This Perfect World (14 page)

Suddenly I see how professional and how subtle it is, this
smooth intimidation of troublesome little old ladies.

‘I am Dr Millar’s colleague,’ he says. ‘Please.’ He gestures
with his hand for Mrs Partridge to speak. His face is all
sympathetic encouragement, the frowning eyes, the smiling
mouth. Mrs Partridge opens her mouth to speak, but then
his bleeper goes. He looks at it to read it, spends a moment
pressing in a quick reply, pops it back in his pocket, then
he’s back with us again, frown and smile sliding simultaneously
back into place.

‘I want to take my girl home,’ Mrs Partridge mutters, and
then she clamps her mouth shut tight, sticking out her chin,
like there’s nothing more to be said.

‘Of course you do,’ the kind doctor says, and both the
frown and the smile deepen. ‘That is only natural. But we
must do what is best for Helen.’ He pauses for a second,
then adds, ‘That is what we all want, is it not?’

I am finding him increasingly irritating. ‘When do you
expect Helen to be ready to go home?’ I ask. It feels strange
to call her by her proper name. She’s always been Heddy to
me. As in
Heddy P smells of wee
.

The doctor raises his shoulders and his hands in an exaggerated
shrug, as if such knowledge is beyond him. He drops
the smile, too, and backs up the shrug with an extended
bottom lip. He has very full lips for a man – some people
would think them attractive. ‘That depends on Helen,’ he
says enigmatically.

‘What do you mean?’ I ask.

He stares at an area above my head for a moment, concentrating
hard as if searching for words that I might understand.
When he’s found those words he looks at me and says,
‘Helen’s cooperation is vital to her recovery. At the moment
we do not have that cooperation.’

‘She wants to go home,’ I say. ‘It’s obvious she does. She
wants to be with her son.’

‘It is not just a matter of patching Helen up and sending
her home again,’ Dr Wolf says, as if I was so stupid as to
think it was. ‘Helen has issues that need to be worked
through.’

‘How can she work through anything if she’s sedated all
the time?’ I can hear myself starting to sound fractious. He
is infuriating me with his controlled patience. Now he nods
his head to one side as if conceding my point, and is about
to reply when Mrs Partridge butts in.

‘We were managing all right at home,’ she mutters, to no
one in particular.

Dr Wolf raises his eyebrows at this, and there is a short,
uncomfortable silence. Then he looks at his watch. Pointedly,
I look at mine too. I am in just as much of a hurry as he is.

‘We need to be sure this will not happen again,’ he says
and there is a definite full stop after his words. We are being
dismissed. He stands up from the table; we stand also. He
puts out his hand; in turn we shake it once again, and then
he opens the door and holds it for us as we trot out after him.

‘Try not to worry,’ he says with a last, economic smile.
‘We are doing our very best for Helen.’ And then he is off,
marching back down the corridor with his coat flapping out
behind him.

We stand in that corridor, Mrs Partridge and I, and watch
him disappear. When I turn to look at her, she is still staring
into the distance, coat zipped up to her chin, shopping bag
in hand, just like she’s waiting for a bus.

‘We have to go,’ I say. ‘The children . . .’

‘Yes, dear. Of course, dear,’ she says, and turns and starts
hurrying towards the exit, so that I have to walk quickly to
keep up with her. I was afraid she’d want to go in and see
Heddy again, before we left, but she pushes straight out
through those swing doors and back along the endless
labyrinthine passages towards daylight. She doesn’t speak
again until we are outside, both of us flinching as the brightness
spears our eyes.

‘Thank you, Laura,’ she says then, and she says it so
formally I wonder if she’s been rehearsing it in her head as
we walked. ‘For all your help, for your kind interest in
Heddy—’

‘It’s nothing,’ I interrupt, wishing she wouldn’t go on. But
she does, of course.

‘For bringing me here, and giving up your valuable time.
You have always been most kind to Heddy, you and all your
family.’

She is so sincere and I am so ashamed. ‘Really, Mrs Partridge,
it’s the least I could do,’ I say, and for the moment, at least,
I mean it.

On the way back Mrs Partridge lights up a cigarette inside my
car, and I haven’t the heart to tell her to put it out. It’ll take
me days to get rid of the smell, and James will do his nut if
he notices. I open my window and try to breathe sideways.

There is something I just can’t understand.

‘Why does she do it?’ I ask. ‘I mean, if she knows they’re
going to stick her in hospital, away from Nathan, why does
she do it?’

‘My Heddy’s been unhappy for a long time,’ Mrs Partridge
says quietly, breathing out smoke on a dragon’s sigh. ‘Since
long before Nathan was born.’

This isn’t the answer I’m after. Heddy’s unhappy face was
a fixture of my childhood, as predictable and as necessary
as Christmas. The guilt would knock me over if I let it.

‘But why does she do these things if it means she is taken
away from her son? Why make herself even more unhappy?’

‘Hormones,’ Mrs Partridge says and I try not to notice as
she tips her ash onto the floor. ‘First she lost the baby. Then
it took such a while for Nathan to come along. We thought
that would make things better, but there was the post-natal
depression, see, and the bereavement still, from the first baby.
And the money worries.’ She sounds like she’s making a list.
It could be a shopping list. One hundred and one things to
buy so that you, too, can be like Heddy Partridge. ‘Then her
husband left her, just when she needed him most. That came
especially hard to Heddy, after losing her father so young.
And she was never happy about her weight.’ She stops. She’s
run out of reasons.

‘But surely she’s just making it worse for herself,’ I persist.

‘Yes, dear,’ Mrs Partridge says. ‘She is. But she can’t help
herself. She doesn’t know what else to do.’ She looks around
her and finds the unused ashtray in front of the gear stick
and grinds out her cigarette. ‘It’s all just too many things for
one person.’

And that’s the truth of it. Too many things. One of which
was me.

The minute I get home I close the front door behind me and
take my shoes and all my clothes off in the hall, and leave
them there. Then I run naked up to my shower and stand
under it before the water is even running warm. I don’t stop
to take my make-up off first, and I can feel my mascara
running into my eyes, stinging them. I clamp them shut; I
want the water all over my face, all over every inch of me.
I feel I need to be washed, and washed again, before I can
even begin with the soap. I start on my head first, groping
for the shampoo bottle without opening my eyes and tipping
far too much out. I scrub and scrub until my scalp feels
scratched raw. Then I move on to my body, working my way
down bit by methodical bit so that nothing gets missed. I
even soap my face, which I never, ever normally do, and my
skin tightens in objection. Then under my chin, in my ears,
across my shoulders and down.

And as I wash I am mentally retracing my steps, going
over in my head everything that I have touched with my
hands before I got in the shower. The handle to the bathroom
door. The inside of the front door where I closed it
behind me, the outside where I pushed it open. My keys. The
car door handle;
both
car door handles. The steering wheel.
The gear stick. I will have to go over them all with Dettox,
and then I will throw away the cloth. I try to think where
Mrs Partridge’s hands have been and I remember her searching
for the ashtray; the whole dashboard will have to be sterilized.

The thought comes into my head to get out my steam
cleaner and clean the car seats. But I haven’t the time before
I have to pick up Arianne from Carole’s, and I wonder if
that might perhaps be going just a little bit far. The thought
stays there, though, and I know I’ll end up spraying the seats
with Dettox, just in case.

Even though my hands have been washed, as they’ve washed
the rest of me, I now wash them again, paying attention to
every groove and line between fingers and around knuckles.
Hospital germs and bugs get everywhere; I can almost picture
them, burrowing into my skin. I do not have a nail brush
inside the shower, so I press my nails into the soap and dig
hard, feeling it clog up underneath them, right down, where
the germs might hide.

The bathroom is thick with steam when I turn off the
shower. I rub myself dry, then wipe a clear patch on the
mirror and see the awful mess the soap has made of my
make-up. By the time I’ve cleaned my face properly and got
dressed, I’m really running late. There isn’t time to redo my
make-up or dry my hair.

I hesitate over the clothes in the hall. For just a second I
wonder if I should take them to the dry-cleaner’s, in case
I need them again.

I take the optimistic route, and chuck them all in the bin.

I make it to Carole’s on time by the skin of my teeth.

Penny is just coming out of the gateway with Sam perched
on her hip when I get out of my car. In one glance she’s
taken in my wet hair, my bare face, my change of clothes.
As unobtrusively as possible I try to peel my shirt away from
my back where it is sticking to my skin, damp from the
Dettoxed car seat.

‘Got time for a quick coffee?’ she asks casually, lowering
Sam to his feet.

‘Sorry,’ I say and, borrowing from James, I pull an
I’d love
to stop and chat if only I had the time
face. ‘I’ve got a splitting
headache.’

Penny’s eyes are almost popping with curiosity. She’s about
to speak and I’m racking my head for quick excuses, but
then she is distracted and I am temporarily saved, by Belinda,
who is just coming out of Carole’s front door.

‘Laura!’ Belinda calls, rushing up the pathway towards us,
Molly following at her heels. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

‘Lucky you,’ Penny mutters quietly, under her breath.

I can feel Penny’s gaze slipping away from me and
wandering down to Belinda’s rather wide feet, which are clad
in a pair of navy-blue loafers. Between these unfortunate
shoes and the too-short trousers are what look suspiciously
like popsocks, in a worrying shade of beige. Out of the corner
of my eye I notice Penny stick out one of her own mock-crocodile-skin boots, pivot it on its pin-thin heel and make
the comparison.

‘You haven’t got any make-up on,’ Belinda accuses me,
gawping at my face with undisguised horror.

‘I know,’ I say. ‘I’m running late.’

Belinda proceeds to make me even later. ‘I want to talk to
you about French classes for Arianne,’ she says, of all things.
‘There may be a space coming available soon in Molly’s class.
I could put a word in for you, if you like.’

I stare at her hamster face staring at mine. French classes
are the last thing on my mind right now.

‘And I wondered what you thought about the girls doing
flute lessons together,’ she carries on. ‘They’re starting them
at St James’s Hall in September. I’ve put Molly’s name down
already.’

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Penny says to me, taking Sam by the
hand and somewhat reluctantly letting me go.

And so I am off the hook for now, but a juicy story gets
all the juicier for the waiting. I am well aware of this. My
naked face on its own would be enough to bring empires
down, around here.

My mother phones again that evening, when the children are
eating their tea. Twice in one week is not like her at all. I
hear her voice and I wonder if there is some mother–daughter
telepathy thing going on along the psychic airwaves. I hear
what she has to say, and I know it.

‘Laura,’ she says, without preamble. ‘There’s something
I’ve been meaning to tell you, but I keep forgetting. Just a
day or two before we moved I bumped into old Mrs Partridge
in the High Street. You remember the Partridges, don’t you,
darling, from Fairview Lane?’ She doesn’t pause long enough
for me to reply, which is probably just as well, but carries
on, ‘Well, it seems poor Heddy’s had some kind of a breakdown
and has had to go into hospital. Mrs Partridge had
been having a terrible time. I did feel sorry for her.’ Hesitation
is slipping into her voice now, slowing her down a little. ‘I
gave her your phone numbers, just in case things got too
bad. You don’t mind, do you, darling?’

‘No,’ I say, keeping my voice as level as I can. ‘Of course
not.’

‘Only I did feel so sorry for her. For both of them. They’ve
had a very hard life, the Partridges.’

I can hear the pity in my mother’s voice, but also something
else, much more disturbing. And it’s something directed
at me, I can feel it.

‘It’s probably something and nothing,’ she says, brightly
now. ‘I’m sure she won’t need to call you.’ The pity is jollied
away on a light little laugh, but the something else is still there.
I can hear it. And then she says, ‘But if she does call you, you
will try to help her, won’t you, darling? You will do what you
can?’

And I think I know what the something else is. It’s doubt.
My own mother thinks me incapable of being nice.

I tell James later, but he’s not that interested. He’s had a hard
day at work and he finds the description of Belinda’s footwear
and her bumptious enthusiasm for all things French or musical
much more entertaining.

‘God, she is one pushy mother,’ he laughs, twirling spaghetti
carbonara around his fork and swigging back his wine.

But when I tell him about my trip to St Anne’s I see his
face shut down a little. He is quiet as I speak; he shovels
pasta into his mouth with his head tilted slightly to one side
as if I have his full attention, but I know he is not really
listening. He’s thinking about work. I know this because of
the politely fascinated expression on his face. I see this expression
a lot. Sometimes it tempts me into telling him something
totally wild, such as that a family of badgers has taken
up residence in the study and used his Chelsea programmes
for bedding, just to catch him out. But not tonight.