This Perfect World (23 page)

Where did it come from, this need to hurt? And where
does it ever end? It lies too deep, too buried.

The cut is thin and sore and mean. There is no thrill. There
is no escape. Already the blood is drying. I lick my finger,
smear it over the red, wetting it up again, rubbing it away.
My life crowds in on me and I am filled with shame.

I throw my dagger in the bin along with the rest of the
swept-up, broken china. In the morning I’ll pay Nicola Blakely
for the broken bowls. I’ll tell her that I dropped them, clearing
up.

I’ll tell James the same, and that I cut my arm in the
process, if he asks. But he won’t. Why should he? We are
pinned to our lives, blind. He cannot see. I cannot let him
see.

At first I sleep the thick, black sleep of too much wine, but
then I wake up suddenly, with a jolt. I thought I heard someone
crying. I lie still, listening, but all I can hear is my heart, and
James’s heavy breathing.

My eyes feel bruised and prickly. I squeeze them tight,
wishing myself asleep again, but my mind is racing, and there
is a thin worm of anxiety crawling over the bumps in my
spine.

I slip out of bed and cross the landing on leaden legs to
my children’s rooms, at the front of the house. I look in on
Thomas first. He is sleeping upside down with his feet on
the pillow and his head and most of his body hidden down
under the duvet. It used to scare me, him sleeping like this.
Several times in a night I would turn him up the right way,
only to have him wriggle back round again. Now I drop a
kiss onto the sole of his left foot and watch his toes twitch
in response.

Then I creep into Arianne’s room. She’s curled up on her
side, thumb just fallen away from her mouth and her beanie
doll tucked up in the crook of her arm. She is an angel with
her white-gold curls and her pink rosebud mouth cupped
around the ghost of her thumb. The curve of her cheek is so
beautiful and so perfect that it makes me ache. Gently I bend
and kiss her, and breathe in her warm honey scent. Her skin
is like velvet under my lips.

Sometimes my love for my children feels so huge and all-consuming
that I want them back inside me, unborn. Surely
every mother must feel like that? Surely even Heddy Partridge,
slashing up her arms and condemning herself and her son to
this prolonged and painful separation, must feel like this?

And sometimes my fears for my children are too fast and
too wild, spreading out roots like trees, too far, too tangled.
How much are they really mine? My Arianne, so sweet, so
eager to please. Blemish-free, waiting to be soiled. Could I
ever have been like that, even just a little? And Thomas with
his temper, quick in fists and kicks.
You need to watch that
temper
, my mother will say to me, if ever she sees him shout,
or throw a toy, or stomp off in a huff. Like she should know.

I had no temper. I kept it in, until the anger slithered out
of me anyway, poisonous and slow.

André is a terrible gossip.

He’s like the village notice board. We all come into his
salon with our little bits of information, and he gathers it
all together, and passes it on. He is central to our lives and
he knows it; he is hairdresser, flatterer, adviser and Ashton’s
own jungle telegraph. All communication passes through
André.

Naturally we use this to our advantage. If there is something
you want known, you tell it to André. As you can
imagine, there are times when this is very useful. For instance,
Tasha told André how much Rupert got for his bonus last
year, so now we all know how rich they are without Tasha
having had to tell us herself and risk boasting. And we know
that Samantha Brook’s husband bought her diamond earrings
and
a necklace for her birthday. And if someone’s having a
party, André will know who’s going, and who isn’t.

Today he is commiserating with me over the hassle of
finding a decent cleaner. Penny had told him I was looking
for one, and now he has a whole list of recommendations
from his other ladies. He’s even written down their phone
numbers for me. André is far more useful than any agency
– and a million times better than the one who sent me
Delores, this morning, who arrived nearly half an hour late
and with one arm in a sling.

‘You’re very late,’ I said when I let her in.

‘Is okay,’ she said, and shrugged.

‘And how will you clean with one arm?’

‘Is okay,’ she said again, though it very clearly wasn’t. But
any cleaner is better than no cleaner, and I had my appointment
at André’s to get to, so I left her to it. But I have to
find someone else. Someone permanent. Soon.

‘Oh, you have to be so careful, don’t you, though?’ André
sympathizes as he lifts up a section of my hair and wraps it
up in tin foil. ‘One of my ladies had a cleaner once who
robbed them of
thousands
, went through the drawers, found
the husband’s bank details, and wham, cleared him out before
doing a runner. And another had her house burgled by her
cleaner’s son. He’d had her keys copied. She kept little labels
on the keys, saying which one was for which house, you
know? He took everything. All her jewellery, everything. Never
got any of it back.’ He shakes his head at me in the mirror.
‘Sitting ducks,’ he says.

I listen to these horror stories with dread, and find myself
a little anxious to get back and check on Delores.

‘Oh, and you’ll never believe this,’ André says with sudden
mischief. In one hand he has a length of foil, in the other
he’s holding up several strands of my hair, which he waggles
now in excitement. I have no choice but to waggle my head
along with his hand, attached as we are by my hair. ‘One of
my ladies came home early one day and found her husband,
and her cleaning lady,
in bed
.’

I round my eyes, waiting for André to tell me who this
particularly unfortunate lady is, as I’m sure he will if prompted.
But he suddenly changes tack entirely.

‘Oh, I know what I meant to say to you. A friend of yours
was in yesterday . . . who was it now? The one with the awful
children.’

‘Juliet?’ I suggest and feel instantly ashamed. Eloise and
Jemima aren’t really awful. They’re gifted.

‘Yes, that’s it,’ André says as he starts painting on the
bleach. ‘She had some shocking news. Said they’re turning
the old people’s home in Chestnut Drive into a refuge for
asylum seekers. She brought a petition in. I’ve got it up
behind the desk. You can sign it on your way out.’

The next day I’m meeting Tasha and Penny for lunch. I walk
into Chico’s at one and they’re there already, sitting side by
side, coffee cups on the table in front of them. They must
have arranged to meet up early, to talk without me first. I
try not to feel annoyed. I try not to feel pushed out, but
Tasha’s busy talking on her phone and doesn’t even look up
at me, and Penny just gestures impatiently for me to stay
quiet, then turns back to Tasha and listens in on her conversation
with this ridiculous proprietorial look on her face. So
I sit down and listen in too.

‘I know, I know,’ Tasha keeps saying. ‘I know . . . I don’t
know
what
we’re going to do. It’s just
awful
. . .’

Penny tilts her head towards me and stage-whispers, ‘Tasha’s
had some
bad news.
’

My stomach does a little half-turn. It must be something
to do with the baby. ‘When I think what might happen . . .’
Tasha says into her phone, and her voice wobbles and she
starts blinking back tears. Penny’s hand shoots out and
squeezes Tasha’s arm, and I wonder if I could have shot my
own hand across the table any quicker and beaten her to it.

‘I know, I know,’ Tasha says. ‘I’ll try, thank you . . .’ Then
she puts her phone back in her bag, and sighs and dabs at
her eyes.

I sit there, and prepare myself to say the right thing.

‘Poor Tasha,’ Penny says, still with her hand on Tasha’s
arm. ‘You okay?’

Tasha manages a small, brave nod and looks at me at last.
‘Hi, Laura,’ she says sadly.

‘Tasha, what
is
it?’ I say.

But before Tasha can answer, Penny leans across the table
at me and says, ‘You won’t believe this. You know the old
people’s home opposite Tasha and Rupert’s new house? You
know it was up for sale?’

I nod, and keep my face carefully blank.

‘Well, it
has
been sold, and now it’s going to be used as
a refuge for asylum seekers!’ She sits back, breathing hard.
‘Isn’t that just awful?’

‘It’s just
awful
,’ Tasha echoes beside her, looking pale and
frail and beautiful.

‘Oh,’ I say. And I’m thinking
Oh shit!
Part of me wants
to laugh, but then I somehow miss the moment. They’re both
looking at me with matching expressions of tragedy and
outrage. And they’re waiting for me to say something more
than just
Oh.
‘Well, is that all?’ I say. ‘I thought you were
going to tell me something awful.’

Penny tuts and blinks her eyes dismissively, and Tasha says,
‘It
is
awful. We spent a fortune on our house, and now it’ll
be worthless with a load of asylum seekers living opposite.’

‘Yes,’ Penny says. ‘I mean, how would you feel if it
was in your road, Laura? You’d never be able to sell your
house. You’d never be able to let your children outside
your front door without worrying about asylum seekers
crawling around all over the place!’

I ought to tell them I made it up. I ought to laugh and
say
Hey, girls, it was a joke. I only said it to wind up the
Littlewoods and the Borrels. You should have seen their
faces!
And then we’d laugh and laugh.

Only I don’t think they would laugh. Their faces look
much like those other faces all puffed up and boggle-eyed
around my dining table.

‘It might not be that bad,’ I say, somewhat lamely.

‘Of course it’ll be that bad!’ Penny snaps.

And Tasha says in this slow, quiet voice that’s designed to
really drive things home, ‘Laura, do you have any
idea
how
much we paid for our house?’

I can feel my face getting hot. When Tasha speaks like
that it makes me want to slap her, friend or no friend. Suddenly
I don’t want to tell them it was a joke. I want to let them
sweat it out for a whole lot longer. I force myself to smile
sympathetically. ‘Why don’t we order some lunch?’ I say, but
Tasha closes her eyes in disgust.

‘I couldn’t eat a thing,’ she says.

‘Me neither,’ bleats Penny.

And so I have to sit there just nursing a coffee until it’s
time to escape and collect Arianne. And I listen to them, and
the things that they’re saying, and I find myself wondering
What kind of friends do I have?

The answer that comes back to me is cold and unwelcome.
The friends that I have are the friends that I deserve.

Even James is not amused.

‘I ran into Rupert Searle on the train,’ he tells me over
supper a couple of nights later. ‘He’s not a happy man.’

I raise my eyebrows over my wine glass and say nothing.

‘He told me it had come to his attention that the property opposite them is to be used to house asylum seekers,’
James says.

‘So what did you say?’

James shrugs one shoulder. ‘I said, “Oh dear, that’s tough.”’
He pauses to spear an artichoke and stick it in his mouth.
‘Apparently he’s thinking of enlisting a lawyer.’

‘It was only a joke,’ I say, but James isn’t laughing. He’s
studying me with this dark, remote look in his eyes, like he’s
trying to suss me out.

‘Rupert Searle doesn’t think it’s a joke,’ he says.

‘So why didn’t you tell him?’

James takes a long, slow sip of his wine, and puts down
his glass. ‘I think that’s up to you, Laura, don’t you?’ he says.
‘This is your little game, after all.’

When we first bought this house we made love in every room,
except Thomas’s of course, and Arianne wasn’t born then. It
took us over a week, including bathrooms. And it was the
best sex ever, slamming against sinks, and walls and tiles.

When it came to the turn of the living room we lay on
the sofa afterwards, surrounded by all the boxes we’d still
to unpack.

‘Do you think this is the sort of thing they do here in
Ashton?’ I asked into his chest.

‘I should think most definitely not,’ he replied, and I felt
so close to him then, as close as I ever could.

It seems like a very long time ago.

It’s my job to do the class list at school. You know, that
precious A4 sheet with all the children’s names on, and next
to them their parents’ names, their addresses and phone
numbers. The idea, of course, is that it makes organizing
your child’s social life so much easier if you have everyone’s
details all ready to hand. For example, if Thomas says he
wants to invite Ben home for tea and I don’t happen to know
Ben’s mother terribly well, I can just look on the list and
there she is, name and phone number. So easy.

Only there’s a lot more to it than that.

Not everyone is on that list. Oh, all the children are on
it, but not all the parents’ names, not all the addresses, and
not all the phone numbers. Some of the children have just
blank spaces next to their names, and the way we see it in
our little town is that there is only one reason for that, and
that reason is that their families are not the right sort. If they
were the right sort, they would have complied, so that everybody
else could look at the list and
see
that they were the
right sort.

So what you have, by being on this list, is in fact access
to an exclusive club. You can see at a glance which children
have the right sort of mummies and live at the right sort of
addresses, and therefore are the right sort of children for
your own child to invite home for tea. For example, if – and
this is such an unlikely if – Thomas was to say he wanted
to have Brendon Stone home to play, I could take one quick
glance at my list and say
Oh, I don’t think Brendon is very
suitable. Why not have Milo
[oh, the joke of it!]
or Toby
instead?