This Perfect World (31 page)

Heddy sits there, and I wish I knew what she was thinking.

I sit down beside her on the brown Dralon sofa and I say
something stupid like
Isn’t it nice to hear the children having
fun?
I feel so thin and insignificant next to the bulk that is
Heddy, and I feel that anything I have to say will be thin
and insignificant too. But I have to say
something
.

‘Heddy, I hope you’ll be happy now,’ I say, but even that
has the edge of a threat in it. So I try again. ‘I really
do wish you and your mum and Nathan every happiness.
I really hope it works out well for you all.’ I sound so
wooden. How can I ever find the words to say what I really
mean?

Heddy sits there, looking at her hands in her lap. Her
lower lip is sticking out slightly, and there is just the faintest
rise of colour in her cheek. I know that Heddy hates being looked at, and here I am, sitting gawping at her, searching
for absolution. And of course I’ve seen her at her worst. I’ve
come along like a voyeur at a freak show and seen her felled
by drugs and misery, lolling in the prison of her own body,
unable even to wipe the dribble off her own chin.

My God, how she must hate me being here.

Outside a car has pulled up. I hear the metal clunk of the
door as it is closed, followed by Mrs Partridge’s high-pitched
Oh
,
hello
, and then a new voice, a man’s. The estate agent
has arrived and they’ll all be coming inside in a moment to
talk to me, because it’s me that will be dealing with things
when the Partridges have gone.

Suddenly, Heddy speaks. ‘I always hated living here,’ she
says. ‘It just makes me think of my dad all the time.’ Her
voice is low, quiet. She’s still staring at her hands and I can
only just hear her. ‘And now you’re here, and that makes me
think of your dad. Your dad loved you whatever you did.
My dad went and died.’

I don’t know what to say. Of all the things I thought she
might home in on, it certainly wasn’t this.

She turns her head to face me, but she can’t quite look
me in the eye; instead she looks just past me, and it’s
to the corner of the room, where old Mr Partridge used to
sit in his chair. ‘However horrible you were, your dad
still loved you. That time you fainted in the street and
your wrist was bleeding . . . your dad picked you up
and he carried you in here in his arms. I wished I had a
dad to carry me.’

As she speaks I see a thin tear slide its way down the side
of her nose. I see this and I feel as if my heart is going to
burst in my chest.

‘Oh, Heddy . . .’ Without even thinking I reach out to touch her arm, but she almost flinches, and looks down again,
at her hands. And another tear plops onto her dress and streaks
its way down her chest. ‘Heddy, I’m so
sorry
. . .’

I can hear the boys laughing out the front, and Arianne
shrieking
My turn
,
my turn!
and Ian Partridge slamming the
van doors shut, and Mrs Partridge saying
Are we done, then?
And then they’re making their way up the path, Mrs Partridge,
the estate agent and Ian.

‘For everything, Heddy. I am just so sorry.’

My heart is hammering. I feel like the inside of my face
is burning, I am trying so hard not to cry. I put my hand on
her arm again and this time she lets me. But then the front
door opens and swings back against the wall with a bang,
now that there’s no carpet for it to stick on, and Mrs Partridge
says
Ooh, steady there
, and the estate agent laughs his estate
agent’s laugh, and the moment is gone.

Mrs Partridge boils the kettle and makes tea in the two
remaining cups, and gives one to me and one to the estate
agent, like we are guests of honour. And she has bought Mr
Kipling cakes, two packets, which she opens and puts on the
arm of the sofa, and which the children somehow sniff out
and come running in from the garden to scoff.

Despite the fact that we have everything written down,
she is starting to panic and fuss now, and she uses the plastic
cake packet as an ashtray and stubs her cigarette out right
through it, into the arm of the sofa.

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ she clucks, and starts licking her thumb
and pressing it on the burn.

‘Mrs Partridge,’ I say, ‘please don’t worry. Everything will
be fine. I’ll come in twice a week for the mail and to check
the boiler, and if there’s any problem Mr Jarvis can call me.’

‘I’m sure there won’t be any problems,’ Mr Jarvis says and
he drinks his tea as fast as he politely can, and leaves. He
already has a buyer lined up. Some young couple, with not
much money, but plenty of enthusiasm – and boy, will they
need a lot of that!

And then it is time for me to go, too.

I thank God for the children, then, for their noise and
their chaos and their general distraction, because it feels so
weird now that this moment has finally come. Any second
now I’ll be crying. I tell myself it’s just the relief that they’ll
be gone and out of my life at last, but it isn’t that, it isn’t
that at all.

I think it’s quite the opposite.

‘Goodbye, Heddy,’ I say, but she doesn’t look up again
and really, what did I expect? Forgiveness? How could Heddy
Partridge ever forgive me?

Then Mrs Partridge is bustling me out of the door with
her endless thank-yous and last-minute instructions for the
boiler and the postman, with Ian crowding out the hallway
behind us. Outside, the sunlight spears into my eyes and I
am blinded for a second. Mrs Partridge grabs me suddenly
with her bony fingers digging into my arms, and pulls me
against her tiny body in a hug, and it’s all I can do not to
cry like a child.

‘Mrs Partridge, I am so sorry,’ I whisper again, into the
nicotine and sweat-scented nylon of her housecoat.

And she replies, ‘I believe you are, Laura. I believe you
are.’

And then Ian snatches me away from her and he hugs me,
too. Eventually I stumble into my car, blinking back tears,
and in the back the children wind down the windows and
they’re yelling
Bye
,
Nathan
, and Nathan and Mrs Partridge and Ian are calling
Bye
back and standing there and waving
at us, as I start up the engine and drive away.

‘I liked that car best,’ Thomas chants in the back.

‘I liked those pink cakes,’ chants Arianne.

‘I liked the yellow cakes,’ chants Thomas.

‘I liked that mattress,’ chants Arianne. ‘Mummy, mummy,
can we put a mattress in the garden to play on?’

And Thomas says, ‘Mummy, when can we go and visit
Nathan again?’

We’re not even out of Forbury and I have to pull over. I
feel as if I can’t breathe properly. I tell myself it’s just the
relief that it’s all over. I stop the car at the bus stop before
Forbury High Street and try to steady my head.

‘Why are we stopping, Mummy?’ Arianne asks. And,
‘Mummy, why are you crying?’

I just sit there for a second with my eyes shut, trying to
get a grip.

‘Are you sad because Nathan’s moving?’ Arianne asks.

And Thomas says, ‘Don’t worry, Mummy, we can go and
see him in his new house.’

As if we ever would.

I feel Thomas’s little hand tugging at the back of my hair
as he reaches forward to stroke me, and my head is just a
boiling mass of tears, but then a bus comes up behind me
blasting its horn and I have to pull myself together and move
on.

All the next day I wander about my house, aimlessly, moving
from room to room. The place is a mess because I’ve spent
so much time at the Partridges’ lately; there’s dirty washing
spilling out of the basket on the landing, and no food at all
in the fridge. And yet I cannot get on with anything.

I feed my children honey sandwiches and sit by as they
run in and out of the house still in their pyjamas, trailing
mud across the floor and dragging all the pillows and duvets
off their beds and into the garden to make a camp. Our
duvet ends up out there too, and the new cushions off the
sofa, which cost ninety pounds each from Osbourne’s.

I feel so disoriented. I tell myself it’s just a reaction, to all
that has happened. I tell myself this, but my self is not
convinced.

I just can’t get it out of my head, what Heddy said about
her dad, and about
my
dad. I can’t stop thinking about
that
day
, when my dad did as Heddy said and carried me into
her house in his arms and laid me on her sofa. And how she
stood there looking at me, and how she was feeling what I
now know she was feeling.

And what of my dad, who loved me whatever I did? When
I lay on that sofa with my eyes squeezed shut and heard him tell Mrs Partridge and Heddy and Ian that I was okay,
I
thought he sounded disappointed.

Disappointed with
me
, yet again.

And what about me? The only feeling I could register in
myself at the time was embarrassment, that I hadn’t put on
a better performance and made the cut a bit deeper.

Suddenly I remember my first concert at Forbury High,
and I remember how nervous I was because I’d got a big
part dancing, not just in a group, but on my own too for
some of it. My mum helped with the catering because that’s
what my mum always did; while I was dancing she was
organizing cakes onto plates and overseeing the cup quota.
She missed the performance entirely, though she took the
complements happily enough in the interval.
Oh yes, Laura’s
very good at her dancing, very good
, she agreed, pouring out
the teas.

My dad, though, he was there in the audience, right near
the front. I saw him sitting there, and gazing off into the
space beside the stage with a frown on his face for the whole
time I danced. And so he missed it all, too.

Though you wouldn’t know it to hear him afterwards.
‘Excellent show,’ he agreed with my mother, with the other
parents, with anyone else who was listening. ‘Laura did very
well.’

That’s Laura for you, folks – all-singing, all-dancing, always
putting on a good show. And there are my parents, doing
the same.

When I took my little wrist-slitting show to the Partridges’
front room I got my dad’s attention then all right. But what
good did it do?

I’ve a hollow inside me, an ache, like an old, old hurt.
Like there’s a cry inside me, cut off, mid-shout. Hurting myself could never make up for what I did to Heddy Partridge.
Each wicked thing that I did sits upon the track of my life
like so many twisted knots. They can never be undone.

When James comes home the children are still up, their
faces and their pyjamas all sticky with honey and mud.
They run in from the garden to greet him, leaving yet more
dirty footprints on the living-room floor, and start clamouring
for his attention. They haven’t spoken to him for
days, as all week he’s been in too late to see them, and
they’ve lots to tell him, about playing at Nathan’s house
and all the cakes that they ate and the mattress that was
as good as a trampoline. James stands there, braced against
the onslaught, trying to keep their grubby hands off his
suit. And every now and again he looks at me over the top
of their heads with a slightly raised eyebrow and a pained
expression, especially when he realizes that the mattress was
outside the house, and when he hears about the camp I’ve
let them make in our garden with our own crisp and pristine
bedding.

‘Well, I think it’s time you put your duvets back on your
beds now, don’t you?’ he says.

‘There’s a snail on Thomas’s pillow,’ says Arianne.

And, ‘Mummy said we could sleep out there,’ says Thomas.

James looks at me again, in disbelief.

‘Well, I didn’t say that they couldn’t,’ I say. I am curled
up on the end of the sofa. I try to raise myself up from my
lethargy, and find that I can’t.

James carries on looking at me, and his eyes narrow. ‘Would
our new cushions happen to be out there too?’ he asks.

I don’t bother to answer. The children are starting to whine
now, deflated by James’s lack of enthusiasm. ‘Right,’ he snaps, ‘I think it’s time for bed.’ And with Thomas and Arianne
hanging off his sleeves, he marches out to the back garden
and marches in again, dragging duvets and pillows and wailing
children; and out again, and in again, until all are deposited
where they should be, dirt and all. And then he comes back
down the stairs, leaving the children crying in their rooms.

Still I cannot stir myself.

James stands before me, with his hands on his hips. He
looks hot, and he looks angry, and there is a large yellowish
splodge on the front of his lapel. ‘Are you doing this just to
wind me up?’ he asks.

‘Why would I do that?’ I reply, but he just huffs and rolls
his eyes in exasperation.

‘I don’t suppose there’s any supper?’ he says and, when I
look at him blankly, ‘You know I have just come in from a
long day at work.’

‘I thought we could get a takeaway,’ I say, a little lamely.

James is looking at me intently,
critically
, as if trying to
suss me out, and I curl my legs up a little closer. Then he
says, ‘You know, I’ve some interesting news of my own.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Yes, really.’ He takes his hands off his hips and folds his
arms now, in front of him, barrier up. ‘Guess who I bumped
into on the train tonight?’

I look up at him. I wait.

‘Rupert Searle.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yes, and guess what he said to me? He said: are we going
to their party tomorrow night, as we’ve not yet replied?’

‘Oh,’ I say again.

He tilts his head to one side and laughs this bemused
what
’
s
-
going
-
on
-
here?
laugh, which isn’t really a laugh at all. ‘Laura, do you
realize
how embarrassed I felt? I didn’t even
know they were having a party.’