This Perfect World (25 page)

‘How are you?’ she asks.

And I lie, ‘Fine.’

‘And the children? How are they?’

‘Fine too, thank you.’

And then we have the usual conversation in which she
says too much and I say too little. News from the village,
and the advice she has given to various committees on various
issues; the advice she gives me now on Arianne’s teeth and
Thomas’s boisterousness (well, he is a boy), et cetera, et
cetera. My toast pops up and goes cold.

And then she asks if there is any more news on Heddy
Partridge.

‘Not really,’ I say, somewhat woodenly. The last thing I
want to talk about is Heddy Partridge.

‘Will you be seeing her again, do you think?’

‘I expect so.’ I can hear my own voice sounding tight and
a little huffy, as if I am a child again, wanting approval.

‘That is good,’ says my mum, and there we have it: approval
given.

‘I’m not so sure about that,’ I say, just a little sarcastically.

‘Of course it’s good.’ And then she gets to the bit that
really matters: ‘Your father will be pleased. He sends you his
love. He’d come to the phone, only he’s in the greenhouse
repotting his tomatoes.’ And before she goes she adds, ‘It
used to trouble him greatly, you know, your . . . unfriendliness
. . . to Heddy in the past.’

Oh, I know that all right. I hang up the phone and there
is a tightness in my chest. I think of my father too busy with
his tomatoes to come and talk to me himself. It is always
best for my father to be too busy with something.

There was a disco for us up at the secondary school, a sort
of advance welcome. Everyone was going – and not just us,
but the new intake coming up from the other two junior
schools too. It was the biggest deal – and my dad went and
offered Heddy a lift.

Not only that, but he didn’t even tell me until we got to
the end of our road and turned left, instead of right.

‘Where are we going?’ I so innocently asked from the back.

And my dad said, ‘We’re picking up Heddy.’

‘We’re
what
?’

‘We’re picking up Heddy,’ he said again, calm as anything.

‘We can’t’ – panic had me bolting forward in my seat –
‘we’re picking up Jane.’

‘Well, we’re picking Heddy up too.’

I stared at the back of his neck in disbelief. ‘But
why
?’

‘Because Mrs Partridge doesn’t want her walking home
alone in the dark.’

‘We’re not bringing her home too?’

‘We are.’ He spoke in this infuriating, fake-reasonable voice,
but I knew he wasn’t reasonable at all. I knew he was sneaky
and mean and he’d deliberately not told me before; he’d
deliberately given me no warning, no way to duck out.

‘Dad, I can’t go in with her,’ I pleaded, starting to cry.

‘Yes, you can,’ he said. ‘You can all go in together.’

‘Dad, I can’t.’ I was really panicking now. We were mere
moments from Heddy’s house. ‘Dad, I won’t!’ I leaned forward,
grabbed hold of his arm. ‘Dad, I won’t go in with her!’

‘Let go, Laura,’ my dad said, and he tried to shake me off,
but I hung on, pulling at his sleeve. ‘Laura, let go!’

But I wouldn’t. I pulled at him and I pushed at him, crying
and pleading and begging him not to ruin my life, and my
dad snapped.

He spun around so that the car started swerving across
the road, and he slapped me once, twice, three times, his
hand slamming down on me, on my arms, my legs, whatever
bit of me he could reach. His face was scarlet and spit
sprayed out of his mouth as he shouted, ‘Shut up! Shut up!
Shut up!’ And down came that hand, down and down as I
screamed and tried to coil away from it, and the car zigzagged
down the road.

We stopped outside Heddy’s house. My dad had both hands
on the steering wheel now, and he was staring out the windscreen,
breathing heavily. I was curled up on the back seat
in a ball with my knees drawn up, and was shaking uncontrollably.
It seemed as if we stayed like that for ages, but
Heddy Partridge must have been eagerly looking out from
the house for us, because suddenly there she was, opening
up the car door and plonking herself in beside me where
Jane should have sat, smelling of chips and old fried eggs.

My dad unlocked his hands from the steering wheel, and
started up the car. Slowly, I uncurled my legs. I couldn’t stop
crying; I pressed myself back into the seat and turned my
face to the window, trying to sniff quietly. I could feel Heddy
staring at me. No one said a word. Then we got to Jane’s
house, and Jane got into the front seat, and she kept turning
around and staring at me too. But still no one said a word;
not until we pulled up outside Forbury High School and then
my dad actually had the nerve to say, ‘I’ll pick you up at
nine-thirty. Have a nice time.’

Have a nice time, indeed. I didn’t even go into the disco.
I spent the evening in the toilets, crying my eyes out and
watching the bruises coming up on my arms. I don’t know
what Heddy did all evening, and I really didn’t care.

I don’t remember my dad ever speaking to me properly
again after that, and I certainly haven’t ever spoken properly
again to him.

I force myself to go and see Heddy again on Saturday, and
this time I don’t make up excuses about hairdresser appointments
or anything else, and this time James doesn’t even ask.

I try to tell myself that I am doing this so that I can get
Heddy and her family back out of my life, so that things
will all go back to normal. But it isn’t that. Not any more.
The normal that I had wrapped up and painted so perfect
and so nice is fast unravelling. I don’t think it ever really
existed.

And I find myself thinking more and more what it must
have been like for Heddy. I don’t want to think about her,
but she creeps into my head anyway, and the guilt is starting
to swamp me. It pulls at my limbs; it drags me down.

It’s the young Irish nurse on again today, and she lets me in
with a smile.

‘Oh, hello there,’ she says, like we are old friends now.
‘You’ll find Helen a lot better today. A lot better.’ She puts
her hand on my arm; her fingers are small and very white,
as though they have been scrubbed to death. ‘It’s a grand job
you’re doing there,’ she tells me so sincerely. ‘Your visits have
made a massive difference to Helen. Massive. Doctor was
saying so just yesterday.’ And then she pats my arm and she’s
off again, shoes squeaking down the corridor.

A massive difference, the nurse says, but how could anyone
ever tell when Heddy says nothing, does nothing, just sits
there with her eyes so black and empty? She’s propped up
on top of the bed wearing what is either a dress or a nightie,
shapeless over her own shapelessness, a ghastly purple colour
and made of the sort of material that would go up with a
crackle and a bang if you stood too close to a fire. It reminds
me of that old party dress she wore all those years ago.
Someone must think that purple suits her. And I don’t know,
maybe it does, but who’d ever look properly at Heddy to
see?

She watches me as I close the door behind me, and carries
on watching me as I pull over the chair and position it
midway between the bed and the door. I sit down, and I am
close to her feet, which are naked and splayed wide on top
of the covers. Her dress comes halfway down her calves,
revealing the mottled and lumpy skin of an old lady, and on
her feet the bunions and sores. Her vulnerability disgusts me;
it is too close, too real.

‘Hello, Heddy,’ I say, and still she watches me with those
dark, slow eyes. How can I ever know what she sees and what
she doesn’t see? What she remembers about me and what she
doesn’t? ‘I hear that you are much better today,’ I say, and I
start on my lecture, going over and over the same stuff: how
she must make the effort, take charge of herself and her life,
and be there to be a proper mother to her son. And on and
on. I hear my own voice, sharp, preaching at her, and I hate
it.
She
must hate it.

My God, how she must hate it.

Again I wonder what I’m doing here. And I think just how
desperate Mrs Partridge must have been to ask for help from
me, of all people. Half an hour is all I can do – half an hour
of breathing in that air that stinks of cabbages and shit, and
repeating the same old stuff over and over until my throat
is dry; but I would die, and I mean die, rather than drink
from the same water jug as Heddy Partridge, however many
spare paper cups there are piled up on the side.

Half an hour drags like a very long time. And all that time
Heddy watches me. I say, ‘Do you want anything? Can I get
you a drink or anything?’

She doesn’t answer, of course. I look around the room to
avoid her gaze, but there isn’t much to look at. It’s a bright
day outside and sunlight is forcing its way through the slats
of the blinds, but once inside the room it wastes into greyness.
I drift away from Heddy, and start thinking about the
mess of my own life; about the school playground come
Monday morning and how I must walk into it, and that I
am the one nobody wants to talk to now. And I’m thinking
How can it even matter?
It cannot matter. And yet it does,
it does. You have your kids and there you are, forced back
into the playground whether you like it or not. And then
that stupid old saying comes grating back into my head: what
goes around comes around. And the irritation, and the
monotony, and the whole awfulness of all of this have me
snapping, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Heddy, do you not think we’d
both rather not be here?’

And then Heddy moves her foot. Her right foot. She turns
it in an arch so that it is pointing inwards instead of outwards,
and then she kicks it back out again. I glance at the foot; I
glance up at her face, and panic jolts in my chest. She is
staring at me with those same dark eyes, but then she squeezes
them shut, screwing up her face. She shakes her head, she
opens her eyes again, and they are flooded, inky with seeing.

‘Why are you here?’ she says, and I am so used to her
silence that it throws me completely.

‘To help your mum,’ I reply, and my heart is starting to
pound.

‘Why?’

‘Because she asked me.’

‘But why?’ she says again.

I cannot hold her gaze. ‘I don’t know,’ I say, and stand up
to leave, but I stand too fast and the blood rushes in my
ears. For seconds I have to just stand there, holding on to
the back of the chair until the sparks leave my eyes. Then I
drag the chair back round to the other side of the room,
pushing it up against the wall, and when I look back round
at Heddy her eyes are shut again.

I tell myself she is asleep. I want her to be asleep.

She fancied Christopher Chapman. You could see it all over
her face. You could see it in the way she followed him around
with her big, dopey eyes, and the way she went bright pink
if ever he looked at her.

Christopher Chapman and Heddy Partridge? What a joke!
Christopher was the most popular boy in the class.

Back then, there was this weird system where we lived
that meant we didn’t move up to secondary school until we
were twelve, coming up thirteen, and in the last year of junior
school we were a bad mix of hormones and boredom. We
played this game – and really, it was just a game – where
we took it in turns to get off with each other, whenever we
had the chance. We played it at school, that last summer. At
lunchtime we’d go down to the far end of the school field
and lie in a row, boys on top, girls underneath, and snog.
Not everyone, of course, just the popular ones. In class we’d
circulate the list, choosing who would be getting off with
whom. That’s how you knew if you were popular – someone
would put your name on the list. One day, someone wrote
Heddy Partridge next to Christopher Chapman. And the list
went round and round, and everyone who saw it laughed or
gagged or pulled a face like they’d just eaten shit, while poor
Heddy just sat there staring at her desk with her face gone
scarlet and her fat chin wobbling.

Christopher didn’t laugh or gag when he saw it, though.
In fact he got really annoyed and snatched the list away, then
screwed it up and shoved it into his desk.

That’s what gave me my idea.

I set Heddy up. I wrote her these letters, pretending they
were from Christopher. I made my writing square-shaped
and untidy like his; it was easy enough to do.

Take no notice of anyone else
, I wrote.
You’re the only
one that matters.
And,
When anyone is mean to you, it really
hurts me. I care for you deeply.

Jane and I thought it hilarious. I tucked the notes under
Heddy’s pencil case at break time, and watched her reading
them when we came back in, secretive, with her head bent
down and her greasy hair falling forward like a shield. She
got this ridiculous soppy-coy look on her face, like she’d got
a sweet in her mouth and was trying not to suck it.

‘Ah, look,’ whispered Jane. ‘She’d almost be pretty if she
wasn’t so ugly.’

Please don’t reply,
I wrote.
Our feelings must stay secret.
I don’t want anyone to laugh at us again.

‘Brilliant!’ said Claire, and it was brilliant.

Heddy lapped it up. On our way out to assembly she stood
back as Christopher walked past her, and he noticed, and
looked at her. And because Heddy Partridge never made eye
contact with anyone if she could possibly avoid it, but here
she was staring right at him with this big, hungry smile on
her stupid face, he looked at her, and looked at her again.

It worked like a dream. Especially as Christopher had
stopped playing the snogging game now, since we’d all laughed.
She must have thought he was saving himself for her.

I want to see you alone so we can talk properly,
I wrote.
Meet me in the graveyard after school. I’ll be waiting by the
statue of the Virgin Mary.