I Confess

I CONFESS

Alex Barclay

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers

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London SE1 9GF

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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Copyright © Alex Barclay 2019

Cover design layout © HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Cover photographs © Hayden Verry/Arcangel Images

Alex Barclay asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008273002

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2019 ISBN: 9780008273026

Version: 2020-03-25

Praise for Alex Barclay:

‘Gripping, stylish, convincing’

Sunday Times

‘The rising star of the hard-boiled crime fiction world, combining wild characters, surprising plots and massive backdrops with a touch of dry humour’

Mirror

‘Tense, no-punches-pulled thriller that will have you on the edge of your deckchair’

Woman and Home

‘Explosive’

Company

‘Compelling’

Glamour

‘Excellent summer reading … Barclay has the confidence to move her story along slowly, and deftly explores the relationships between her characters’

Sunday Telegraph

‘The thriller of the summer’

Irish Independent

‘If you haven’t discovered Alex Barclay, it’s time to jump on the bandwagon’

Image Magazine

Dedication

To OMGP This is what it feels like to be seen.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Alex Barclay:

Dedication

Pilgrim Point: Beara Peninsula, Cork, Ireland

Chapter 1: Edie

Chapter 2

Chapter 3: Edie

Chapter 4

Chapter 5: Jessie

Chapter 6

Chapter 7: Murph

Chapter 8

Chapter 9: Patrick

Chapter 10

Chapter 11: Laura

Chapter 12

Chapter 13: Patrick

Chapter 14

Chapter 15: Helen

Chapter 16

Chapter 17: Dylan

Chapter 18

Chapter 19: Johnny

Chapter 20

Chapter 21: Patrick

Chapter 22

Chapter 23: Murph

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: Edie

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44: Clare

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48: Mrs Lynch

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55: Helen

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59: Sister Consolata

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Ten Months Later

Chapter 63

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Alex Barclay

About the Publisher

Pilgrim Point

Beara Peninsula, Cork, Ireland

Darkness had travelled loyally with Pilgrim Point through all its incarnations, as if passed in the handshake between each fleeing owner and the hopeful successor whose eye he could barely meet. This anvil-shaped promontory on the south-west coast of Ireland had once been a battleground, and at various times in the centuries that followed, had been fought over, lost, regained, or relinquished.

The sufferings of each owner – and there were many – would at first be borne privately, but the anguish of their aggregate would eventually sound like an alarm, travelling east to Castletown, where it would turn to whispers at a retreating back. Pilgrim Point, now empty of life, would release into the silence a siren cry that would always be answered. Deep and discordant, it called to those of a darker persuasion. The greater surprise was the fine gold thread of its lighter melody and how its gleam, though rare, could attract to Pilgrim Point, in equal measures, those of more noble intent.

Perhaps its grounds had swallowed the consequences of so many sins that, under the feet of sinners, it felt like home and under the feet of the righteous, like a summoning. This despite stories of strange apparitions and untimely occurrences. There was also the curious fertility of its grass – stark against the dark stones of the ruins that marked it. This trick of nature kindled even the faintest hope of triumph, when it was doubtless nothing more than a pleasing cover for what lay beneath – the roots of sin itself. From under this vibrant green bed, it released a pale malevolence that rose like smoke to disappear into the late-evening mist.

Were you to pass through the black gates of Pilgrim Point now, you would find yourself on land cloven by a bitter feud between brothers. The path you must take marks the dead centre, its course as unbending as the will of the men who occasioned it. As you follow this path, you will feel as though the landscape is unfurling around you, ahead of you, and for you – in time with the fall of your foot or the galloping hooves of your mount. You will be rewarded, then, at the cliff edge with such astonishing natural beauty; this anvil pointing towards nothing but sky and wild Atlantic. Turn left or right and you will catch glimpses of lesser headlands, like runners that have fallen behind in a race. You have won. Or so you think. You won’t know yet that, in fact, you have been won. Through the powerful sweep of the wind and the steady crash of the waves, you won’t hear the voice of the true winner:

‘I am Pilgrim Point, host of rulers and battles, victors and vanquished, the rich, the poor, the faithful, the lost. Who are you? And what will I make of you?’

For what does an anvil do but allow a thing to be hammered and moulded? And what confusion comes when it plays blacksmith too.

I should know.

I once lived there. And, I now believe, died.

In a Manor of Silence

Lord Henry Rathbrook, 1886

1

EDIE

Pilgrim Point, Beara Peninsula

4 August 2015

‘If you have a rich imagination you will never be poor.’

Edie’s mother, Madeleine, had heard that from her starving-artist parents throughout her childhood, so although she grew up in a home blessed with the freedom of passionate creativity, it was caged, in her mind, by penury. Madeleine mentally rejected the advice, never realizing that she had, in fact, taken it – she married a rich man, having fallen in love with a version of him she had used her rich imagination to create. Before they married, she had brought Edward home to meet her parents, and Edward, weary of the constraints of his upper-class upbringing, had been charmed by her parents and their ramshackle home. He came alive in their company and expected their daughter would bring out the same spirit in him. It wasn’t long after they married that he realized they were both running towards the life the other wanted to leave behind. Edie’s mother was happy with her beautiful home and her beautiful things, and a husband who travelled for business and left her to enjoy them. When he returned from his trips, she seemed as disappointed by the reality of him as he was by the sense that she might pick him up, look around, and try to find a suitable place to put him.

It was only when Edie was born that her father’s dormant spirit and warmth found a home. He poured all his love into her, gave her all his attention. There was never any disappointment on Edie’s face. She loved him just the way he was.

When Edie was eight years old, he brought the family to Beara on holiday. He had spent his most magical childhood summer there and had told Edie stories about fishing at sea or from the rocks on a pebble beach so secluded he used to pretend that it was his, that he had won it from a pirate in a game of cards. He told her about hiking mountains and hills, swimming in lakes and waterfalls, and diving off piers into the freezing Atlantic Ocean. He told her about friendly locals, and warm welcomes, and nights filled with laughter, music, singing, and dancing.

He made sure that Edie’s first summer there was filled with all the same things, and for Edie, every day was like living in a fairy tale. Her father had spent the whole month of August with them, and by the end of it, had bought a beautiful house on a sheltered harbour. They called it Eventide. It had a boathouse and a summerhouse and a lawn that sloped down to a short rocky strand. By the following summer, she and her mother were living there full-time, and her father visited as often as he could.

He always stirred her sense of adventure, bringing her out to sea with him, or to storytelling nights in a candlelit cabin in Eyeries – a tiny village where all the houses were painted in different colours. He would leave books by her bedside, tapping their hardback covers, and saying, ‘You’d like this one, Edie,’ ‘You’d get a kick out of this!’

They used to drive by the gates of Pilgrim Point, in those days a convent, and she would always look out for the mismatched stone finials on the pillars – one a lion, the other an eagle. Her father told her it was once a manor built by two English brothers, the Rathbrooks, who fell out, accusing each other of all kinds of transgressions that led them into a series of stand-offs that began with the alleged theft of a finial at the gate and ran right down to the edge of the cliff where one brother accused the other of regularly appearing, ghost-like, to frighten him. Both men denied the accusations levelled at them, abandoned the manor, and died estranged.

‘Never be too proud, Edie!’ her father had said. ‘But don’t let anyone get the better of you, either!’

Edie’s mother, meanwhile, played only a bit part in Edie’s childhood adventures. Her role would come when Edie had outgrown them, when she could prime her to do as she had done: look beautiful and marry well.

And in the middle, torn between who she was and who each of them wanted her to be, was Edie. But there was one thing her parents did agree on – her beauty. That, she realized, was her safest ground. When the waters got choppy, that’s where she stood – fair-haired, smiling, long-limbed, and sunkissed – and that’s where Johnny Weston found her. She had first seen him when she was fourteen years old. It was the Saturday of the August Bank Holiday weekend – the beginning of what was officially called the Beara Festival of the Sea, but was only ever referred to as ‘Regatta’. It was the highlight of Beara’s social calendar, when the town was filled with people, and the harbour filled with boats.

Edie was in the crowd, watching from the pier as Johnny, in red shorts, bare-chested and muscular, was playing Pig on the Pole. He and his opponent were sitting on a greased-up pole high over the harbour, each trying to topple the other into the sea with the slam of a pillow. Johnny won. He always won.

The first time they met was the following summer after Edie was crowned Queen of the Sea. Johnny came up to her in the square that evening to congratulate her. She was fifteen, and sober, and he was twenty and so drunk that all he did was sway in front of her, in awe, until he was dragged away. They kissed the following Christmas, when Edie had just turned sixteen. Johnny, her crooked-smile charmer – her first love, her only love, the only man she had ever slept with, and, like her father, a man who could do no wrong.

They were married twenty years now, with a twelve-year-old son, Dylan. They had left Beara for San Francisco the year they got married, worked their way up in hospitality, moving around, making money in real estate and investments. Home for the past six years was the ski lodge they owned in Breckenridge, Colorado – a small, friendly resort town at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. They loved it there, but the plan had always been to buy and restore an old property and have their own luxury inn. They had no plans for an imminent move, nor had they considered Beara as a location – until Johnny arrived at breakfast one morning and told her the convent at Pilgrim Point was up for sale, rushing through talk of the view, and the architecture, the slashed guide price, and the years that had passed since they had been there.

She was watching him now from the balcony as he stood in the entrance hall below, picturing him welcoming their future guests. Johnny was a natural host, an entertainer, a storyteller rather than a conversationalist. He had a collection of anecdotes that Edie loved walking in and out of at parties, laughing at the punchlines and, over the years, chipping in her own lines.

He looked up at her, and his eyes brightened. ‘How did the solo expedition go? Did you find Consolata’s torture chamber?’

Edie shuddered. Sister Consolata had been the widely despised Vice Principal of the local secondary school when Edie was a student there. Sister Consolata had lived and worked at Pilgrim Point for forty years, and it was only after she died that it was revealed she had owned it, that it was not owned by the order, as everyone had assumed. A wealthy uncle, who had bought it from the Rathbrooks, skipped over her elder brother to bequeath it to her.

‘The only trace I found of her,’ said Edie, ‘was in every grim corner, and peeling wall, and threadbare carpet I looked at.’

Johnny jogged up the stairs to her. ‘Come on – let’s have on more look at the library.’

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

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.’