My Last Confession Read online

  As I read about the crime, I realised how terrible and how wrong I’d been to forget about the victim, to push her to one side as if she wasn’t relevant. No matter what my job was, this was unforgivable. I’d become so involved with Jeremy Bagshaw that I hadn’t even thought about poor Bridget McGivern.

  Bridget McGivern, who’d been married. Who’d left behind an eighteen-year-old daughter. Who’d been a successful dermatologist …

  … and who’d died just two weeks after meeting her long-lost daughter for the first time.

  25

  Amanda Kelly met Bridget McGivern for the first time in a large dining kitchen in Ballon, Stirlingshire.

  Well, that wasn’t really the first time. The first time they met was twenty-eight years earlier, in a little white hospital room in London with a silver bed and a thin mattress and a metal bench on which there were various contraptions to do with childbirth.

  Before Bridget met her untimely death, she’d dreamt about this room often. There’d been paint peeling from one of the walls and a pair of shoes in the corner with blood splattered all over them. There’d been a cheap wee radio beside the metal bench with music so gentle and so soft she’d wanted to hurl it out the window.

  There’d also been three people with her: a thin midwife with smoker’s skin and breasts a smidgeon higher than is humanly possible; a trainee midwife of twenty or so who seemed more concerned with the perky-bosomed smoker than the prospect of being in charge of the placenta. And then there’d been Bridget’s mum, Margaret, who wasn’t at all happy that her genius girl was lying back with her fine legs spread wide apart, making no noise. Her daughter, only seventeen, who’d skipped two grades she was so bright and had already started medicine.

  Margaret Garden, who was forty at the time, had big plans for her daughter, none of which involved the early production of children. She’d been planning a wonderful graduation party for Bridget, had looked forward to showing her off in the old neighbourhood where none of her friends’ children had achieved anything beyond nursing school or, in one case, three-quarters of a wishy-washy arts degree. Margaret had no intention of letting all her plans go to pot because Bridget had had sex with some boy called Hamish in Stirling, who hadn’t even finished school yet.

  If only she’d kept Bridget at home, she berated herself, not sent her off to halls in London, then she’d have realised in time. God, her friends would gloat if they knew about this baby, especially the ones who’d been aghast at her allowing Bridget to live on campus so far away. ‘Bridget’s such a sensible girl,’ she’d told them back then. And it was true she’d never had any trouble with Bridget; she wasn’t like other teenagers who smoked Marlboro Lights down at the bus stop and spent their time speaking to boys or sometimes kissing boys on the lips in the lane behind Croftwood High School.

  If only Bridget had taken her advice about sex: don’t use condoms, don’t use the pill, don’t use anything, just don’t do it. It’s unhealthy, it’s overrated and it will hold you back.

  If only she’d known sooner, this would never have happened. But Bridget hadn’t come home for Christmas, had made excuses at Easter, and by the time Margaret travelled to London to surprise her beloved daughter with two day-passes to the Haymill Baths she was almost in labour.

  ‘Jesus!’ Margaret screamed at her daughter as she burst into the grotty shared student living room. ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!’

  After that she’d fanned herself and sat on the edge of a chair saying Jesus a lot more.

  The next day she sprang into action, and before Bridget knew what was happening she’d signed away her baby.

  *

  Bridget remembered the face of her mother in that white room – overseeing the procedure, there to the end, ensuring that the post-birth cuddle wasn’t long enough to allow indecision.

  She remembered the feeling of relief when the baby plopped into the midwife’s arms, and the feeling of need when the nurse soothed her crying baby – a little girl who howled so loudly it scared Bridget.

  Bridget had held her, and the baby’s howl had turned to a kind of whimper. Like a sexual noise, almost. Ecstasy. Relief. Release.

  The baby’s mouth distorted sideways, reaching for something, and suddenly Bridget understood she needed to lift her T-shirt and make herself available for the reaching. The little mouth sought her nipple and the distorted lips honed in, eyes closed, knowing somehow exactly where to go. Bridget was overcome with joy, melted by it. She needed to touch this person, hold her, stroke her arms and legs and tummy and kiss her forehead and her ears and her little perfect hands and look endlessly into those eyes, those beautiful eyes.

  ‘That’s it!’ said her mother, and the baby was taken away, its high-pitched cries reverberating down the corridor.

  And Bridget was left on the white bed with her T-shirt up, and her right breast exposed, and her legs open. ‘How Deep is your Love’ dripped from the radio while a trembling student nurse pulled what looked like a large lump of liver from between her legs before slapping it onto the metal bench under the window.

  So that was really the first time they met, Bridget and Amanda. And while it was heart-wrenching and tragic and disturbing and unforgettable, it was nothing compared to the second time.

  26

  I wonder, looking back, if I could have walked away at that point. Not seen Amanda again. Not asked questions about her biological mother, the late Bridget McGivern. Not visited Jeremy.

  Would I have walked away if Billy Mullen hadn’t turned up on my doorstep just before the trial? Billy Mullen who, I later discovered, had been Jeremy’s cell-mate. Billy Mullen, who had also worked with Chas in Sandhill Prison’s cook room years earlier.

  Just twenty-five and a weedy wee gobshite, Billy wore bad-taste designer clothes that cemented his status as a Glasgow ned. Even more so with the scars, one on his right cheek as per the Sandhill uniform, and one on his upper right thigh, which he took every opportunity to show people, even though it involved the removal of his jeans and even though it was still infected from where the ‘cunt got me with a machete’.

  Billy Mullen knocked on my door at 8 p.m. one evening just after I’d gotten home from a day spent visiting several new probation clients, starting several social enquiry reports, and adding information to Jeremy’s report, giving an account of his attempted suicide and noting that he still had the loving support of his wife. After looking up Jeremy’s alleged victim on the internet, I had printed and signed the pre-trial report, put it in an envelope and laid it on my desk. Throughout the day I found myself tapping it with my fingers, knowing I should put it in the post, also knowing I was unable to.

  ‘Is the big fella in?’ asked Billy when I answered the door.

  ‘Sorry?’ I asked.

  ‘The big fella?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Are you Krissie?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’ I said.

  The asking suddenly switched off and the charm switched on. Glasgow banter – the ‘ochs’ and ‘you knows’ and ‘wee pals’ and ‘way backs’ and ‘them rockets from E hall’ – all rhythmic and indecipherable, like rap. I gathered, after a while, that he’d known Chas from his stint in prison.

  I was just about to deny the existence of anyone called Big Fella and shut the door in his face, when Chas pushed me and my plan aside with a ‘Fuck me!’ and a bear hug. Fight Three.

  And this one was not going to be easily get-over-able.

  While I washed Robbie’s hands several times and then put him to bed, Chas yapped to Billy Mullen, who scared me with his bruised, cut, alien-like skull and constantly descending jeans (for the purpose of showing off infected machete scab, which he revealed on three separate occasions – to Chas, to me, and to Robbie, who TOUCHED IT!).

  Chas turned into an alien too. After I put a resisting Robbie to bed, I listened at the door to the sitting room for a moment and noticed that Chas’s accent had even changed. A posh Edinburgh boy who’d gone to private school
and played tennis, Chas was using words like ‘reccy’ and laughing at Billy’s stories of lucky buckets and peters. Who was this man?

  I went and steamed in the kitchen for an hour while they drank five bottles of beer each and laughed so loudly I was sure they’d wake Robbie up. I stomped past the living-room door at least twice and they didn’t flinch. Then I spent ages trying to set up the ancient video recorder because Build a New Life in the Country was on and I was going to miss it. They didn’t even try to help me.

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ I yelled at Chas when the noxious weed that was Billy Mullen finally left.

  ‘What?’ said Chas, mystified.

  ‘How can you bring him in here?’

  ‘He’s a fab wee fella,’ said Chas.

  ‘He’s a fab wee fella!’ I mimicked him, as if I was still in Primary Four.

  ‘You’re a snob and a pain in the arse,’ said Chas, his face furious as he reached for his coat.

  This was the first time Chas had called me a pain in the anything.

  ‘You’re not walking out,’ I shouted as he fumbled to get his coat on, to do the ‘time out’ thing.

  ‘I am, actually.’

  ‘How can you call me a pain in the arse?’

  ‘Easy. You are,’ he said, unclenching my hand’s grasp.

  ‘Don’t walk out on me. Let’s sort this out,’ I pleaded.

  ‘If I have any more sorting out conversations, I’m going to explode. It’s like I’m living with a fucking therapist.’

  This was a surprise. I’d thought this was the thing that differentiated us from Zara’s mum, and Marj from my old work, both of whom never talked to their partners about anything. Zara’s mum had even weathered one argument by leaving notes on the fridge for three weeks and Marj only conversed with her revolting husband about what kind of meat he might like for dinner.

  ‘In the last couple of weeks I’ve done nothing but look after Robbie and get it in the neck from you when I’m not in the middle of hour-long conversations about how the fuck we can make things better.’

  ‘So you’ve done nothing but look after my son?’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ he snapped back.

  ‘Well, if you don’t like it, Chas …’

  ‘All I did tonight was have a drink with an old friend who happens to come from a different socio-economic background. And you can’t handle it.’

  ‘He’s an offender, and I’m a probation officer. Robbie’s sleeping and you’re swearing in there and drinking beer!’

  ‘Oh my God!’ said Chas. Then, instead of taking me in his arms and promising to change his character and personality forever because I was right and he was wrong, he added, ‘You’re a snob and a hypocrite.’

  ‘A snob? Me?’

  ‘And you’re fucking naïve, Krissie. You

  take things at face value, believe shit just ’cause of how it looks. You’re gullible, Krissie. You’re a naïve, gullible snob.’

  ‘I’m gullible! I know these guys, I work with these guys. They’re dangerous. And you’ve just finished parole, Chas! Not to mention having him here is unprofessional!’

  ‘He was by far the funniest guy I met in prison. If you can’t tolerate the company of a boy from across the river in our house then you’re in the wrong job and the wrong relationship.’

  Before I could say anything in response, he was out the door.

  And so was I, following him down the stairs and making a racket, not caring what the musicians downstairs heard, or what the old lady across the landing thought.

  ‘Come back here, Charles!’ Charles was a bad sign. I never called him Charles.

  ‘Get back here now or –’

  He stopped at the second landing and looked up at me.

  ‘Or what, Kristina?’

  ‘Or I’ll … just get back here.’

  But he just turned and walked away, and a few moments later I heard the door slam.

  27

  The next day I scrawled an angry, ridiculous letter of resignation. Robert and Penny were away facilitating a domestic violence workshop, so I was alone in the office with Danny.

  ‘How does this sound?’ I said, reading the letter to him.

  Before Danny could respond, I put the letter down and got on my high horse.

  It had to be more than a coincidence, I told him, that my life had fallen apart as soon as I started work as a criminal justice social worker. There was the stress of working with admin staff who were mean witches from hell, refusing to help you no matter how difficult not helping might be in comparison. There was also the stress of having a boss who was never there, who left notes and reports and case files in pigeonholes in the early hours of the morning and then disappeared to fucking absentee-management training of all things. And the stress of clients who were drunk or rude, and who refused to leave the interview room until you’d given them money or a cigarette. And the stress of abandoning my child to various places and carers all over the city. Plus the fucking stress of being the breadwinner … Of my boyfriend being away all day, all night, doing God knows what – maybe even fucking someone else. Of smoking again and having a terrible headache and only a day to complete a report on a man who bit another man’s ear off and a never-ending pile of frigging whites …

  ‘Stop!’ shouted Danny.

  What a relief, to be told to stop. My face had gone red with lack of breath and I was incapable of stopping alone.

  ‘Breathe,’ said Danny. ‘Your life is not in ruins. You are tired and you had a fight with your boyfriend. Give me the report. I’ll do it. And go home,’ he added, before ripping up my attention-seeking letter of resignation.

  *

  That night Chas and I didn’t sort things out, didn’t have the chat that differentiated us from other couples. Instead we withheld affection and sex and I realised we were exactly the same as every other couple; that my gloating feeling of superiority was ill-founded.

  Our chemicals had obviously done their stuff – two years was the limit, apparently – and we no longer tingled at the thought of each other or found each other’s little habits cute.

  I found the way Chas sometimes picked at his toes not cute at all. Ditto the way he worked all night in his studio and refused to show me any of his paintings. Double ditto the way he used my Mach Three razor and not one of the three I had bought especially for him. Not to mention the way he cooked nothing but pizza and that an overflowing washing basket was invisible to him. Or how he made me feel stupid because he was always so reasonable and invariably right.

  They say the thing that attracts you to someone is the thing that will tear you apart. I’d fallen in love with Chas because he was down-to-earth and kind, because he didn’t care what others thought of him, and because he treated people well, regardless of their looks or background. And indeed it appeared that this might be the problem, because I did not want him associating with Billy Mullen. It made me uneasy. I had a distinctly bad feeling about it.

  We made sure Robbie had no idea of how estranged we were. I did the bath, Chas did the story, and we both lay on either side of him for a few minutes at bedtime before retreating and resuming our silent argument.

  I ate my lonely Sainsbury’s microwaved Thai curry in the kitchen, did the dishes, swept and mopped the floor, tidied the bathroom, put a load of washing on the pulley and another one in the machine, arranged the clothes for the morning, put videos in their cases, and did a list in my head of all of the above and a list of all the things Chas had done (i.e. nothing). Then he came in and declared: ‘Let’s have a party.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Let’s have a party on Friday. Your folks are happy to baby-sit.’

  ‘Your opening is next week, Chas.’

  ‘I need to chill out. I want to have a drink and a chat and I want to flirt with you at a party and feel young again.’

  ‘I don’t feel like having a party.’

  He knew I hated parties. I got stressed just thinking about organisin
g them, which was one of the reasons I hadn’t wanted to get married until an accidental wedding-dress purchase had fucked with my head.

  ‘That’s a shame. I’ve already invited some folk over.’

  And off he went to fritter about in that fucking studio which could have been full of bare-breasted ladies for all I knew.

  I didn’t sleep at all as I tossed and turned and wondered what he was doing, and how we would ever get through this. When he came in and saw I was still awake, he said, ‘You’re stressed. You’re not coping. We need to make some big changes.’

  I lay there silently wondering how to bring up the list I’d made earlier of all the things I’d done in the house and all the things he’d not done, and how to say that a party was not a good idea and … I was the one with the problems. ME!

  He sighed at the silence and left to sleep on the sofa.

  Fuck.

  This was not us. We were not this couple.

  Fuck.

  28

  Leaving a maternity ward empty-handed is an unimaginable experience. Ask anyone whose baby has been placed in a tubed plastic container to grow some more, or been removed for detox and foster care. Ask anyone who’s had a stillborn baby or a baby that died soon after birth. Ask anyone who’s given up their baby for adoption. Not pleasant, walking with the limping gait of a torn new mother, alongside women with stomachs or little car seats filled with baby, smiles that are filled with baby, baby, baby.

  Bridget Garden, just seventeen years old, walked out of the maternity ward empty-handed, her breasts hard and lumpy, wet patches on her T-shirt. She was still bleeding into the extra-strength super-size pads provided by the hospital – and continued to do so for as many days as the milk persevered. Her body cried a grief-soup of milk, blood and tears that would discolour her heart until she died.