous kitchen of her glamorous new grandmother and watched it move – that first five minutes, that second set of three minutes, the last two, then one, and suddenly a lifetime of wondering was answered with the creak of a door, some fast footsteps along solid oak flooring and an embrace that was inappropriate for strangers, but not for them.
Thank you, God, they both said inside during that first long embrace, thank you God … for bringing her back to me.
34
What would have happened if I’d thrown Billy’s letter in the bin? What if I’d ripped it into teeny pieces and scrunched it up in a ball and tossed it out the window? Would my problem have disappeared? This thing that could destroy everything – my job, my relationship, everything? Would it have gone away?
It was worth a try, I thought, so I ripped it, scrunched it, and tossed it first at the wall and then in the bin.
Robbie, meanwhile, raced into his room, where he emptied all the trains and tracks from a box onto the floor and started playing with them. He seemed desperate for his own things after a night away. He was getting cuter every day, his hair blonder and curlier, his mouth a huge expanse of teeth because he was always smiling. He’d had reason to smile. His mum and dad, until a few days ago, had been the happiest couple in the world. They’d done everything together – every meal was a sit-down affair, every walk to the shops was hand in hand with intermittent ‘1-2-3 Weeeeeee’s!’ Bedtime was family cuddle time, after family story time. And baths were funny, filled with Santa beards and Teletubby slides. His life was good.
Now, these photos, of me kissing Danny in the hallway, snorting speed in the bathroom, smoking a joint, could ruin it all. This could be the moment when – if I was writing a report for Robbie in years to come because he’d been joyriding or fighting at the football – I would say ‘Ah!’ (to myself). ‘Ah! So that’s why you’re the way you are. Your mother had an affair when you were three. She was a drug addict. And your stepfather, who loved you with all his heart, left, never to be seen again.’
*
I spent hours in an anxious haze, cleaning frantically and trying to entertain Robbie, who asked endless questions about his daddy’s whereabouts.
‘He’s painting,’ I said. ‘He’s very busy.’
After putting Robbie to bed, I rang Chas about a hundred times and left about a hundred messages. Talk to me, forgive me, I’m a nut job, shouldn’t have drunk, first session in two years, sorry, talk to me, ring me, ring me, answer, pick up, are you with her, are you fucking her, sorry, talk to me, shouldn’t have said that, had another drink, shouldn’t have, am a nut job, talk to me, forgive me, you’re with her, aren’t you …
No surprise, really, that Chas didn’t come home that weekend.
So I was left – after a bath with no Santa beards and bedtime with no family cuddle – with my photos and the torn-up letter that I retrieved from the bin and taped back together. I thought logically. What did it mean, this letter? What impact could it really have?
Would I lose my job? Would it matter if I did, considering the nosedive my life had taken since I started? Shite, I’d been more sympathetic to some prisoner than to my boyfriend. Perhaps it wouldn’t be the worse thing if I worked in Sainsbury’s, except we couldn’t pay the mortgage. We’d have to move back to Mum and Dad’s, get tenants in the flat again.
Actually, it was probably good that Chas hadn’t answered his phone. After all, he’d just finished parole. The last thing he needed was to get involved in any kind of criminal behaviour. I knew him well enough to know how he’d respond. He was the kind of guy who took things into his own hands. Liked to sort things himself. Didn’t trust the police, or the courts. If I told him, he’d do something stupid, and get himself locked up again.
Then there was the kiss with Danny. Chas hadn’t seen my pathetic attempt to get him jealous at the party. Add this to my abusive alcoholic behaviour, and he’d never come back to me.
But I couldn’t tell the police either. See paragraph above re job.
Which left me with one option.
On the back of the pithy note Billy had left was a phone number. The first few times I rang it there was loud dance music and a muffled sound of people talking or partying. I hung up when I heard this, had a small sip of wine and tried again.
‘Aye?’
It was Billy.
‘What do you want?’ I asked.
‘Now that’s not very nice, is it, hen? After all, you phoned me.’
‘What do you want?’ I asked again.
He hung up this time.
I was relieved that he had. Maybe he didn’t want anything. Maybe I was being silly, assuming he did, and the photos were just photos. After all, this guy, I thought to myself over another wee glass, was a friend of Chas’s. Chas liked him, thought he was nice, just a wee funny guy who’d unfortunately become hooked on heroin and did the odd theft to fund it. Not a nasty guy, Chas said, not one of the big wigs, just a user.
The comfort of this thought was interrupted by someone knocking on the door. I peeked through the peephole.
Billy.
I put the chain on and opened it slowly.
‘All you have to do is take this in to your friend,’ he said, holding something towards me.
‘Who?’
‘Jeremy.’
‘Bagshaw?’
‘That’s right, Jeremy Bagshaw. If you don’t, he’s dead meat.’
‘What is it?’ I asked, looking at two packets of cigarettes in his hand.
‘What do you think?’ snarled Billy.
‘I’m going to call the police.’
‘I wouldn’t if I were you. Jeremy’s getting fed up of that health centre. And you wouldn’t want anything to happen to Chas, now would you, not when he’s been such a good dad to little Robbie.’
And then he was gone. Before I had time to not take something in my daft outreached hand, he was gone, and I was left with two cigarette packets that were heavier than they should have been.
I sat on the window sill of our tenement flat and looked out over the cricket club. The cigarette packets were in front of me on the ledge, daring me to touch them, open them, smell them. I was shaking. I was chain smoking. I was drinking a second bottle of red wine.
35
On Monday morning, when I dropped Robbie at the nursery, the staff gave me the smirks they’d set aside for me since my repertoire of sex toys had appeared in the structured-play room. Robbie raced off to play with his pal Mark without even looking back, and I handed his lunch to Miss Watson.
Despite the possible repercussions for me, Chas and Jeremy, I’d decided during my sleepless night to head to the police station and tell them everything. I had Billy’s cigarette packets in the car, and was absolutely sure it was the right thing to do. Never play alo
ng, never do what they say, I told myself over and over. It’s daft, not worth it, the stuff of very stupid people.
But just as I was opening the door of the nursery to leave, Miss Watson said: ‘We’ll need your signature if you want Robbie’s uncle to collect him this afternoon.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Billy Mullen. He rang to say he was going to collect Robbie.’
I raced to grab a highly puzzled and alarmed Robbie, who protested loudly.
‘He won’t be staying … and Billy Mullen is not Robbie’s uncle. Don’t let him in, whatever you do.’
I dropped Robbie off at Mum and Dad’s.
‘Can you look after him till I find another nursery?’ I asked. ‘It’s not working out there.’
‘Of course,’ Mum said. ‘What happened? Is Robbie all right?’
‘He’s fine. It’s just not the right place. Can I pick him up after my work? Chas is flat out.’
I sat outside their house in my car. I looked around the street. There was an old man walking a dog, two youths skiving off school, a cat.
I dialled Billy’s number carefully. I had to try. Maybe if he heard my voice he would find it in his heart to be a good person and not an evil one from hell.
‘Please. Leave him alone. Leave us alone. Please.’
He paused before replying, and I felt a brief glimmer of hope, but then he said, ‘Listen, it’s just once, I’ve been promised that. Just the once. All you have to do is slip it to him. Put it in between some files or something. Lawyers get away with it all the time. Then, I promise you, this will all go away.’
‘If I don’t … If I go to the police …’ I ventured.
‘I can see you, Krissie. You shouldn’t smoke.’
I looked around me. Shit, where was he?
‘… Robbie looks so cute in red.’
I peered in Mum and Dad’s window. Dad had Robbie in his arms and was dancing to something. Robbie had his favourite hand-knitted red jumper on.
My Last Confession Page 12
