Алекс Баркли - I Confess

It didn’t matter how absent Edie’s father was nor that his adoration appeared like seasonal blooms in a vast lonely landscape. It didn’t matter how remote Johnny’s father was or how desperately lonely his mother was, or that she had moulded her son into as close as he could be to the husband she really wanted, watching as her efforts were chipped away at by the husband she actually had. They saw what they wanted to see. And Johnny believed them.

As she came to the end of the drive, Edie caught sight of Johnny, standing in the conservatory with Terry Hyland, the contractor. Terry was a short, springy, gnarly-faced, man — the same age as Johnny, but looked a decade older. Johnny, at six foot two, towered over him, clearly questioning something, clearly unhappy about it, which was his default setting when it came to Terry. Terry had his arms folded as Johnny spoke, then would unfold them and stab a finger at the ground when he was responding to him. They glanced up, and pretended that they hadn’t seen her. She guessed it was because they were both on a roll, and that if they could see her, that meant she could see them, which meant she might intervene.

She had no intention of intervening — there was too much to do before everyone arrived. The inn was closed for the season, and she hadn’t brought any staff in for the night — she wanted to do everything herself, and to keep their evening with friends a private one. Her parents’ dinner parties had been like that — hushed and behind closed doors... until they got rowdy and spilled out into rooms or hallways close enough that Edie could wake to the sound of their voices or the smell of their cigarettes.

She used to watch her mother prepare the house for guests, and she would always be given a job that, each time, she would carry out as if she didn’t know that at least some part of it would be taken away from her or redone. The older she got, the less it happened, and, by the time her mother sent her out in to the world, she was proud to. When Edie was asked in therapy to think of something she might thank her mother for, that was it.

When she was fifteen, Edie had sat with her father at the table by the rocky shore at the end of their garden and told him that she hated her mother. He raised an eyebrow, but let her talk.

‘You don’t know what it’s like when you’re not here, Daddy. She’s so strict. She has to control everything — what I eat, what I wear, who my friends are, what we do. She likes Helen. And she likes Jessie, but she never lets me go to her house. She hates Laura because she thinks she’s “unrefined”. And she thinks Murph’s a... what’s that word?’

‘Boor!’ said her father, laughing. ‘I like Murph! He’s a fun fellow, isn’t he? A bit rough around the edges, like all the best people.’

‘Yes!’ said Edie. ‘And his father is the sweetest, gentlest man.’ She paused. ‘What, Daddy?’

Her father frowned. ‘Nothing. He is, he is. He’s the stone chap, isn’t he? Built those marvellous stone walls.’

‘Daddy, you used to go fishing with him,’ said Edie. ‘Jerry Murphy.’

‘Ah, Jerry Murphy,’ said her father. ‘Of course, of course. It’s been a while.’

‘All he does is sit in the house and read about history now,’ said Edie. ‘But he drinks a lot, so Mummy doesn’t like that.’

Her father’s gaze drifted out over the water. ‘But he’s a heartbroken man, isn’t he?’ he said. ‘Lost his wife, lost his job.’ He let out a breath. ‘We’d give the man a pass for that, surely.’

It was the first time her father had crossed the united front he and her mother usually presented.

‘Oh, Mummy does like Clare,’ said Edie, ‘but I think that’s only because she’s rich too.’

Her father leaned back from Edie a fraction and that one small move made Edie’s stomach flip and the blood rush to her cheeks. She had never felt ashamed in his presence before.

‘I’m sure your mother and I have both failed you along the way,’ said her father, skipping past it, ‘and I’m sorry that we did. But my advice to you is this — think of the past as a great big sea. It has delicious things we can feast on, a pearl here or there if we’re lucky. There are other things that are best left there, though. And conditions are not always favourable — unseen currents, waves waiting to crash. It’s best to take a quick dip, never wallow there, and certainly don’t drown.’ And he had smiled.

Her father was a prescient man. Edie still dived into that childhood sea, and fed on those creatures until she was sick. She had wallowed in the waters, crying into them, stirring up waves. There had been times when she hoped they would drown her.

Edie looked up at the walls of the inn. The rain on the granite had always looked to her like an oily film that could fall away from it in a single sheet. She had woken that morning, heaving and sweating, having dreamt that it had, and that she had watched, helpless, as it slid to the ground and rippled across the gravel towards her, and that she had stood, rooted, as it wrapped around her like a cocoon, and that she hadn’t made a sound, even when it started to tighten around her neck. When she woke, she felt that she hadn’t shaken it — not that she was bound by it, but that it hung over her like a threat. Daddy, what was I thinking?

Tonight, she and Johnny would be welcoming five of her closest childhood friends — Murph and Helen and Clare and Laura and Patrick. She waited for the joy to fill her heart. Instead, a thought came in to sink it: Five friends. No sixth — no Jessie.

All she could think of then was: I am the Ghost of the Manor.

The Sisters of Good Grace Convent, Pilgrim Point

31 October 1988

Murph, Helen, Edie, Laura, and Clare were gathered at midnight by the chapel gate.

‘Happy Hallowe’en!’ said Murph.

‘Where’s your mask?’ said Clare. ‘You were the one obsessed with us wearing masks.’

‘The elastic broke,’ said Murph.

‘The size of the head on him,’ said Laura. ‘As if they wouldn’t know you if they looked out. Consolata up there closing her curtains: “Surely, that’s not that six-foot-four Liam Murphy goon running across my lawn. If only I could see behind that tiny plastic circle on his face — then I’d definitely know.”

‘Have you seen the selection down in the shop?’ said Murph.

‘I think we have,’ said Clare, looking around. They were all holding green Frankenstein masks.

‘Monsters, the lot of us,’ said Murph. ‘Is there no sign of Jessie?’

‘I wouldn’t hold out much hope,’ said Laura. ‘She was down town earlier, pasted.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Helen. ‘On her own?’

Laura nodded. ‘Apparently, Consolata was at her again, the silly bitch.’

‘All the more reason for her to come,’ said Murph.

‘I told Jessie I’d meet her,’ said Helen. ‘I don’t know why she couldn’t have walked up with the rest of us.’

‘Leave her off,’ said Laura.

‘She needs to ease up a bit,’ said Helen.

Murph nodded. ‘She needs to get a grip... on these.’ He held up a bag of cans.

They all laughed, but Edie knew they were all thinking the same thing — Jessie shouldn’t be drinking, not as much as she did, not on her own, not at sixteen, not after everything she had been through.

Murph looked up the road. ‘Here she is now. A dog to a bone.’

‘Oh God,’ said Clare, turning to Laura. ‘You were right.’

Jessie waved with a can of cider as she swayed towards them, a white plastic Hallowe’en mask pushed up on top of her head.

‘She shouldn’t be climbing a wall in that state,’ said Helen.

‘Laura can heave her up one side,’ said Murph, ‘and I’ll catch her on the other.’