My Last Confession Read online

  Helen FitzGerald

  My Last Confession

  Thanks to my editor Helen Francis,

  to my agent Adrian Weston,

  and to my two forever friends who are even better

  than full-bodied Australian red

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  My Last Confession

  1

  Tips for parole officers:

  1 Don’t smuggle heroin into prison.

  2 Don’t drink vodka to relieve stress.

  3 Don’t French-kiss a colleague to get your boyfriend jealous.

  4 Don’t snort speed.

  5 Don’t spend more time with murderers than with your son.

  6 Don’t invite crack-head clients to your party.

  Maybe if they’d had some kind of induction then my wedding day would have been the most wonderful day of my life. I would have beamed in my mermaid sheath with floral-embroidered bust. Little Robbie would have walked in front of me in his Hunting Donald kilt, mini-sporran, maxi-smile, his hair lacquered, Fifties-style, his battery-operated diesel engine whirring in his shirt pocket. He might have thrown rose petals on our friends and families and said ‘shite’ very loudly as I had accidentally taught him to do. And Chas would have lifted the veil from my face and kissed me on the lips, making me the happiest bride in the history of brides.

  I should have watched dewy-eyed as Chas made a toast to us and a speech. Instead, someone pinned me down and I clawed at the dark like Clarice Starling.

  I should have waltzed with Chas. Instead, I had to watch his life slipping away while I screamed for someone to call an ambulance, please … please …

  I should have sipped champagne. Instead I sobbed with terror.

  It was all my fault. Because in my first month in the job I was stupid enough to do all those things a parole officer should never do.

  *

  In the two years before I became a parole officer I’d made a lot of changes in my life. I’d given up work to concentrate on bringing up my baby, Robbie. I’d watched him learn how to crawl then walk then talk then body-slam my boyfriend Chas till the two of them were sore with laughter. Most of all, I had dived headfirst into the realm of the loved.

  I let myself drink a cup of coffee in bed each morning while Chas went back to sleep beside me. I enjoyed the time we spent holding the buggy handles together as we mooched around not-very-good shops. I took turns with Chas in pushing the swing at the park, making funny shapes with bubbles in the bath, reading stories, lying beside Robbie till he fell asleep.

  And Chas and I touched. In fact we never stopped touching. I just couldn’t get enough of this person I’d held at a distance for so many years.

  To start with, the three of us lived off the goodwill of my parents. In my hour of need one sunny September they emptied the essentials from my flat into their house and fluffed themselves up around me for as long as I needed. They encouraged routine, good food, exercise and fresh air. They discouraged drinking, impulsiveness, self-hate and blame. My routine became the same as Robbie’s. After a good night’s sleep, I ate the spoonfuls of sustenance that Mum and Dad set before me. Mid-morning, I took slow, calm walks around the park. I slurped home-made soup for lunch, snoozed in the afternoon, went for a second stroll in the evening, ate a balanced dinner, had a bath some time later and then went to bed. It bored me stupid to start with. No alcohol, no partying, no friends, colleagues, worries and buzzes. Just the calming presence of Chas and my parents. But before long I began to redefine what I previously called boredom as relaxation and good health and realised that these things were gradually leading me towards happiness.

  Chas started off by visiting, then staying over occasionally. He’d been released from prison a couple of years back, after assaulting a paedophile, who just happened to be the stepfather of my closest childhood friend, Sarah. For years this man had set about ruining the lives of children he had unsupervised access to. He’d almost ruined mine, and had succeeded spectacularly with Sarah. It was terrible in my eyes that Chas had been punished so severely.

  After his release, Chas was paroled to his family home in Edinburgh. His parents were posh serious types who wanted Chas to turn his life around, get a sensible job and a different girlfriend. Ever the rebel, he continued to paint and commuted to my house as often as he could.

  When Chas declared that he was no longer on parole and could therefore live wherever he wanted, I asked him to move in. He kissed his worried parents goodbye and arrived at the door with two large suitcases. Each morning after that, Chas would head off to the space he’d rented at the sculpture studios in Hillfoot and spend his day painting from the sketches he’d made all over the world. He’d travelled for years after we shared a flat at Uni, sketching his way through latitudes, but after he came back, and we got together, he hid them from me. It was a surprise, he said. He’d show me if he ever had an exhibition.

  It took time, but I was gradually coming to terms with the death of my best friend, Sarah. Her name always followed the word ‘poor’ in my mind. Poor Sarah had a terrible childhood. Poor Sarah couldn’t get pregnant. Poor Sarah was betrayed by her husband, Kyle, and her best friend – me.

  Poor Sarah killed herself.

  After months of waking to a sick feeling in my tummy, with poor Sarah’s face hovering over my bed, I began to feel better. I felt I had everything a girl could possibly hope for:

  A beautiful healthy three-year-old son who made up songs to the tune of the Teletubbies:

  Mum and Daddy

  Mum and Daddy

  Eat fried rice

  Mum and Daddy

  Mum and Daddy

  Are ve … ry nice!

  (And I saw them kissing … YUK!)

  A loving partner who always had the time and energy to hold and comfort me; who knew how to change my negative thoughts to positive ones, my bad moods to good; who always had the right answer when I asked him, sometimes in the middle of the night, if everything was going to be okay. �
�Yes, baby girl,’ he would reply. ‘Everything is perfect, because I love you more than anything in the world. I even love you more than pizza.’

  (Chas really loved pizza.)

  I had two wonderful, generous parents who had put weekend getaways on hold and given over two of their precious bedrooms to help get me back on track.

  And I had an immensely good haircut. After wearing it long and wavy for years, and mostly shoving it back in a ponytail to get it out of the way, one day when a wonderful feeling overtook the sickly one in my tummy, I decided it was time for layers. I called Jenny, hairdresser to the stars and me, and she layered it with glee till I looked glowingly thirty-five, and for days afterwards everyone stopped me to say how terrific I looked.

  The haircut signalled the end of a phase in my life and the beginning of another. It was time to move back into my own flat, time to get a job. I was ready to get back out there, into the real world.

  I think Mum and Dad were ready too. Mum missed her creative room, which had been taken over by wooden train tracks and a cot-bed, and Dad missed the spare bedroom Chas and I slept in, which he had used to decamp to when Mum got fidgety feet in the middle of the night.

  I gave my tenants a month’s notice and we started packing up our gear and organising to get stuff out of storage.

  With Chas no longer on parole, I decided to apply for a position in criminal justice. The job was very different from the child protection work I’d done for so long and that had helped burn me to a cinder two years earlier – safer, somehow, because I would be following the orders of the court. I wouldn’t be taking people’s children away from them or accusing them of things. No, I would be part of the criminal justice system and therefore secure in the knowledge that my clients would not blame me, harm me or hate my guts. Also, a friend of mine had worked with offenders and said it was way more family-friendly than child protection. And I have to admit that the idea of talking to bad boys all day seemed as exciting as when I was a teenager.

  One night after Robbie went to sleep, I filled out an application form for ‘Criminal Justice Social Worker’. I wrote a beautiful covering letter about being a team player, understanding the balance between care and control, having outstanding time-management skills and all the other crap they wanted to hear.

  I posted it the next day.

  2

  When I got dressed on the morning of the interview, guilt, self-hate and nerves competed for the space in my head where my brain used to be. Was my decision to go back to work the right one? Or was Zach’s mum’s choice a better one? Playgroup treasurer? Taxi service for promising young swimmer, gymnast, baby-yoga-ist, sing-alonger and enjoy-a-baller? Maker of time-tabled, organic, E-numberless and aggressively supervised meals? Mother of children who knew their place, their manners, their alphabets and their keyboards? Campaigner against the word ‘just’ as a prefix for housewife?

  Or was Martha’s mum right? Casual dope smoker who laughed with her little one, enjoyed every moment she spent with her, even if she sometimes forgot to make dinner as such. Then again, as Martha’s mum reasoned, if the wee one was really hungry then she’d ask for food, wouldn’t she?

  Or was it me? Rummaging through my clothes saying fuck and shite a lot, sculling a tepid Lavazza, getting ready to leave Robbie behind in his warm Bob-the-Builder PJs?

  Of all three mums, as I got dressed for my interview that morning, I knew I was the least right.

  Expletives done for the moment, I dragged an old social work uniform out of my cupboard – not too ‘I’m-superior-to-you’ formal, not too ‘I-can-be-walked-all-over’ casual – and kissed my boys goodbye.

  If I got the job, Chas planned to take the Robster to the studio with him. ‘Don’t be so traditional, K!’ he said. ‘You’re so het up. He’ll be fine!’ Robbie would be given a paint brush and some old canvases and it would be fun, Chas insisted – two boys with paint, hanging out – what could possibly go wrong?

  (Ha! I was looking forward to Chas clambering up that learning curve.)

  *

  Chas and Robbie waved from the front door of Mum and Dad’s, both beaming at me as I walked along the street and turned the corner. As I disappeared, I heard in the distance that Robbie’s giggling had turned to crying, and it was like when I was breastfeeding and milk would spurt from my breasts when Robbie cried, which was horrifying, but also wonderful, how the connection between us was so physical. We were joined then, and still were because although milk wasn’t spurting from my tits (thank goodness, as I had a lovely black shirt on) his cry went to a place in me that no other cry ever could.

  I ran back to him, but by the time I got there Chas had distracted him by tickling him under the chin with a Chinese lantern from the neighbour’s garden. Looking up at me from his laughing, it was clear he was wondering why the hell I was back so soon. So I tickled him too, and kissed Chas on his beautiful perfect painter’s hands, the hands I’d fallen in love with two years earlier 0n the backseat of a Ford. Then I turned and ran all the way to my car with a different kind of pain, the kind that’s more like an ache because at the end of the day, even as a mother, you’re not indispensable.

  *

  It pissed with rain as I walked past two high-rise towers plonked in the middle of a wasteland. Wind channelled its way between them, the towers swaying. I looked up and wondered about who was swaying up there, twenty-two storeys high, their stained tea mugs sliding left then right on their kitchen tables. It made me dizzy, so I looked down and concentrated on walking, which wasn’t easy because the wind was pushing me as if to say, Get out of here, out of here.

  The interview was at my prospective workplace, which was in an area of deprivation. If only I’d heeded the warning – i.e. an area that is the puddle of the world; an area with boarded-up windows and unplayed-in playgrounds; an area with more wind than other areas just yards away, more wind and no street names, no house numbers and no pedestrian crossings; an area not to be entered lightly, but with a knife and a willingness to use it. People walked on the road, refusing to defer to the moneyed authority of cars. Groups of young men stood on corners dealing, or else eating Greggs steak bites.

  I walked past them, wondering if they would notice that an outsider was walking by. Someone from a different place, only two miles away, but a place with house numbers, Lavazza and hope.

  *

  The interview went badly. Suddenly I wanted to be home with Robbie more than anything in the world, especially considering the dire state of the office and surrounds. Still, I tried my best to feign enthusiasm as I sat on my rickety chair in the middle of a large ugly room filled with shite and three interviewers.

  In the social work course I did there’d been many important things to learn – risk assessment, anti-discrimination, crisis intervention and so on. But one of the most important lessons, the thing that everyone who did the course learned by heart and kept with them for life, was to dress so appallingly that the users at the meth clinic felt chic in comparison.

  These three had pushed the lesson a bit too far, however. Take the style and elegance of committed Christians, quadruple it, and you have the three social workers who interviewed me that day. Commendable, determined ugliness, taken to the limit, from tip to toe, in greasy hair, bad teeth, and clothing too small or too large but worth it for the price.

  As they sat opposite me, bombarding me with questions, I remembered why I’d felt so good when I left social work. Social workers were intensely serious and quite often they had bad breath.

  I had done the wrong course, was going for the wrong job, I thought to myself as I licked the back of my hand and smelt it.

  (Oh … coffee tongue. Maybe not.)

  The questions were the same as for my first interview ten years earlier, and I answered them half-heartedly, rambling on about the things I remembered from the relevant sections of my diploma. I made an attempt at humour: ‘My weaknesses?’ I repeated. ‘Well, there’s my perfectionism, which can be a bit dif
ficult, and I’m a workaholic, can’t get enough of work, you know … which can also be a bit hard. And then there’s my cocaine habit …’

  My boss-to-be, an expressionless forty-something with a voice so soft and therapeutic that I wanted to strangle her, did not flinch. The two men bookending her bit their lips, bless them.

  I left the grey building thanking the Lord that I’d fucked it up so badly. Who’d work in a place like that? Where would you go for lunch?

  But when I got home they’d already phoned with the good news. I was now a criminal justice social worker or, in sexier terms, a probation officer, parole officer, shit-kicking, hard-talking, bad-boy-breaching administrator of the law. If it’d been America, I’d have had a gun and a uniform – that’s how goddam sexy my new job was.

  The next day, Chas bought me a police uniform and a toy gun, and he was mightily pleased, if a little sore, at how quickly and naturally my shit-kicking-bad-boy-breaching attitude had taken hold.

  3

  Mum and Dad were happy for us. We were starting a new life together, like they had, thirty-seven years earlier. A couple of nights before we moved out, we found ourselves all sitting around looking at their wedding photos. They got married in Bali, long before it was fashionable and the likes of Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall tied the knot – or not – there. Afterwards, they partied with four friends till the wee hours before falling asleep on the beach.

  ‘We were so in love!’ Mum said, smiling, because they still were, after thirty-seven years together. They still sought each other out at parties ahead of anyone else, still had stuff to say over formal restaurant tables.

  ‘Chas is a lucky boy,’ Mum told me, and we hugged.

  ‘I don’t deserve him,’ I said. At this she pushed my fringe back, oddly fond of my forehead and eyebrows, and told me that I had no self-awareness, and that everyone was always inordinately pleased to see me. She told me that, at Christmas time, aunts and uncles and cousins would sit at the table not saying much until I arrived and then conversation would suddenly start. I brought laughter to people, she continued. Did I not realise that Chas was flat as a pancake without me? Withdrawn and sad.