"Father forgive me, for I have sinned.

"I didn't mean for it to happen. Honest. I know it's my fault, I know I should never have let it happen, I was corrupted, I was wrong - it's only when it's the middle of the night, those moments that feel like total clarity when you wake up and see the moonlight casting dirty puddles of luminescense on your floor and the shelves and cupboards are vague forms in the shadows that I find myself whispering those rebellious thoughts that tell me I was right, and they were wrong.

"I was six months pregnant at the time; eighteen years old. Parents weren't exactly ecstatic, of course, but they cried at my wedding, picking me out the shiny silk dress that felt like melting ice against my skin, the bouquets of flowers with their choking scent and the clink of glasses at the reception as He held my in his meaty great fingers and told the world that I belonged to him now.

"The violence didn't even wait until the honeymoon was over (Majorca, gorgeous, scent of frangipani floating on the sea breeze as He tossed me against the hotel room wall and sent tears of blood pouring down along my jawbone). He told me everything I should have always known, that I was a slut and I knew it. I ruined his life, yeah, I know that. I destroyed him, but that was just me thinking wrong, cause under the neon club lights and the beautiful stained glass windows in the chuch, it felt almost like we were in love.

"I met here a couple of months after I got home. September. She seemed to fit in perfectly with September. She was by the canal, its surface was all black and oily, and she was lying there with a bottle of Smirnoff lying on the grass beside her, her hands behind her head and her breath curling up in wreaths of steam from her tiny red lips, lips like a doll mouth. She had a wool cap pulled down over her auburn hair and a lip piercing. I remember thinking she was asleep at first, but she was looking for shapes in the clouds.

"Audrey. Her name was Audrey. She used to complain it was old-fashioned, but she was a modern girl, the sort of girl I used to be, who doesn't give a shit - oh, sorry. God, listen to me. Swearing in front of a priest. Sorry. She was eighteen like me, she was a student at the local college. When He was out at work we used to walk down to the children's play park and sit on the swings, dead leaves under our feet and cold air swirling around us, and tell each other about our lives, you know? I felt safe with her. I mean safe as in, she wasn't going to turn around and hit me. Emotionally it was entirely different. D'you see what I mean? Like when I was with her, inside my head I was a plane taking off, up up and away, and I was sure it was going to crash but the whole experience made me light-headed and almost happy.

"I didn't realise what she was doing to me. Not at first. It was firework night it all happened, I remember that. He was going to an office party, but we'd had a row that night, and he'd said I wasn't to go out. But I saw Audrey walking past ours, and I ran out and caught up with her, and we went and sat by the canal watching the reflections of fireworks. I kept looking at her and seeing them reflected in her eyes. We were sitting so close, keeping warm from each others bodies and whispering things I can't even remember now. She had a bottle of red wine in her lap and we kept taking huge gulps of it and then - sorry. I'm sorry. I can't - OK. She kissed me. Or no. I kissed her. I'm not sure. I just remembered the way her lips tasted. They were all chapped from the cold, and red from the wine. When we stopped, she had that mischevious glitter in her eyes and my head was exploding with fireworks.

"She said "I love you" and I didn't know what to say.

"So like I said, I was six months pregnant. After that we still met up at the swings, but we'd always sneak off and find somewhere private and we'd kiss and talk and I never once thought about how I was betraying Him, just that when I was with Audrey I was safe and free. We talked about me leaving Him, because she was scared he'd hurt me, but I knew I never could.

"New year's, and it was a week before the baby was due. We'd had our romantic new years meal together, me and Him, and I knew He was going out to celebrate with his friends at a bar and god forgive me, I called Audrey and I told her to come over and we'd drink in the new year together. Yes, I know I was pregnant, I know it was bad for the baby, but at that point I was so far gone I wasn't even thinking. We were in my room listening to one of Audrey's CDs, and she was wearing this tiny black dress and I don't want to tell you what I was thinking when I saw her wearing it, oh, I can't believe I ever thought things like that. She was kneeling on my bed and the fireworks were going off outside the window and I leant in and kissed her, you know, one of those kisses that make the whole world erupt with light, and then He came in.

"I suppose it was inevitable. I did it and I deserved what I got. He hit me so hard that I saw blood fly from my mouth and scar the wall. Audrey was screaming. I was knocked to the ground he was punching me in the face, I think he was breaking my jaw. I couldn't hear anything any more except the fireworks. I just wanted to black out and then I did. And when I came to there was this horrible weight on top of me, and I blinked and I looked and he was - oh god, I'm sorry, oh god..." A pause, a sob. "He was lying there, and there was a kitchen knife in his back, and Audrey was just standing there looking very pale and shaking.

"I stood up and I reached out for her, and she said "don't touch me". I thought she was in shock, maybe she was. I didn't know what I was doing. I started to cry. Then I started screaming for help. She didn't try to stop me. The neighbours must have heard me, because the police came in not long after, and she was still just standing there looking just so pale. Like she was dead, not Him.

"Anyway, she's being sentenced tomorrow, and they reckon she's going down for murder. Life. She says she killed him to save me. I know I won't see her again apart from in court tomorrow. After I heard all the stories, heard people saying how I changed when I was with her, and I saw how she seduced me, and that was how I lost Him - well... I just need to be normal again. I just need it to be me and the baby. She tricked me into thinking that I felt free and open with her, and that I could maybe have had a happy life, but I know that's not true. That's not the life that was meant for me.

"I love Audrey. I love her. But what I did was just wrong, sick, unnatural, right? Everyone tells me it was. I'm almost getting to the point where I don't fall asleep imagining that long hair tickling my cheek, and that's good, right?

"That's it. That's the true story. Now I need you to tell me I can be forgiven for what I did. Because I know everything that happened was my fault. And I need to be free now."