‘And talking, too.’
‘Oh.’ (Dashed)
‘Do you want to stay here tonight?’
‘No, I need to go home. I need to put this lovely little boy to bed with a story and a cuddle and then I need to not have a glass of wine.’
I took a Nicorette inhaler out of my pocket – Danny had given it to me that morning as part of my action plan – and sucked hard on it.
‘Looks like a tampon,’ Mum said.
‘I know.’
*
The solicitor still hadn’t phoned when I got back to work after lunch. He was in court. I left him a message with my home number, tore up Jeremy’s report, sent another one to court that I’d somehow managed to complete in forty minutes, and left to get money out of my dwindling bank account and buy a present for Jeremy and Amanda – a silver quaich.
When I nipped home to wrap the present, I noticed that Chas had been there. He’d left the stepladder in the wrong place, and a note on the kitchen table – ‘Can you please call me?’
I dialled his number immediately, my heart racing. But it rang out, so I left a message. Fuck.
I sniffed out other hints of Chas. His favourite jeans and T-shirt gone, a photo of Robbie moved slightly to the left, toothbrush and shaving cream gone, the kitchen window left open. He’d had a glass of water and left it in the sink, looked through the mail and taken a bank statement and a letter from the art gallery. Then he’d written the note, closed both sets of doors and left.
Another thing I noticed on the way out was the wedding dress I’d bought.
It was hanging on the back of the bedroom door. I touched the bodice, the Nutella stain still alive and well, and found myself kissing my hand and then it, that soft white thing that was the future I’d probably lost.
The phone rang. It was the solicitor. Jeremy was being released. He was waiting for me to come and get him.
*
‘Good thing you did Jeremy’s nails,’ I said to Amanda, after picking her up en route to the prison.
‘I looked for that manicure set for hours,’ she replied. ‘Glad you stole it, though.’
I thought of the things Chas and I did together. Chas grew fly-legs from his nose, and I would gather them between my two fingers, yank and then count the number of black nose hairs on my fingertip. We even did this as a party trick to freak people out. (The best was fifteen.)
Then there was the tiny gap between my two front teeth, that I could squirt water out of by pressing my tongue hard against it. I would often catch Chas’s eyeball unaware from impressive distances. Oh, and there was the time he used his razor to make me Brazilian and all the times he used mine to make his face smooth. When I thought about it, Chas’s DNA was everywhere on me still, and mine on him, but that was all we had of each other, just flakes of dead cells.
Was it another life? Would I be able to return to the realm of the loved, take a cup of coffee in bed, be parents together with Chas, cook meals in on Friday nights and read stories together beside a chubby smiley little curly-haired boy?
47
Amanda was about to re-enter her previous life, the one where she was married to a successful property developer and living in a lovely flat in Islington and showing off to the friends she’d left in Glasgow. She’d missed him, but missing him had been overshadowed by the events following the wedding party in Glasgow.
Finding Bridget.
Feeling things she hadn’t known know how to express.
Expressing them in a way that made her feel confused and guilty.
And Bridget’s brutal death, a constant nightmare, in her unconsciousness and consciousness.
Then Jeremy’s arrest. The man she loved. How could anyone think he could do such a thing?
As Krissie’s car neared Sandhill prison, Amanda’s heart beat fast with excitement and nerves. Would Jeremy have changed after his experiences in prison? Would he blame her? Would he cope with her grief? With the fact that she sometimes cried all day, and sometimes all night, and hardly slept or ate?
Would Jeremy still love her? Would he love her if he knew that jumping naked onto beds was the last thing she felt like doing?
She was nervous, but she believed he would. He was her Jeremy. The man she had fallen in love with that night in the Earls Court hostel, who had forgiven her that day in the police cell when she told him about what happened with Bridget, who was a poor vulnerable soul who needed the love he’d been denied from the age of four.
She spent all day preparing for him. Hair and skin and clothes and perfume. She made the bedroom welcoming and comfortable, bought chocolate she knew he liked, and prayed. Dear God, please let this be the end of it. Please let us be as happy as we can, and please let Bridget be in heaven. Amen.
The horn beeped. It was the weirdo social worker who seemed to have nothing better to do than ferry her around and talk non-stop about Jeremy. Why the fuck were taxpayers paying for people to have manicures and drive people around like that? It was scandalous, and something worth taking to her local MP once she got a lift to the prison because she didn’t have a car.
Oh God, she was nervous. In an hour she would hold him, take him home. They would be together. She would ask him to move to Scotland and he would say yes, and they would begin a family. A boy and a girl. Or two girls and a boy, three … Charlie, Rachel and Anna. She was smiling, despite the nerves, as she got into Krissie’s car to find a present on the passenger seat, and her smile subsided as she wondered what the taxpayers would say if they knew they’d just paid for a useless wedding gift.
48
Overjoyed at the news of his release, Jeremy walked towards the confessional again. Father Moscardini had become a friend, or at least a trustworthy confidant, and he liked him. He wasn’t patronising or mean, didn’t call him a ‘body’ or call lunch ‘feeding time’. He treated him like a human being.
The last time Jeremy had seen the priest was a week ago at lunchtime. It had been Friday, which meant the ‘lucky bucket’. This extra menu item excited the men in C hall beyond belief, that they could have more food than the usual hospital portions – but a bucket of the week’s leftovers – baked beans and fish fingers and hamburgers and chips and rice and curry, all mixed to warm mush in a prison cauldron – did not excite Jeremy at all. In fact it made him feel sick. Jeremy took a roll instead, and the priest smiled at him with understanding.
‘How are you feeling?’ asked Father Moscardini.
‘Good,’ Jeremy had lied, and the priest followed him to his cell.
He’d had the cell to himself since his last co-pilot moved onwards and upwards to the convicted hall, and he’d been feeling scared. If he got out, how would he cope? What would happen next? Father Moscardini talked to him for hours, first about music and sport, then travelling and then love.
‘From what you’ve said over the past few weeks,’ said the priest, ‘you seem like a romantic. You love with every piece of you, give with every piece of you, and there is nothing wrong with that. You will get over this terrible time, but first you must get over what happened to you when you were a tiny boy. Come to confession again. Don’t be scared off this time.’
‘It does scare me,’ Jeremy said. ‘I’ll think about it.’
*
That was a week ago. He was free now, about to face life head-on, and he knew he couldn’t leave those prison walls without seeing Father Moscardini once more.
49
I want to get one thing straight. I never led Jeremy on.
After Amanda and I went to see him at Sandhill that afternoon, I went over each of my interviews in great detail and I’m absolutely sure I never led him on.
The first time I saw him, when I arrived fresh with my report request, he’d told me about London, about him and Amanda meeting in the bar, moving in together, then deciding to get married. He’d told me about Bella. I’d told him about Chas, for rapport. (Shit, over-share – mental note not to disclose personal information to clients again.)
But if anything, I told myself later that evening, this information would have made it clear I was out of bounds.
The second interview, when he’d just been beaten. It had been the ‘You-can-tell-me’ interview. Nothing untoward.
The third, when he told me he was in danger, that we were both in danger.
Then in the suicide cell, after he’d tried to hang himself, I’d watched, mainly, as he and Amanda hugged in the corner.
The next time I saw him, I told him about the drugs and Billy, and how my little boy was in danger.
The sixth and last was when I told him Chas had left me.
Shite, I’d seen the guy six times for a report that required one half-hour interview. And I’d over-shared to buggery, something I’d never do again. Still, I had never ever led Jeremy to believe I wanted to be with him romantically, or that I was his best girl.
‘My best girl!’ he’d said after I walked into the Sandhill’s reception area.
I’d left Amanda in the foyer and asked Bob, the prison social worker, to leave his crossword for a bit and take me through to the reception area, where Jeremy was waiting to be escorted into freedom.
The reception area was a Portakabin filled with cubicles like those around old swimming pools, where men changed into either freedom or the opposite. Ten men were waiting with uncontainable grins, their belongings in hand, good intentions in head – though many of these good intentions would dissolve at the off-licence in Lee Street.
Jeremy didn’t have the huge optimistic grin of his colleagues. He was standing in casual clothes, looking rather gorgeous actually, and the bruises and cuts on his face had died down.
He touched my arm and smiled. ‘Thank you, Krissie. You’ve saved me.’
He looked different, very different. Suddenly taller, straighter, with equal eyes.
‘I’ve been to confession,’ he said.
‘Excellent!’ I said, and hugged him. After all, he was no longer a criminal. No longer my client.
‘Amanda’s waiting in the foyer. But before I go get her, tell me what I should do with the drugs, Jeremy. I don’t want to get you into trouble.’
He ignored my question. ‘I don’t want to see her.’
I thought he’d be desperate, that he’d run to her and I’d watch the product of my hard work twirling around and kissing through the smiles.
‘But why? She’s so excited,’ I said, my surprise momentarily drowning out the drugs in my kitchen.
He leaned in towards me. ‘She slept with her mother.’
‘I know that. But it wasn’t exactly …’
‘I’ve had so much time to think, and I wanted to forgive her, but I can’t.’
‘Jeremy, you have to talk to her and sort things out. It’s been a terrible time, but …’
‘I just feel so mixed up,’ he interrupted. ‘But you’re right, I have to talk to her. Will you do me a favour?’ he asked
‘Of course.’
‘Sit with me, while I talk to Amanda? It could be difficult. We might need you.’
*
A front row seat to tragedies in progress. That’s my job, to sit with salty popcorn and watch – this time Jeremy breaking Amanda’s heart in a small room in the special-visits area of Sandhill.
There was silence for a moment as she hugged him, but then he pulled back his face, suddenly grave.
‘I can’t be with you Amanda.’
Amanda’s face compartmentalised into sections of brokenness.
‘So much has happened. And I probably could have coped, if not for what you did, with Bridget I mean. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get through it. We were on honeymoon! But that’s not the main thing, in the end.’
Amanda looked shell-shocked. ‘What is the main thing?’ she asked.
‘The main thing is that I’ve fallen in love with someone else.’
‘What?’
I think we both asked this question at the same time, wondering who on earth he could have fallen for in prison – Chuggy from C hall? Father Moscardini in chaplaincy?
As the silence dragged on, both sets of eyes turned to me, and I realised what he was going to say as he said it.
‘Krissie. I’m in love with you, Krissie.’
*
Of course I told him it was ridiculous. ‘Jeremy! What are you talking about?’ I said.
He went bright red.
‘I’m sorry if I’ve given the wrong impression!’
Amanda ran out of the room, and I wasn’t sure what to do next.
‘Jeremy, you’re a good man, and I can understand you feel some kind of … gratitude, but …’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I feel like an idiot.’
‘It’s all right. But it’s goodbye now, Jeremy. I’m a social worker. I’ve crossed the line and I’ve become over-involved. In the process I’ve screwed my life up. But you know what, I’m going to fix things. I’m going to get Chas back. He’s the only one for me, always has been. I did your report, that’s all.’ I shook his hand. ‘Goodbye, Jeremy. I need to go.’
‘Of course. My God, I’m such an idiot. Goodbye, Krissie. I’m sorry.’
*
I raced out to get Amanda, but she had gone. Her taxi was screeching down the driveway as I exited the revolving doors.
As the doors slowed behind me, whirling people in and out of the big hoose, I took a huge breath. Suddenly, rays of light pierced through the sky as if to say: ‘It’s over now, Krissie. You’re out of the water. You can take a breath. Go!’
50
Amanda somehow found her way home. She fell into the hall and her adoptivemother caught her. ‘Oh, my darling,’ she said, holding her tight on the couch as her dad raced in from the garden. ‘It’s okay, my love. It’s okay. We’re here. We’re here.’
He’d gone. Just as Bridget had.
And what was left?
Her mother, her beautiful mother, holding her tight and telling her she’d be all right.
Her father, her kind-hearted father, doing the same.
She would stay in that house, on that sofa, for a long time. She would be fed and held and watched for a long long time, and after a while, the sick feeling in her tummy would fade and she would start to feel good, maybe even one day wonderful. And maybe, for the first time since that dinner at the age of six, when her folks decided she was old enough to know where she came from, she would realise that she’d always known where she came from, that there was nothing else to wonder, nothing else to find and nowhere else to go.
But once a year, on the anniversary of Bridget’s death, she would go shopping. She would take her time, choosing the most beautiful card she could find. She would tremble as she sat in the restaurant in Bridge of Allan where she and Bridget had shared three bottles of wine together.
From your wee ginger nut, she would write, before sealing it with tears, adding no address and popping it in the post.
51
As I drove home from Sandhill I became more and more determined not to let a wire-ball girl ruin my life with Chas. So maybe they’d been shopping together, maybe they’d kissed, but Chas and I were meant for each other. No amount of shopping and kissing would destroy us.
He’d been working towards the biggest event in his career. His opening. He’d been painting for years, and had finally been given the chance, and I had not only been a bastard but had also completely forgotten that the opening was tonight.
Everything had sun shining on it. Robbie’s smile when I went to pick him up, Mum and Dad’s garden, the Clyde as I drove home with my mission to get Chas back, the flat with those gorgeous hardwood floors and my wardrobe filled with flattering outfits.
I bathed Robbie, dressed him in his Hunting Donald kilt and chose an outfit. I remembered I had one thing to clear out of my life before heading to the gallery to get my old one back. No more hiding things away, ignoring things in the hope that time and silence would fix them. I would tell this Madeleine to get the fuck away from my man. I was so
excited. I would beg, apologise, make promises, not talk too much, kiss him, hug him, touch him, not drink, look at the paintings I had never been allowed to look at.
But first.
I tripped over the small stepladder that had been left in the middle of the kitchen and swore at it. Why had Chas moved it that morning? I opened it out and stood on it. I reached up above the pelmet at the top to the dusty ceiling of the wall unit, and felt the plastic box where I had hidden two cigarette packets filled with class-A drugs a few days earlier, packets that I would take to the police before going to the opening. I pulled the box down with me and looked into it.
There was nothing there.
52
Chas had been to the flat earlier that day. He’d had enough of the silliness. Days of not talking to his soul-mate, and for what? Some daft attempt to get him jealous? The photo was laughable – Danny uncomfortable and trying to get away, Krissie looking out of the side of her eyes to see if Chas was looking. He hadn’t worried about that for a moment. But her volatile behaviour had been driving him bonkers. And he had an exhibition to get ready for. He couldn’t afford to fuck it up.
A few days out, he’d decided, would be best for both of them. Because despite his mostly un-macho attributes, Chas felt the desperate need to provide for his new family. He’d travelled and wasted time for too long. He’d also decided he wanted to get married. Soon as he saw her in that over-the-top dress that was still hanging in the bedroom, waiting, he knew. She looked glorious, a white fluffy bride, and he would marry her.
He would, he decided, propose to her at the party. He daydreamed about having children with her. A house with a garden, without four flights of steps and nosy noisy neighbours. He wanted to take his family to Rome for the weekend, or spend the summer somewhere with sun and language. He wanted to be settled. Boring, settled family life was what he wanted, and that meant he had to make money. And if he couldn’t make money painting, he was going to need to find another way.
My Last Confession Page 17
