This Perfect World (20 page)

‘You are lucky,’ Penny says, ‘to have a garden like this, so
close to London.’

‘Mmm,’ Tasha hums, in that tone that only the truly fortunate
dare adopt – that tone that lets you think that, to them,
it’s all something and nothing. ‘It’ll be a pain to maintain,
though,’ she says, meaning either the pool or the garden, or
both.

We all nod and sympathize, making it quite clear that
we’re not jealous – no, not at all.

‘That’s the trouble with big gardens. And big houses, too,’
says Liz, who’s still living in the house that she and Tim
bought when they first got married, now with three kids and
one bathroom between them. ‘They’re a lot of work.’

‘I just wouldn’t have the time,’ agrees Penny a little too
eagerly.

‘I was thinking of getting some sort of marquee,’ Tasha
says, ‘for our house-warming party. What do you think? And
I’ll need a couple of decent-sized patio heaters. Some of those
really big industrial-sized ones.’

‘You know, they’re really bad for the environment,’ I say,
and it comes out too sharply, not because I’m a perfect saint
about such things, but because I’m feeling prickly. It’s been
creeping up on me all afternoon, all through this fawning
session. Penny and Liz look at me aghast. Tasha looks out
across the beautiful garden towards her beautiful daughter
with a slightly hurt expression on her face.

‘Well, they are,’ I say, in defence.

‘Rupert and I actually take a lot of care to offset our
carbon emissions,’ Tasha says a little huffily, still without
meeting my eye.

‘Of course you do,’ Penny jumps in, then she says to me,
‘And anyway, it’s only
once
, for heaven’s sake.’

‘Yes, Laura,’ Liz says, so they’re all rounding on me now.
‘It’s not like she’s going to be using them
all year
.’

And who am I to dare criticize Tasha? I stick a sweet smile
on my face and back-pedal fast. ‘Of course not. Now and
again can’t hurt. And anyway we don’t want to freeze, do
we?’ I laugh, remembering too well how it felt to be in exile,
and knowing how easily I could end up there again. ‘Didn’t
Fiona Littlewood have one of those at her garden party last
year? I’ll ask her where she got it from, if you like. I’m seeing
her on Saturday.’

They all look at me curiously now, Tasha included. They
know that I can’t stand Fiona Littlewood.

‘Dinner,’ I say, flatly. ‘The Littlewoods, with Juliet and
Andy. Our turn.’

‘Poor you,’ Penny says, and the others murmur sympathetically.

You know how it is, you get into these rounds and rounds
of dinner parties and the whole thing becomes like a roulette
game: who did you have last time, who the time before, who
have you been to, and who with whom? And then when
you’ve sorted out the right guests so that you don’t offend
anyone, and fixed a date when everyone’s free, you have to
get the food.

I loathe cooking, the hours spent ploughing through recipe
books, then trawling round Sainsbury’s in search of obscure
ingredients upon which your whole ensemble depends. I hate
it, whenever; but more than anything I hate it when I’m
cooking for Fiona Littlewood.

The girls know this, and they understand why. Not for
Fiona Littlewood some impromptu pasta dish washed down
with copious amounts of Sauvignon. Oh no. Fiona Littlewood
is the benchmark of domestic perfection by which we all
measure ourselves. Fiona Littlewood is the perfect cook.
Dinner at Fiona’s is an invitation to be received with honour
and returned with dread. She is the sort of woman who can
stuff a live lobster as if it were a pepper. There is a section
in her wardrobe devoted to pinnies, in a variety of fabrics
and colours, to go with every outfit, including evening wear,
and I have never, ever seen her get one dirty. Even afternoon
tea with the children at Fiona’s house is a full-blown Aga
affair with pinwheel sandwiches (home-made bread of course),
scones and three-foot-high cakes, effortlessly produced. Never
did a fish finger cross the lips of a junior Littlewood.

‘That woman is a marvel,’ Tasha drawls. ‘Do you know,
she did the catering for the Christmas fair almost entirely
single-handedly. Six hundred mince pies.’

‘Sickening,’ Liz says. ‘I don’t know how she has the time.
And with all those children, too. What’s the latest one called?’

‘Minka,’ I say.

‘Minka!’ Liz screeches. ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

‘So what are you cooking?’ Penny asks.

‘I’m not,’ I reply. ‘I’m having it catered.’ My voice drops
like a stone into water. They stare at me, wide-eyed, as the
ripples roll out. ‘Well, I haven’t even got time to go shopping.
I’m going to my parents’ tomorrow and I won’t be
back till Friday.’

Penny’s mouth has dropped open. Tasha’s perfectly pale
face is looking a little flushed. There is something dangerous
in the brightness of Liz’s eyes. I observe them, strangely
detached.

‘Who’s doing it?’ asks Liz, and there’s a slight disapproval
in her voice. Mostly I think it’s just jealousy that she didn’t
think of doing it, or wouldn’t dare, but there is also the slight
sense that you’re not a real woman unless you do your own
hostessing.

‘Nicola Blakely,’ I say. ‘Lives on Barlow Road. You’ve
probably never heard of her. I hadn’t till I looked her up.’

‘I
have
heard of her!’ Liz exclaims, and Tasha and Penny
are both leaning towards me now, nodding their heads in
frantic agreement.

‘She had a child that went to Carole’s for a while – don’t
you remember?’

‘Weird child, wasn’t it? Funny eyes.’

‘Weird mother.’

‘Fiona can’t stand her. Didn’t they both do the same cookery
course once?’

‘It was college, wasn’t it? Weren’t they at college together?’

‘Don’t you remember them at the nursery Christmas party,
bitching about each other’s vol-au-vents?’

I don’t, but I can’t think anyway. Can’t think of anything
but Nathan, seated on my lap in the dark and crying for his
mother.

‘Oh, this is so hilarious!’ Penny squeals. ‘You mustn’t tell
Fiona. She has to think you did it all.’

‘I can just see it now.
This chicken supreme is wonderful
,’
Liz mocks. ‘
You must give me the recipe
. Oh, Laura you
mustn’t tell her.’

‘I won’t,’ I say and my voice is so cold it would freeze
lesser beings. Not these women, though; they are too knocked
out by the joke to notice the chill. ‘The food will arrive half
an hour beforehand. Back door, of course. And the plates
will be collected in the morning. No one will know.’

They are staring at me like schoolgirls, hiding their thrill
behind their hands. Yes, Tasha’s hand is actually up there,
against her mouth, perfect nails coyly displayed. You’d think
I was doing this for their entertainment. You’d think I’d
found the cure for ageing, or for the boredom of married
sex; for something important, you know, in our little world.
I look at their faces and I see that I have. I see my kudos
rising up and shooting through the metaphorical roof.

‘Oh, this is brilliant,’ Tasha says through her fingers. ‘Fiona
mustn’t
know.’

‘Just imagine,’ Penny says, ‘if Fiona Littlewood thinks there’s
a better cook in Ashton than her!’

‘How will she cope?’ laughs Liz, and so they go on, thrilled
with my wit and daring.

I find myself looking away. I cannot be bothered to laugh,
or not to laugh. There is a commodity much like cement
settling itself in the space between my stomach and my heart.
I watch the children play and I think how they run around
on Tasha’s huge lawn as if they owned the world. I try to
picture Nathan running around with them, in and out of
those trees, and I can’t. I can only picture him seated on my
lap, crying.

There was a boy at infant school called Michael Napps. We
called him Nappy-pants.

He was a small boy, with rather a large head and lots of
thick, curly hair that sprang upwards in gravity-defying rolls,
making his head seem even bigger. His mum made him wear
white socks, like a girl, and elasticated-waist shorts that he
pulled up too high, so that they came almost up to his chest.
And he talked to himself; we’d seen him.

Sometimes, when we were bored, we’d look out for him.
We’d spy him wandering around the playground on his own,
muttering to himself and making strange noises, and we’d
creep up behind him and shadow him. He seemed to imagine
he was driving some kind of car, and when he realized we
were following him, he’d make weird little peep-peep noises
out of the corner of his mouth, shunt up an invisible gear
and try to run away.

And we’d run after him, chasing him into the trees that
ran along the far side of the playground.

He’d try to hide behind a tree, but we’d find him.

‘Nappy-pants! Nappy-pants!’ we’d taunt, rounding on him.
His trying to hide worked to our advantage, for it meant
that the dinner ladies couldn’t see him if they looked over
from the playground; they could only see us, a bunch of
sweet little girls playing nicely by the trees.

He was like a scared animal when trapped. Once caught,
he didn’t even try to escape. He’d just stand there pinned
against the tree, quivering, and staring at us with watery-bright
eyes.

‘Nappy-pants!’ we’d hiss at him, putting our faces up close
to his. ‘Nappy-pants!’

If we did this for long enough – and that was the aim, of
course, to do it for long enough – he’d start to fart, out
of nerves, I suppose. We’d have our faces up close to his
and suddenly we’d notice it, the stink, coming up.

‘Urgh!’ we’d shriek, wrinkling our noses in horror. ‘How
disgusting
! Nappy has pooped in his pants again!’

This was just a little something we did for a change now
and again, when we got tired of picking on Heddy.

What fun there is to be had when you are young, and fortunately
perfect. It seemed to me back then that some people
are born to be picked on, and others to do the picking.

*

Thomas, Arianne and I arrive at my parents’ house just a
little bit late for lunch on Tuesday, with what I hope will
be enough clothes stuffed haphazardly into the back of the
car. I didn’t have time to pack properly; I’m sure it will be
noted. My parents live all the way out past Exeter, way
further from Ashton than the couple of hours or so that my
mum likes to think it. I’m sure that when they moved she
envisioned all our holidays and weekends spent hacking
down for visits, but in fact this is only the second time I’ve
been. Somehow that’s all I can manage, however much they
mind and expected it to be otherwise. They want me to go
down for a full week in the summer, with the children, and
I’ve said I will because I can hardly say no. And I want to,
of course I do. As my mother tells me, it’s good for the
children.

The children, the children.

They are tired and fractious and hungry when we finally
get there. Thomas is feeling sick and Arianne has wet herself
because there was absolutely nowhere to stop for the loo for
the last hour. Hardly the arrival my parents were expecting.
They are standing by the road looking out for us. So are one
or two of the neighbours.

‘You’re late,’ my mother says through her china smile as
we stagger out of the car. ‘I’ve had lunch waiting for over
an hour.’

And lunch has to wait even longer while I sort out the
children, who don’t want to eat at all, by which time my
mother is almost as stressed as I am.

‘I expect they had too many sweets in the car,’ she says
as the children pick at their food.

‘They didn’t have any,’ I say.

‘You used to get travel-sick. You’d grown out of it, mind
you, by the time you were Thomas’s age. It’s in the mind,
mostly.’

Thomas glares at her, and then at me. ‘It’s a long journey,’
I say, as nicely as I can.

My mother crumbles a bit of dried-up bread between her
agitated fingers. ‘Isn’t Arianne toilet-trained by now?’ she
says, and poor little Arianne, who is mortified, starts to cry.

But still.

They’ve a whole schedule lined up for us. They’ve gone
to a lot of trouble. There’s no time to be aimless, or bored,
or introspective. Walks, picnics, trips to the beach, where
every move the children make, every nuance in their behaviour
and every phase in their development – forwards or
backwards – is observed. It’s all
Do you think it’s a good
idea for Arianne to be sucking her thumb? Have you noticed
any improvement in her coordination yet? Do the ballet
lessons help?
And
You really should encourage Thomas to
learn a musical instrument, Laura. It will help him to focus.
He does have a bit of a temper, doesn’t he, dear?

It’s exhausting, but only what I expected.

Then Arianne lets it out, about Nathan.

We’re walking across the field behind the village, coming
back from feeding the ducks. My mum and Arianne are up
ahead, with Thomas bounding alongside, and my dad and I,
somewhat quietly, bringing up the rear.

My mum and Arianne stop and turn, and wait for us to
catch up, and when we do my mother says, ‘Arianne tells me
you’ve had a little boy to stay because his mother is ill.’
There’s something slightly accusatory about the tone of her
voice, as if she’s offended that I hadn’t already told her such
news myself. Arianne seems to notice this too and she’s looking
at me a little guiltily, a little confused. But it is typical of my
mother to take one of the children aside in this way and quiz
them for information. ‘She tells me that the little boy lives
in Forbury, Laura. Is the mother anyone I know?’

I wonder if she knows. She
can’t
know. She can’t have put
two and two together that quickly.

But who else do we all know who still lives in Forbury?
Lie, and I’ll be digging myself a hole, I know it.

So I say, ‘It’s Heddy actually.’