The Confession of Stella Moon

by Shelley Day

  Just before sunrise, when the night was at its coldest, Stella hauled one of Muriel’s old fisherman’s sweaters out of the trunk. It stank like a wet dog and was full of moth holes, but at least it would keep her warm. Then Stella tipped and banged the dust and the cobwebs out of the perished wellies, also belonging to Muriel. She shoved her bare feet into them so she could go and bring some wood in. There was a strange half-comfort to be had from being in Muriel’s shoes again, in the fact that Stella was now mistress of this territory, in knowing that she was free and alone to make the most of her time here until the snow’d melted enough to travel and make her second confession possible. Stella tugged open the door and looked out from the iced-up veranda across the slab of steel-grey sea. On the other side of the bay, she could see flurries rushing in from the Arctic on a sharp north-easterly, coating the headland, blurring the castle ruin and blotting out the cliffs, the cliffs where Muriel died.

  As Stella looked out across the sea, the cliffs transformed: a thick white blind came down and the world was made that bit smaller. Stella stepped back inside and pushed and kicked at the swollen door to jam it shut again. She’d managed, after years of soul-searching and struggle, to somehow come to terms with the killing of her mother. Now she had to start again. Now there was another one. Now Stella had dues to pay for the baby. She knew it wasn’t going to be easy: she knew what happened in prison to people who’d harmed a child.

  And there was part of Stella that almost wanted to run away and hide, to forget about it all again, turn the clock backwards, stay in denial. Another part of her knew that would never again be possible. And even if it were possible, Stella knew that was not the road she would now choose to take. She’d killed the baby. She was willing to face up to it. She would pay the price.

  Back inside the Beach Hut, Stella turned the Chubb key in the deadlock, wedged a wicker chair underneath the handle, dragged the old wooden trunk across and pushed it up against the chair.

  Stella wrote and wrote in the blue silk notebook. She wrote for Marcia. She wrote until her hand could no longer grasp the pen. The need to sleep – when it came – came heavy. She stumbled to the bed, curled herself up under the damp covers and closed herself inside the silence.

  Stella had tried, face to face, to tell Marcia everything, all the small things she remembered. But there hadn’t been much. There were gaps she didn’t know how to fill, had never known how to fill. Marcia had laughed, disbelieving. Then, more serious.

  ‘That’s peculiar,’ Marcia said, ‘to have such fat chunks of your life totally missing.’ Stella knew what Marcia was thinking, that there could be anything in those gaps. Anything. ‘Or nothing,’ Marcia said, ‘maybe there’s nothing.’ So Stella had convinced herself there was nothing – there seemed nothing to remember, so maybe there was nothing. How wrong she’d been.

  Now Stella knows what was missing. Now she will have to do what has to be done, which includes telling Marcia. Marcia had always said how important it is to know your own story. That’s the route to knowing who you are. So, yes, Stella had wanted to remember, wanted to be able to tell the whole story.

  Then all the horrible stuff had landed on her at the Boarding House, and Stella no longer believed that remembering it all did anyone any good. Nobody had advised her that the price of remembering might be too high; nobody said to watch it, it might shrink you to the size of a lentil. No, nobody said anything about how remembering can take away everything from under you and leave you with nothing, leave you not knowing what you’ve done or not done, or why or when or where. A memory that rips the ground from under you, so not a single thing makes any sense any more. You’re left grabbing after certainties that slip away as soon as you get anywhere near them. You’re left grasping and desperate and you still don’t know who the fuck you are, because you haven’t got a past, because you haven’t got a story, you haven’t got a future because you haven’t got a story. All you’ve got are the gaping holes in someone else’s script – Muriel’s, your grandmother’s, and yours, Marcia. Yes, yours, every fucker else’s fucking script but your own, Stella Moon.

  So, Marcia, memories are just little stories you tell yourself, are they? Is that what they are? Do you really think that’s what they are? Well, do you?

  Killing a baby! That’s a nice little story for you, Marcia. Fuck you, Marcia, fuck your know-all stupid mantras. What the fuck did Marcia ever know about Stella’s life? About anyone’s life but her own? How could Marcia have known anything when Stella herself had been blind to it, when so much had been buried, hidden away, distorted, destroyed?

  Tell Stella this, Marcia: why do people do anything, anything at all? Why don’t they just lay down and die, before the absolute futility of this shitheap we call life collapses all around them? Little fucking stories, they can practically kill you.

  Baby Keating, dead and buried.

  Your fault, Stella – nasty, vicious Stella Moon.

  Now look what she’s done. Capable of anything, red-haired devil. Keep right away from her.

  You should be ashamed of yourself, Stella Moon.

  The burden of knowing – Stella can no longer push it away.

  Stella huddles tighter in the damp bed. The cold has seeped right into her bones and frozen them. Her body aches with the effort of keeping warm. She’s too cold even to shiver. Soon there’ll be no paraffin left and that will be that. She would drag the mattress into the main room, lie down in front of the stove, if she had the strength.

  Rehabilitation and therapy. Connect up your memories into a nice little storyline. Give it a happy ending. Here’s your life, here’s a story, here’s a timeline. Come on, Stella. A beginning, a middle and an end. Where you came from, where you are, where you’re going to. Take responsibility for what you’ve done. Tell it how it was. Own it. Then draw a line under your crime. Draw a line and move on. Come on, Stella.

  That was the theory.

  Stella hadn’t been able to do any of it. There had only been gaps and confusion.

  I don’t have a story, Stella had wanted to scream into their stupid, concerned faces. I don’t have any fucking story.

  Stella preferred endless games of Battleships, Hangman and Noughts and Crosses, with Marcia. Sharing bags of Mint Imperials. Chanting games like I went to Paris and I took with me…a feather boa, a pair of purple pyjamas, a pink monkey with a hat on. A turquoise-blue Indian silk notebook with handmade paper. A letter from Marcia, not yet opened. Muriel’s little blue suitcase. Her small grey haversack. The empty Kilner jar.

  In any case, Stella had never had any problem whatsoever ‘owning’ – as they put it – her crime. From the start, she’d taken full and proper responsibility. Straight away she’d admitted what she’d done to Muriel. Dialled 999 – apparently – and asked for the coastguard with a steady voice. At the police station, she’d replied to every question, she’d made a confession, signed it and dated it. Stella did not need to make any personal acknowledgement of her crime, the final, triumphant line of any therapeutic story.

  Stella is going to have to get up to put more wood on the fire. She hauls herself out of bed, pulls the blanket around her and shuffles into the other room. She clears one pane with her sleeve. It’s still snowing. She brings some wood in and keeps the fire going. Stella wraps herself in the damp blanket and lies down on the rug in front of the stove.

  They wanted a motive, a motive for matricide, like they couldn’t complete their picture if she couldn’t give them a motive. But if there was a motive, Stella could never have put it into words. There are some things that can’t be put into words, things there are no words for, things you know but hardly know, and somewhere deep down, somewhere beyond words, a whole different life is lived continually, a life before and beyond the words for telling it. Prison, they said, hardly out of earshot, could well be quite the wrong place for this one: she’d be better off up the road. Have you seen her eye
s?

  There were four reviews of Stella’s case. Her medical records were shared out, thumbed, annotated. No-one agreed with anyone else. Report after report, no-one was any the wiser. Stella shrugged and said again she was sorry for what she’d done, she was sorry she couldn’t help them any further, if anything did come to her, she’d let them know. The last case conference looked from one person to the next and told Stella that was all, thank you very much, she could go.

  Marcia was waiting to escort her back through all the locked gates and echoing corridors. She looked at Stella and smiled. Marcia, the only one who wasn’t trying to wring words out of her, the only one Stella wanted to tell anything to. Marcia’s big bunch of keys jangled against her hip. She said not to worry, you can write it down in your own time. When the time was right, the words would come. Then she’d be lucky if she could keep them away.

  All Stella had wanted was to get out of Holloway and for the seven years to pass so she could get the hell out, put it all behind her and start her life again. How she’d longed for the day those gates clanked shut behind her, how she’d itched for it. And then, when it came, it was like it had sneaked up on her and taken her unawares. It came too suddenly and it came too soon. Stella wasn’t ready. The day of her release landed on her like the meteor landed on the dinosaurs. It landed on her the very moment she no longer wanted it. Stella’s release was no release at all.

  They’d practically had to push her out, their big smiles showing too many teeth. They were shoving money into her fist and handing over the black plastic bin bag that contained everything that belonged to the departing Stella Moon; pushing her out into the world, her time done. The gates had squealed along on their metal rollers and clanked shut behind her. She’d stood there for a moment, looking about, feeling very small. Then she’d pulled the little blue suitcase out of the black bag, stuffed everything into it and pushed the empty black bag back through the bars of the gate. They could keep it. Stella stood tall and crossed the road to the bus stop.

  Now, at the Beach Hut, Stella knows she should find something to eat. Or at least a hot drink. Stella knows this. But she doesn’t move. She stays where she is, shivering and wrapped in the damp blanket. She stays close to the fire while outside the snow still falls.

  For the first time since she left Holloway, Stella is missing Marcia with a longing that is deep and physical and makes the whole insides of her jagged and empty. The realisation that she has never really missed anyone before in her life comes as a shock. Some sort of shift is happening, tectonic plates bump and scrape and realign. Stella turns over, her back to the fire. She feels so sick, she wills sleep but she knows it won’t come. She will get the notebook again and write some more.

  Tell Marcia. Tell her what? That Home is a decrepit lodging house with boarded-up windows, fit only for rats and insects, stinking of vomit and Frank Fanshaw’s rancid sweat? This isn’t what Marcia wanted for Stella. Tell her about the poison cupboard? Death in every jar and bottle, death in the séance, death in the medical bag, aborted foetuses. Tell Marcia you killed Baby Keating as well as your own poor mother. See if Marcia’s got any time for Stella when she hears all that. Memories are black stains creeping under the wallpaper, making hideous shapes. Look at them, they all look like Stella Moon.

  At the Beach Hut, huddled beside the fire, Stella is in a prison a hundred times worse than Holloway.

  Dearest Marcia,

  I know how hard you tried to help me and I’m very grateful for all you did, but since I left Holloway everything’s gone wrong and I’ve discovered even worse things and it’s all gone belly-up and I’m never going to be able to have a normal life. I mean literally Never, so I’m saying goodbye now. Goodbye, dearest Marcia, and God bless you – and thanks again for everything, Marcia. It’s me that’s failed, not you.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The day the snow came, Gareth came too. He struggled more than five hours to get from Newcastle to the Beach Hut, though Stella didn’t know much about that until later. The journey shouldn’t have taken more than an hour, but on that day the snow blocked the A1 south of Morpeth and Gareth was diverted the long way round via Ashington and the coast – five hours in a long line of headlamps and tail lamps shuffling in single file behind the snow plough.

  Gareth brought with him various newspapers, because there were bits in some of them about Stella. He didn’t tell her then that someone from his own office had been yapping to the press. Gareth wanted Stella to leave the Beach Hut then and there, he said he could get her into some sort of safe house, where the press wouldn’t be able to get at her. He talked about police protection, and about changing her identity and living as a completely different person. Her past – to all intents and purposes – erased. Stella could see Gareth meant well, that he was concerned for her. She couldn’t think of how to tell him all that was beside the point, how to break it to him that there was another killing to be atoned for. And Stella knew that even if she went along with Gareth’s plan, sooner or later she would still have to face up to what she had done, and the sooner she did it, the sooner it would be off her conscience. And as for changing her identity, Stella said an emphatic ‘No’ to that. Gareth didn’t understand. He called her stubborn and ungrateful. Let him think what he likes. Stella’s only just beginning to find out who she is: she’s not going to start changing identity now.

  Anyhow, the press didn’t worry her, not now she’d decided to turn herself in. Having made that decision, Stella had somehow freed herself from a dead weight, and had started to write things down. She wanted to get that done, for Marcia – she owed it to her. She had a project now. Something she wanted to do for someone she cared about. Gareth was a distraction. He would get in the way.

  The papers Gareth brought said nothing Stella hadn’t seen or heard before – the likes of her shouldn’t be running loose, should be permanently locked up, in the public interest, how could the public be expected to sleep soundly in their beds knowing people like her had the run of the place? The government’s too soft on crime by half, etc. The fact that Macalinden wanted to unearth the truth about Baby Keating left Stella unmoved: she’d be giving it to Macalinden on a plate the minute she turned herself in to the police, which she was resolved to do as soon as she could get away. Stella couldn’t quite take in what Gareth was so panicked about. She was resigned to everything.

  There was a photograph in one of the papers, the same one from seven years ago. Gareth laughed at it, perhaps trying to be light-hearted. He kept saying he wanted to help her start again. Stella tried to laugh along with him. Couldn’t bring herself to tell Gareth it was all far worse than he realised. She’d made up her mind to see this through, with or without Gareth’s support. She’d give herself up, confess to killing Mrs Keating’s baby and take whatever was coming to her. Gareth was oblivious. If she insisted on staying put, he said, he would coach her on how to speak to the press. He’d been on courses. The secret was not to be caught off guard, to say what you wanted to say, regardless of their questions. But hopefully, he said, they wouldn’t find Stella – not just yet – not if she kept her head down. The snow was a good thing, it’d deter them from travelling any distance.

  Gareth brought whisky – Glenfiddich, two bottles. He poured some into plastic beakers. Stella didn’t want it but didn’t like to disappoint him, so she sipped small sips every time Gareth did and said nothing when he topped her beaker up a second time, then a third. They talked about the freakish weather, Gareth’s good fortune in getting through at all. He held up the Chronicle at arm’s length and laughed at the photograph of Stella, compared it to her real face, laughed some more, drank some more, peered through the window and watched the snow, still falling. Over his shoulder he said Stella was ‘his’ case now, Geoff had handed her file over, Gareth would be looking after Stella from now on, responsible for her rehab. And he’d been thinking, he said, he might use her for his Case Study for his MSc dis
sertation, if she was agreeable? Watch this space, he said. Stella said nothing. Gareth was in a different world. Nothing of what he said touched her. Gareth came away from the window and sat down next to Stella. The Chronicle lay open on the floor with Stella’s picture staring out. Gareth almost had his foot on her face.

  ‘Here’s to the future,’ Gareth said, holding up his beaker and bumping it against Stella’s, ‘Here’s to…’

  Stella got up and walked over to the window.

  She’d rather not look at that photograph. If Stella looked at it closely, she’d see not herself – not Stella Moon – but Muriel. She’d see her mother’s horrid wide eyes and how crazy they looked. Stella Moon would disappear into the image, she’d fuse with Muriel, she’d be lost for good.

  Stella cannot tell any of this to Gareth. She wishes he hadn’t come. She has to leave Gareth sitting by the fire, his tie and his belt undone, pouring another drink, opening a packet of Cheddars and talking with his mouth half-full of cold pork pie. Gareth peering at the photograph, asking if there was a radio in the place, did Stella want another drink, should he put another log on the stove, did she have any other photographs from when she was small? It was like Gareth was on holiday, a weekend seaside break.

  Stella slipped into the bathroom. She stood in front of the mirror. If she looked into the mirror she would see Muriel’s eyes, she would see they were crazy. She would see why they made people afraid, why they made Stella afraid. She pulled the Wellington off her foot and hit it against the mirror, she hit it and hit it and hit it. She wanted the mirror to be shattered, for the wiry red hair and the wild wide eyes to be smashed in pieces.