Confessions From The Confessional

Isn’t it weird, to think that policemen are human too? You see them on the streets; bobby hats like navy 3D toilet seats, ready should some inebriated inbred smash a bottle over their defenceless head as part of a well-thought out Get Into Jail Free card. And you assume that they were always such law-abiding, sanitised goody two shoeses. They’re probably blandly married to a faceless, beige-wallpaper woman called Sarah, with three angelically bland children, and a bland white picket-fence life with a plush little Audi on the drive. But you only have to look inside this office to know that, actually, policemen – and, of course, women (We couldn’t forget the women; not in this politically correct society) – have their illegitimate vices. Perhaps not the hookers-and-heroin lifestyle that you or I could enjoy, given a lowlife’s ill-advised descent into depravity, but a rather whiter type of vice. One that you’d still judge them for.
Cordelia, for instance. She watches junk food TV. Like The X Factor, and America’s Next Top Model. And when she’s indulging – gorging on the calories that mindless televised stupidity provides so amiably – she feels useless, like she’s a stereotypical British moron, and she has to drown her sorrows in Tesco’s ice-cream. Then she feels even worse, knowing that she’s only buying from Tesco’s because Waitrose’s prices are out of her league. Damned recession. But she comforts herself with the knowledge that, one day, she will find Prince Charming. And they will live happily ever after in a white picket-fence house with a plush little Audi on the drive. She would never admit such abhorrently saccharine fantasies to anyone, because she is a balls-out feminist.
Toph, her counterpart, is given to much blacker fantasies. These mostly involve Cordelia, a plush hotel room with a grand satin bed, himself and a packet of protection. On occasion, these idle delights are joined with subtly saucy lingerie; the sort that could stop traffic with a hint of lace and a whiff of violets. Because Toph has always liked the smell of violets – they’re so patently feminine. He likes feminine women who pretend to be feminist. Like Cordelia is. He once told Marty about his little crush, but Marty was so scathing about love that Toph gave up. Thank fuck that Marty’s such an amnesiac of a drinker.
Marty is gay. He’d never admit it to anyone, let alone himself, or indeed his wife and kids. They will never know. He never satiates himself with clandestine porn. He never glances for a second too long at risqué episodes of Torchwood. He never sneaks off to the swingers’ club down the road. No; he is content to revel in his melancholy. Secrets make you enigmatic. Enigmatic; a word you wouldn’t normally use to describe Marty. But we’ll get to that, in good time.
Be forewarned. None of these vices will be of any use to you. The fact is, that were it not for the suspected suicide of Father Amos in the nearby St Michael’s Parish Church, these secrets may have come to light. Marty would have divorced Sarah, Toph would have made more of a drunkenly passive Cordelia, and Cordelia would have married Toph and they would have been blissfully married. Happily ever after.
But Father Amos popped his own clogs, and after that... after that, they discovered his vice; a yellowing little diary. Hereafter, the confessionals of a Miss Catherine Selby came to light. And that, my friends, is where Cordelia, Marty and Toph come into play. Like little pawns on a chessboard. It’s just that I felt it should be known that the three of them are flawed individuals, and you should know that. After all – you’re not perfect, are you?