This Perfect World (7 page)

Funny that I should think of that now.

Downstairs in the kitchen I pour myself a large glass of wine.
I can still hear the children grizzling away, but it’s becoming
intermittent now. Five times I’ve been called back upstairs,
bringing drinks, finding teddies. Five times I’ve gone up, and
each time I’ve said
I’m not coming up again.

I sit at the table and sip my wine, and wait as the silence
gradually eases down.

All day I have had the strangest sensation of going the
wrong way fast, like running backwards through a crowd.
And all day I’ve felt that at any moment I might bump into
Heddy Partridge. I keep getting the neck-prickling feeling
that she’s just behind me, that if I turn around she’ll be there,
moon-faced and rabbit-eyed, watching me.

This is so irrational. Heddy Partridge
makes
me irrational.
I know she isn’t going to come wandering out of St Anne’s
looking for me. I mean, just imagine it, big mad Heddy
roaming the streets of Ashton in her hospital gown!

It’s the girl she was that’s haunting me. Not the woman
that she is now, whatever that may be.

I have this image stuck in my head, of Heddy on her ninth
birthday. Heddy coming down the stairs in her house, ridiculous
as ever in her ballet clothes, stupid face open and hopeful
as a baby’s.

I didn’t
know
it was her birthday. It was a Saturday, and
there we were, picking her up for ballet yet again. My dad
always let me sit in the front for the short distance from my
house to the Partridges’, but then I’d have to go in the back
when Heddy got in the car, and sit next to her, because my
dad said I had to be
nice
. So because of her I had to move
away from my dad. The only time I ever got to be near him,
to have him to myself, to feel like I was
special
maybe for
a few minutes – and Heddy Partridge cut it short.

‘Go on, then,’ my dad said, and I got out of the car even
more reluctantly than usual to knock on the Partridges’ door,
because that particular Saturday it was raining, hard.

The rain dotted grey spots on my pink ballet tights as I
ran up the pathway, holding my coat up over my head.
Halfway up the path there was a huge puddle. I jumped wide
to cross it, misjudged, and clomped down onto the wet
concrete, splashing puddle water across the tops of my feet
and inside my school shoes.

‘Stupid Heddy Partridge,’ I cursed. ‘Stupid, fat,
stupid
Heddy Partridge.’

You’d think she’d be ready when we came for her. You’d
think a honk of the horn would do it and out she’d come,
but oh no, up that pathway I’d have to go, come rain or
shine. Up that pathway and into that house.

I rang the doorbell and listened to that awful chime.

‘Come in, come in,’ Mrs Partridge said, opening the door
and ushering me through the plastic strips to stand dripping
on the doormat. She pulled the door shut behind me, leaning
over me, close, with her arm outstretched to do so. She smelled
of the hard work of being Mrs Partridge, of cooking and
sweat and cigarette smoke. I shrank into myself, appalled by
her nearness.

‘Heddy!’ she called as the door clicked shut behind me,
shutting out the sound of the rain. Her mouth was close to
my face, her voice loud in my ear. I could smell her breath,
a smell of cats and fish and dampened-out bonfires. I pressed
my tongue against the top of my mouth and tried not to
breathe, for far too long, and felt my heart thump.

‘Heddy!’ she called again, away from me now, shouting
up the narrow stairs that rose steep and dark from the hallway
into the darker beyond. I let out my breath and quickly took
in another, through my mouth. ‘Heddy!’ Mrs Partridge yelled
again and her voice caught on a gurgle and a cough. The
cough rattled like water over stones, and as if in response
Mr Partridge started coughing too, from behind the half-closed
living-room door where he sat slowly, audibly dying.
I wished I was safely back out in the car, next to my dad,
who hardly ever coughed at all.

Mrs Partridge turned back round to me, a conspiratorial
look on her face and said, ‘It’s Heddy’s birthday today.’

I could smell her breath again. She grinned at me,
triumphantly, waiting. ‘Oh,’ I said.

Then Heddy came down the stairs, at last, fat pink legs
visible first, like butcher’s sausages in her ballet tights,
followed by the rest of her. Most of us wore pink leotards
now. Mine was the exact same colour as my tights, with a
thin belt around the waist, sewn on at the sides. Heddy’s
leotard was black and plain and cut low on the thighs with
thick elastic bunching against her flesh, like old-fashioned
knickers. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked
at me, all bright-eyed and expectant.

They were both looking at me, and waiting.

‘Happy birthday,’ I muttered, then I stood there impatiently
as Heddy shoved her feet into her school shoes and
took her anorak down from the coat rack. I’d got my hand
on the door latch and, as soon as I possibly could, I pulled
open that door and ran back down that pathway in the rain
to the car, and my dad. I wanted to get in the front, right
up beside him, but I didn’t, because I had to be
nice
to
Heddy.

I knew Heddy was following along behind me, but when
I opened the door to the back seats and clambered in, I saw
that Mrs Partridge had followed us too, come out in the rain
holding a broken yellow umbrella over her head. She bent
down to the front passenger window and tapped, and my
dad started when he saw her, as if he’d had a fright, which
would have made me laugh if I wasn’t so angry. He leaned
across the passenger seat to wind down the window, grabbing
at the handle with a clumsy hand. And then he put on
this stupid, gushy voice.

‘Hello, Mrs Partridge, how
are
you?’ he asked with way
too much enthusiasm. I cringed on his behalf.

‘Oh, good, good. Not so bad,’ Mrs Partridge said back,
and probably she was cringing too because there was this
awkward pause then, as if neither of them knew what to say.
And I sat there, thinking
Oh, just get on with it
, while Heddy
stuffed herself onto the back seat beside me.

And then,‘It’s Heddy’s birthday,’ Mrs Partridge announced,
as Heddy bumped her big self up against me.

Oh, woopy-dee. Bring out the trumpets and put an ad in
the paper. I wriggled across the seat to the far side and
pressed myself right up against the door to get as far away
from Heddy as I could. She smelled of wet dog.

‘Happy birthday, Heddy,’ my dad said, straining his neck
to look round at Heddy in the back.

‘Thank you,’ Heddy muttered, and blushed, and looked
down at her fat legs, flattened fatter against the seat of the
car.

I thought Mrs Partridge would go away now that she’d
made her grand announcement, but she carried on standing
there with the rain running down off her crumpled umbrella
and into the open window. Then, to my horror, she said,
‘Would Laura like to come round later, this afternoon, for
some cake?’

No, Laura would not, I wanted to reply, but my dad
answered for me, gushing, ‘I’m sure Laura would
love
to.
That’s very kind of you, Mrs Partridge.’

I sat the whole way to ballet staring out the window away
from Heddy, and fuming. And when we were at ballet she
seemed to think this unwanted invitation – and the extremely
unwanted, unfair acceptance – somehow gave her the right
to hang around me more than ever. When I hung up my coat
with the others she was there, hanging hers on the next peg.
I took off my shoes and left them under my coat and ran
over to the bench on the far side of the hall where some of
the other girls were sitting, to lace up my ballet pumps. I
squeezed myself in between the other girls, deliberately, so
there was no room for Heddy, thinking she’d get the message.
But still she followed me across the hall, and stood there,
totally ignored by everyone, until Madame clapped her hands
for us to get started. Then Heddy tried to stand next to me
when we did our circle exercises, so I had to dash across
the hall at the last minute and butt in on the other side
of the circle, just to get away from her. And then I was stuck
with her stupid face opposite me, all hurt and bemused.

She was like a dog following me around all the time; she
made me want to kick her. It wasn’t my fault that she was
too thick to know when to get lost. And it wasn’t my fault
that the only time I ever got to have my dad to myself – that
is, when he was giving me a lift somewhere –
she
had to
come along and spoil it.

She wanted me to tell the others it was her birthday. I
didn’t, of course.

I ignored her all the way home in the car too, staring out
the window and not speaking to Heddy or my dad, so she
was the one who had to answer him when he asked
How
did it go, did you have a nice time?
And then I hated her
even more for muscling in and talking to
my
dad when she
shouldn’t even have been in our car at all.

When we dropped her off, my dad said, ‘Have a very
happy birthday, Heddy. Laura will be along later.’

Before Heddy had even closed the car door behind her,
and knowing full well she could hear me, I said, ‘Dad, I don’t
want
to go round there.’

And my dad turned around and snapped at me, ‘How dare
you be so rude! It’s jolly kind of them to invite you.’ And
so I got another lecture all the way home, about how I
mustn’t be so selfish, about how I must make more of an
effort, about how I must be
nice
to poor bloody Heddy
Partridge. The injustice of it all was like a finger jabbing at
my head, like Heddy Partridge was put on this earth just to
make my parents forever disappointed with me.

If my dad liked Heddy Partridge so much, why didn’t he
go to her party? In fact, why didn’t he have her for a daughter
full stop, instead of me?

After lunch my mum gave me some money and made me
walk to the shops around the corner to buy Heddy a present,
even though it was still raining. I bought her a box of cheap
bath cubes, like you’d give to your granny, from the chemist,
and the worst card I could find, a hideous cheap thing with a
bunch of old flowers on the front. It was my dad I was angry
with, but Heddy bore the brunt of it. I spent the rest of the
money on sweets, which I ate, though they stuck in my throat.

My mum made me get changed, too, into something nice.

‘It’s not a party,’ I kept saying to her. ‘It’s just
cake
.’ And
mouldy cake probably, at that.

I sip my wine. Memory is a leech, sucking me back.

My dad walked me round to Heddy’s house. I expect he
thought I wouldn’t go there unless he actually took me and
watched me go in.

It
wasn’t
a party.

It was just me, and the Partridges.

‘Come in, come in. Come in out of the cold,’ Mrs Partridge
ushered me, all cheery-jolly, as she opened the door. Heddy
stood right behind her, dressed in a purple, smock-type dress
in some nylon material that had bobbled up, all down the
sides. Hideous, absolutely hideous. And she’d got her heavy
black hair pushed back from her face and held back by a
gold slide. She didn’t look any better for it. Some faces are
best left covered up.

‘Have a nice time,’ my dad said behind me and then the
door closed.

I felt like a Christian, thrown to the lions. Except, looking
back, I know there was nothing very Christian about the
way I thought, or felt, standing in Mrs Partridge’s hallway.

I stood there, clutching Heddy’s present in my hands, feet
cemented to the doormat. Mrs Partridge and Heddy stood
in front of me, leering at me. Then Ian Partridge came out
of the living room and leered at me too.

‘Well, don’t just stand there,’ Mrs Partridge said and moved
forward, putting one thin hand on my arm, the other on the
present. Instantly Heddy moved towards me too, eager hands
outstretched, and took that present. She tore at the paper,
and Ian sidled up closer to her, looking on. They looked like
Tweedledee and Tweedledumetta. I didn’t know how anyone
could get so excited over a box of bath cubes.

‘Thanks,’ Heddy said, all bright-eyed, like she meant it.

‘Go on in, then,’ Mrs Partridge said, steering me away
from that doormat. ‘Go and say hello to Mr Partridge.’

Now I have to say here that the one thing I dreaded more
than anything was having to go and say hello to Mr Partridge.
He gave me the creeps. Normally I avoided him by staying
in the hallway when I waited for Heddy to get ready for
ballet or Brownies; sometimes I wasn’t so lucky.

I could hear him behind that living-room door, rasping
away.

‘Go on, then,’ Mrs Partridge said, with a big nod of encouragement.
‘Go and say hello to Uncle Vic.’

Heddy and Ian stepped back, to one side, making a path
for me. All three of them watched. I took a step forward,
and another, towards that half-closed door. In my head I
chanted the words of a rhyme we used to sing, tossing tennis
balls against a wall and catching them again.

Uncle Billy with his big hairy willy
Uncle Bob with his big hairy knob
Uncle Jock with his big hairy cock
Uncle Vic with his big hairy dick.

I put my hand to the door to push it, and it caught on
the carpet and stuck.

‘Here,’ Mrs Partridge said, leaning over me again. She
gave the door a yank and a shove and it swung open. ‘Look
who’s here,’ she called to the shadow in the corner. ‘It’s little
Laura Cresswell.’ Then she dropped her voice again and half-whispered
to me, leaning close so that I could smell her
breath again, and feel it on my neck so that the skin prickled
and cramped, ‘Say hello to your Uncle Vic.’ And she more
or less pushed me into the room.

He wasn’t my uncle, and I hated her calling him that. It
made me terrified that he might try to give me a hug, like a
real uncle. Or, worse still, kiss me. He had paper skin, and
thin lips that disappeared into his teeth, and a great hollow
in his neck that drew right in when he breathed. He can’t
have been that old really, but he looked it. He looked like
death and beyond, and the only light in his eyes was the light
of fear that sparked up every time he coughed. And God,
how he coughed. You could hear the stuff coming up from
his lungs. I don’t know how Mrs Partridge, and Heddy, and
Ian could carry on like normal, moving about their house
with that cough as background music; it felled me into stillness.
He caught me with his eyes as he coughed – brown
eyes, dark, like Heddy’s, darker still against his colourless
skin.