I Confess

The library was on the first floor, at the rear of the convent, overlooking the sea.

‘You have to admit,’ said Johnny.

‘It is spectacular,’ said Edie.

Johnny walked over to the side window, and squinted through the stained-glass panel to a two-storey flat-roofed building nestled in the trees. ‘I might see if I can drive the bulldozer that day,’ he said.

Edie laughed.

‘I’m not sure how gracious the Sisters of Good Grace were if they were shoving their guests into that shithole,’ said Johnny. ‘But you’re right – it’s the perfect spot to build.’

Edie narrowed her eyes.

‘You did say that, didn’t you?’ said Johnny, frowning. ‘Did you not say something about razing that to the ground, so we could build the perfect family home, featuring everything you’ve ever dreamed of under one roof, including your handsome husband, and beloved son?’

‘You’re beloved too,’ said Edie. ‘Especially when you’re telling stories.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Johnny. ‘I’m sure that was exactly what you said earlier.’ He looked across to the other side of the property. ‘So, Consolata sold the acre with the Mass rock on it before she died. What was that about? Did she not trust the next owner not to make shit of it?’

‘Probably,’ said Edie.

‘It would have been a nice feature to show the guests as we’re guiding them down the jetty steps to their death. I mean, to our boat. I could tell them the story about our oppressors’ – he winked at Edie – ‘banning the poor Catholics from going to Mass, making them climb up the rocks and traipse across the fields to have a sneaky one.’

‘There’s no oppressing you, Johnny Weston.’

An hour later, Johnny and Edie stood, face to face, in the entrance hall.

‘I know exactly what I’d do here,’ said Edie, sweeping her slender hand around. ‘Dark walls – somewhere between French navy and Prussian blue – custom blend, obviously.’ She smiled. ‘Some teal in there, antique gold somewhere, and – don’t laugh – a deep raspberry, but subtle, like in an edging or maybe …’ She looked down. ‘Maybe the centre detail of the tiles. Gothic, encaustic, original design, but I don’t want it matching matching, so maybe a dusky black, a smoky grey as the main colour, a fine line of antique gold.’

Johnny took her hands.

‘Can you imagine,’ said Edie, ‘a grand opening, Regatta week, on the lawn …’

Johnny smiled his crooked smile and the scar on his chin went white.

‘So that’s a “yes”,’ he said.

‘Yes!’ said Edie. ‘Yes, it is!’

2 (#ulink_73ef57d4-3420-5966-bd15-42e33dd5d614)

The Inn at Pilgrim Point

24 November 2018

As Edie approached the turn for the inn, she often thought of travelling the same road with her father when she was a little girl. She pictured the sun flickering through the bright leaves and across his face, the darker tan of his neck, his arms outstretched, the gleam of his wristwatch, his hands on the steering wheel, how he would turn to smile at her as she bounced beside him on the front seat, ready for adventure.

Today, a storm was raging across Beara. Edie’s head was pounding from the clash of the rain as it hit the roof and the windshield, startling her with loud, sporadic surges. She drove through the black entrance gates to the inn, past the stone falcons mounted on each side.

‘Daddy, I bought the manor! I changed the finials! They’re matching, Daddy! They’re like me and you!’

She drove towards the inn, picturing it through the eyes of her friends as they arrived for dinner later. It would be dark by then, and they would love the warm glow from the lights at the foot of the trees, and how the leaves made a canopy that softened the straight line of the drive. Everything had changed so much since they had all known it; she had made sure of that, because it had to change. She had walked the rooms and hallways on the day of the viewing, transforming them in her mind’s eye in a way that felt magical. It was as if, with a flick of her wrist, she was plucking paintings from the walls, whipping tiles off the floors, rolling up carpets and then, with a sweep of her arm, replacing them with her vision of the future.

She wished she could be with her friends as they saw its newest incarnation. They would feel differently about it now – it was beautiful.

Edie’s breath caught, and her hand went to her chest. She glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw, reflected back at her, the upward-tilted chin of her mother and the fastened joy in her eyes – the look that reminded Edie of things on shelves that, if you break them, you have to pay.

She felt a stab of anger at her blind faith in Johnny in the day of the viewing that, if he could see beyond the dark history of Pilgrim Point, then she could too. Johnny, who didn’t believe in dwelling on the past, yet, she now realized, still saw them the way the outside world saw them when they first met – she the beautiful, privileged daughter of a wealthy English businessman and his devoted homemaker wife; Johnny, the handsome privileged son of the local doctor.

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.