My Last Confession by Helen Fitzgerald Read Free Book Online Page B

outside number 43, and he stopped the car and kissed her on the lips and wondered if the girl who had grown up in this house was the same girl who had sucked his dick somewhere between Penrith and Carlisle.
    Amanda’s parents were older than he expected – approaching seventy, maybe – and nicer. Mrs Kelly was round and short, with thick grey hair, a lifetime of smiles lining her face. Her husband – slim, fit, moustached and Brylcreemed – was less smiley, but no less lovable. They hugged their girl (‘Oh, my darling girl!’ her mother said over and over), they hugged him (‘Welcome to the family, son!’) and they served soup that had been simmering since Amanda phoned ten miles after Motherwell.
    The house was a four-room box filled with Amanda memorabilia – ballet photos, badminton trophies, beauty college certificates – and it smelt nice. Jeremy noticed that everything about Amanda seemed different once they walked through the door; her clothes changed from bright and bohemian to old-fashioned and comfortable, her chat from urban and hip to giggly, gossipy. Jeremy wasn’t sure how he felt about the changes initially.
    After a no-nonsense dinner of lamb stew, Amanda’smother put on some old family videos. They drank beer as they watched Amanda performing in her Primary Three nativity play with chubby grin. They laughed as she long-jumped in the school sports aged eleven, and as she poked out her tongue while sunbathing on holiday in Portugal aged fourteen.
    All four were getting a little tipsy as they pored over old report cards …
    Could do better.
    Lacks concentration.
    Seems bored.
    … and were positively pissed when the photo of Amanda and her first boyfriend, Peter Bishop, found its way onto the coffee table.
    ‘Oh God, what was I thinking?’ Amanda said, examining the fifteen-year-old boy. He was very good-looking. Her comment had obviously been intended to put Jeremy at ease.
    ‘What were you thinking?’ someone said. The voice was not a happy one.
    ‘What you were you thinking, Mand? Disappearing like that?’
    Her mother was drunk enough to confront her now.
    ‘Ten years without coming back. And there were times we thought you might be dead!’
    Amanda put the photo album and the beer down on the coffee table, walked over to where her mother was sitting, knelt before her, and buried her head in her lap.
    ‘I’m so sorry,’ Amanda wept. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking! I love you! I know it sounds corny, but I wanted to try and find myself.’
    And did you?’
    ‘I found Jeremy,’ Amanda replied. ‘I’m sorry I hurt you.’
    Amanda’s father joined his girls on the sofa while Jeremy watched with a tear in his eye.
    *
    They spent three days organising a party to celebrate their marriage. Jeremy mostly managed to keep his mobile switched off, even though his second-in-charge was having a nervous breakdown. The glass from Germany had arrived for the patio doors in the Finsbury Park project but was the wrong size. And the water pipes in one of the cheaper rentals had burst, damaging the immaculate dining room belonging to the gay couple downstairs.
    ‘Send the glass back,’ Jeremy said. ‘We won’t pay unless it’s what we ordered. Then ring the plumber and the insurers. Easy.’
    The party was at to be held the Grantly Hotel, a three-star job two blocks further into pebble-dash hell, and Mand’s parents were insisting on paying for it.
    ‘We won’t hear of it!’ Mr Kelly had said when Jeremy opened his wallet. ‘It’s the least we can do for our Mand.’ Jeremy had never conceived of shortening Amanda’s beautiful name, but there it was – Mand.
    At first, Jeremy wasn’t sure how he felt as the pieces of Amanda began to click into place. Mand . Who was she?
    They went for drinks at a West End pub. Amanda’s friends gathered around a table and fired questions at her. What have you been doing? Why didn’t you write at least? How did you two meet? Did you know Peter