My name is Adam Cain. I'm seventy years old and live in Edinburgh. I've something that needs to be said.
When I was a boy living in East Lothian we were very poor. My mother, a single parent, was too proud to claim National Assistance and instead opted to do back-breaking agricultural work.
During school holidays she would send me off to spend the day with the families of her friends until she returned home late each afternoon. I found this arrangement dismal and disorientating, shy lad that I was.
Then late one summer she asked if I wanted to make a few bob working in the fields. Being used to enduring poverty, always making do with second-hand clothes, receiving pre-owned birthday presents, getting my meagre pocket money by returning glass juice bottles for the deposits, I jumped at the chance.
Next day I was on the coach with a team of pickers, all women, rattling along farm roads surrounded either side by ripe fields. Aged twelve, I was on my way to earning my first wage outdoors in warm sunshine.
Once we arrived I saw others who'd travelled in a different bus. Among them were youngsters roughly my age who'd been taken on earlier in the school holidays.
Turned out I'd been drafted in as an extra pair of hands at the last moment. I was also warned it was all strictly off the books and to tell absolutely no one.
The other kids looked even poorer than me, even neglected. Some I recognized from a few academic streams beneath me at school. They were pretty rough. I wasn't afraid of them but neither did I warm to them. Remember that I was a little withdrawn.
We children were put to work on a field of gooseberry bushes. The pay was two shillings per basket handed in to the gaffer. I was keen to get started.
However, the crop seemed particularly poor that year, with few gooseberries on any of the bushes. My heart sank, knowing I'd be working all day to make very little cash.
It wasn't until many years later I realized we were actually gleaning the field some time after the women had gathered in the main harvest.
But one kid decided he knew how to deal with the situation. He would creep up on newbies like me, tip up our baskets and then pick up what fruit he could for himself. This happened a few times during the first week.
Naturally, it was pointless to complain to the gaffer. In any event, the misdemeanours usually took place at some far-flung part of the farm where there were no other witnesses.
OK, you've read this far and want the confession promised in the story title. Here it is.
The farmer had been digging a drainage channel close to an edge of our field. As he was creating the new channel he was also filling in an old ditch, with plans to plant over it the following season.
Then one day, though he hadn't completed work on either of the ditches, the farmer downed tools to go off and attend to a job elsewhere, leaving just me and the feral kid.
When the boy had worked his way closer to me, I offered him a drink from my juice bottle. It being hot and sweaty work, he gladly accepted. He also smirked at what he took to be an obsequious gesture on my part.
Still on his knees beside his baskets, both eyes closed, he put the bottle to his mouth and drank. From his body language it was clear I wouldn't be getting the bottle back.
I waited until he went to take a second gulp before kicking the glass down his throat - smashing his teeth and tearing the soft tissue at the back of his mouth.
He was unable to scream. I went on to pick up a shovel from near the ditches and hit his skull repeatedly.
When he seemed a goner I dragged him over to the old ditch and rolled him in. I then spent the next couple of hours filling in that small section as his body lay at the bottom, unconscious but twitching.
At the shift end I took his baskets to the gaffer and received what should have been his pay. No one inquired about the missing boy until I heard someone, perhaps his mother, mention his name just as I stepped aboard my bus home.
The following week there appeared a newspaper article about the boy. It said he was deemed missing, and the police apparently had no leads.
Dear reader, I've never confessed this crime to anyone, that is not until now.
However, when working the same field the following summer I did note the farmer had completed work on the ditches. I also appreciated how particularly well the crops were growing in that corner.
OK, I need to get ready for what I gather will be my final hospital stay this afternoon. Thank you for reading.
Genesis 4:8