This Perfect World (22 page)

Do I see a flicker in those eyes? Do I?

I talk at her, on and on. I talk like I will talk until I have
rammed it home. Like I will talk week after week, for as
long as it takes for her to get the message, for her to wake
up and pull herself together, if not for herself, then for the
child out there that needs her.

That that child’s been with me, I’ll use.

That that child will be with me further still, I’ll use.

And I’ll see Heddy screwed up with that knowledge until
it has her fighting herself and out of here.

Now here we are, seated around my glass-topped dining
table, the Littlewoods, Juliet and Andy Borrel, and James and
me. There’s a big mirror on the wall in my dining room
and in it I can see us all, and I think what an advert we
women are for André’s with our uniformly blonde hair. I bet
you couldn’t tell us apart from the back. Suddenly I wonder
if at André’s the stylists only do one style. Probably they do.
Probably among themselves they call it ‘the housewife’, and
slap it on us if we want it or not. I mean, how would we
know
if we wanted it or not? It’s just what happens. It’s what
we are.

‘Glass is so lovely,’ Juliet said as soon as we sat down.
‘Oh, I’d love a glass table. But don’t you find it impractical
with the children? I mean, how do you keep it clean?’

‘I make them eat on the floor,’ I said, and Juliet laughed
uncertainly, and wiped her fingers back and forth across the
glass, leaving behind a nice little smear.

They gobbled up Nicola Blakely’s monkfish in a citrus
crust with honey-glazed vegetables.

Fiona was most impressed. ‘This is wonderful, Laura,’ she
declared, more than a little surprised. ‘You must give me the
recipe.’

Even James said, ‘Mmm, this really is good, Laura.’
Somehow he managed not to notice the knock on the back
door at seven o’clock, and the lack of chaos in the kitchen.

And now we’re talking about schools. I keep trying to
steer us off the subject, but as soon as I think I’m getting
somewhere, Juliet has us reined in and back again. It’s driving
me senseless. I mean, what would we talk about if we didn’t
have children at the same school? Would we even be here,
like this? Would we know each other? Would we even
want
to know each other?

There must be something else. But with Juliet it’s all: the
kids, the kids, the kids – in which category she includes her
husband. Once I asked her what she was doing at the weekend
and she breezed back with, ‘God, we’ve got so much on. Two
parties on Saturday and another on Sunday.’ And I was thinking
Lucky you
and feeling a little miffed about all these parties
going on and me not being invited – when I realized she
was talking about children’s parties. She was just doing
the chauffeuring. That was it. That was her weekend.
And the thing is, she was happy with that.

Now she’s going on about the fund-raising committee for
the simulated rainforest in the sensory garden at school, and
that gets Fiona’s husband joining in with his oh-so-slightly-superior
but hey-I’m-down-with-the-mums inside knowledge
on the subject. He’s a governor. Well, he would be. And Fiona
of course practically
is
the PTA.

They refer to the headmaster by his first name. I can’t do
that. It makes me cringe. But they’re in the know, you see.
First-name terms with the lord of it all. It’s a status thing.
Clocking up points. It’s all about catchment areas and who’s
in and who’s out, and who ought to be in and who ought
to be out. Elbows to the fore, folks, it’s all shove, shove,
shove around here. It’s years until any of our children will
be going to secondary, but the battle started at birth. Let’s
face it, the options around here are private if you can afford
it, Catholic if you can’t. And if you can’t manage either of
those, it’s all-out war, charging your kid through music lessons
to try to get them into Elmsmead. And if you can’t even get
into Elmsmead, you’ll have your personal PR campaign
working overtime trying to convince everyone else that you
really
wanted
little Freddy to be getting down and under
with the locals at Watts Lane High.

Juliet and Andy can’t afford private, and they’re not
Catholics. Mention secondary-school options to Juliet and
she gets these weird contortions in the muscles of her neck.
Peter Littlewood mentions it now.

‘So where will you be sending your two when the time
comes?’ He says it to Andy, but Juliet answers.

‘We haven’t even
thought
about it yet,’ she lies, with a
laugh.

‘Really?’
Fiona and her husband say at the same time,
both of them overdoing the horror, and you know damn well
that there were tutors, music lessons and school-fees plans
lined up for each of their gifted little darlings the minute
they were conceived.

‘Well, anyway,’ Juliet says, stiff-jawed as her neck tightens
up, ‘we’re thinking of moving.’ Which is of course the other
option with regard to catchment areas, and gets us on to
property. And how much it costs. And the right time to move.
And blah, blah, blah.

I catch James looking at me with the faintest hint of a
smirk on his face. He’s enjoying all this. Normally I would
be too, in a way. In that I’ve-got-to-sneak-out-to-the-kitchen-and-down-myself-a-gin-before-I-kill-myself-laughing kind of
way. But tonight I can’t find it funny. I mean, why do we do
this? Why do we sit through such mind-numbing hell just so
that we can laugh about it later?

It isn’t funny. It isn’t a game. This is our lives.

They start talking about the old people’s home in Chestnut
Drive. It’s up for sale, apparently, as the old people can’t
afford to live there any more. There’s a rumour going round
that it’s going to be knocked down and replaced by affordable
housing, for key-workers: teachers and nurses and other
much-needed types.

‘We need our key-workers, of course we do,’ Fiona gushes.
After all, she can hardly purport to say otherwise. ‘But the
thing is, how can we be sure that the people the flats are
meant for won’t sell on? And then who will we have living
there?’

A shudder works its way around my table.

‘It’ll totally change the face of Ashton,’ announces Peter
Littlewood with finality.

‘It comes down to parking in the end,’ Andy says, and
Juliet nods vigorously in agreement, although we all know
it isn’t really about parking at all. That’s just a cover. It’s
really about the wrong sort of people, parking the wrong
sort of cars. ‘Sixteen flats, let’s say two cars each. That’s
thirty-two parking spaces needed.’ Andy pauses while we
absorb the brilliance of his maths. ‘It’s hard enough already
trying to park around here.’

‘Tell me about it,’ agrees Peter, who owns two cars himself,
the BMW that he drives to work in and the little Mazda that
he likes to run around in at weekends. This is, of course, in
addition to the people-carrier that his wife ferries the children
about in. ‘Sometimes I can’t even park outside my own
house. The last thing we need around here is more cars.’

I drink my wine. I know I’ve had too much. Something
pops inside my head.

‘It’s already been decided, hadn’t you heard?’ some mischief
makes me say as I dole out the dessert into glass dishes. ‘It’s
going to be used as a refuge for asylum seekers.’

The silence lasts for just seconds, but it is glorious.

Then, ‘Good God,’ gasps Andy Borrel, and turns an
alarming shade of mauve.

‘That is the final straw,’ states Peter Littlewood, and flings
down his napkin with a flourish.

The wives are staring at me, horrified. My husband is
staring at me as if he wonders who on earth I am.

‘Well, they have to put them somewhere,’ I say sweetly, as
I pass around the cream. ‘So why not here, in Ashton?’

Fiona Littlewood, who is spooning one of Nicola’s excellent
profiteroles into her mouth, appears to accidentally
swallow it whole and starts to choke. It soon becomes necessary
for her husband to smack her on the back, which unfortunately
causes her to slurp a little chocolate sauce down the
front of her blouse, which even more unfortunately is made
of silk chiffon. Instantly Juliet launches into a stream of
advice on how to remove stains from delicates, and leans
across the table to dab, dab, dab at Fiona’s breast with her
napkin.

All around me faces are purple, faces are white. My husband
is watching me with narrowed eyes.

‘Coffee, anyone?’ I ask.

‘What’s with the asylum seekers?’ James asks, later, as I am
stacking the plates and bowls for collection in the morning.

‘Just a little joke,’ I say lightly, and I try a little laugh, but
it comes out all wrong, like the brittle snapping of bones.

James is standing behind me. I can feel him watching me
as I put bowls on top of small plates, small plates on top of
large. I wonder if he will notice that they are not our plates
and bowls. He doesn’t. I wonder if he is going to ask me
what’s wrong, but he doesn’t. What I’d like is for him to put
his arms around me and hold me, but he doesn’t do that,
either.

He just stands there behind me as I create a perfect
pyramid out of Nicola Blakely’s white china. I find myself
unable to turn around. I put the last bowl into place slowly,
in order to prolong the task. I wish he would touch me, I
wish he would laugh, say something funny – anything – to
break the isolation that is wrapping itself around me like
a shroud.

Finally he moves. I hear him take a glass down from the
cupboard. Still with my hands and all my concentration on
the balance of that last bowl, I hear him pick up the whisky
bottle, unscrew the cap and pour.

There is a silence while he drinks. I wait for the tap as he
puts the glass back down on the side, but it doesn’t come.
Instead I hear him opening the kitchen door.

‘You’re in a strange mood tonight,’ he says, and he leaves
me alone.

I stare out of the kitchen window at the blackness outside
and I am flooded with many, many unwanted feelings.

I still have one finger on that last bowl, keeping it balanced
in place. Both the bowl and myself are perfectly still, but
there is a veritable cocktail of emotions racing through my
body.

James has gone up to bed; I heard his foot on the stairs,
then the landing, followed by the quiet opening and shutting
of doors. Now the house is silent, and here I am, attached
by one finger to my china pyramid.

I cannot think what made me stack the plates and bowls
so high, and I have the sudden urge to give that top bowl
a little wobble. I twitch my finger; nothing much happens. I
twitch it a tiny bit harder and the bowls creak in protest.
I watch, fascinated, as six bowls, six small plates, six dinner
plates and three serving dishes begin a slow gyration underneath
my finger, leading from the top down. I hold my breath
as they sway precariously and then resettle in a dangerous
imitation of their former alignment. My heart is pounding,
anticipation, excitement blocking out everything else. My
whole self homes in on the thrill.

There is a voice in my head saying
What if? What if?
It
is a voice I remember well.

I hold my finger still. All of me is so still I can barely
breathe. There is just my heart, jumping.

Dare you
, the voice says.

I crook my finger, then push it out.

The bowls slide from their tower like divers, synchronized,
and smash onto the floor. I count them down. One, two,
three, four . . . They explode into petals at my feet, hitting
the tiles and dancing out to a fanfare of exhilarating sound.
Each crash hits my ears like a whip.

Bowls five and six rock, hesitate, and stay where they are.

After the noise comes the silence, clean as ice. I am standing
in a sea of confetti. I expect to hear my husband come charging
down the stairs, but I hear nothing. He must be whiskied
away, sound asleep. There is just me, and what I have done.

It’s like a blood-letting.

Now I move, and the broken china crunches under my
shoes. I think of Thomas and Arianne coming down here in
the morning, and the guilt floods in. I think of their bare
feet, pink and soft and vulnerable. I know I must clear up
every last broken piece. I take the dustpan and brush from
the cupboard under the sink and feel the sharp slivers catching
and splintering under my feet as I move. I sweep and I sweep,
cleaning away my shame. When I have finished sweeping, I
go down on my knees and feel into the corners with my
hands. The floor is cold under my skin as I spread my hands
across the tiles, seeking out every last tiny shard. And I gather
them all up, picking them up with my forefinger and my
thumb.

I think I am done, when I find a small dagger of a piece,
hidden under the dishwasher. I pick it up, and suddenly I
wonder how it would feel, now, to cut its sharpest point
across my skin. I am wearing a black lace shirt – I never go
sleeveless if I can avoid it – and I bend my left elbow and
tip up my hand so that the sleeve falls back. The skin on my
inner arm is pale and the scars even paler, a cobweb of
ghostly lines. I could trace over them, and draw them all
back in. I prick a line in my skin and my fingers curl up in
defence. I scratch it down and feel it sting. A tiny drop of
blood creeps out and beads there; I tilt my arm and it runs,
a mere trickle, over my skin. I watch it, mesmerized. My
breath is in my throat, caught; needles prickle inside my
chest, and flashing behind my eyes, one right after the other,
are all the things, all the awful, wicked things, that I ever
did to Heddy Partridge.

And stuck in my head there’s this phrase:
What goes around
comes around. What goes around comes around
. A stupid
old cliché, going round and round, on autoplay.