This Perfect World (29 page)

Out of habit, we sit opposite each other and eat the pasta.
Out of habit, we drink the wine.

And James takes a big sip from his glass and says, ‘Well
then?’

Not so long ago that would have been the prompting for
a story, and not so long ago I would have obliged. Tonight
I say, ‘Well, what?’

‘Who’s the boy?’

Carefully, I say, ‘He’s my friend’s son.’

‘Your friend’s son?’

‘The girl I told you about. The one who’s had the breakdown.
If you remember.’

‘I remember,’ says James. ‘But I didn’t realize that she was
your
friend
.’

I feel like I am being cross-examined, and I force myself
to eat, feeling as if I could choke on it. ‘I just want to help
her out,’ I say.

And James says, ‘Oh, I’m well aware of that, Laura. I just
hope your guilty conscience isn’t clouding your judgement.’

I look at him sharply, half-expecting him to laugh. But I
see that he is perfectly serious.

‘I have a right to know who our children are hanging
around with,’ he says. ‘And I don’t like them playing on
wrecked old cars.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, they weren’t playing on it.’

But James appears to have had enough of sitting and talking
with me. He picks up his plate and his glass and decamps
to the living room, where he turns on the TV. And so I have
the choice of either staying where I am, alone, or joining him
on the sofa, still more or less alone. Either way he has made
his point. There is no room for my past in our marriage. Of
that I am very clear.

I am nervous as hell when I pick Mrs Partridge up on Tuesday
to take her to the hospital. I’ve booked Arianne in to Carole’s
for extra hours, just in case. Mrs Partridge’s appointment
with the doctor, Ian told me, is at half-past eleven, but
doctors, of course, can often run late.

Mrs Partridge is ready, as usual, and is grateful, as usual.
She sits beside me in the car, buttoned up to the chin in her
coat, even though it is a hot, humid day, and clutches her bag
upon her lap. I expected her to be happy, and I can’t understand
why she isn’t. She isn’t even speaking, much. It’s like
she’s locked into herself, filled with her own fears.

‘It’s good, isn’t it? About Heddy?’ I say.

And Mrs Partridge, who is lost in her own thoughts, says,
‘What, dear? Oh, yes, dear, very good.’

‘When will she be home? Do you know?’

‘Soon, dear, the doctor said soon.’

‘Well, that’s fantastic, isn’t it?’

Mrs Partridge sighs. I glance sideways at her. She’s staring
out of the windscreen in front of her with a deep frown on
her face, and chewing on her lip. ‘My Heddy,’ she says at
last, ‘she’s up and down. Up and down.’

And I see her wanting Heddy home, and not wanting it,
as she sinks under the weight of her own life.

‘This house,’ I say. ‘You didn’t mention it.’ I try not to
sound accusatory. After all, what business is it of mine?

Mrs Partridge says nothing, and stupidly I can’t help feeling
a little hurt. But I carry on, ‘It’ll be so much better for you,
won’t it, to be living near Ian? Better for all of you. Easier,
for you especially.’

And Mrs Partridge says, ‘Of course it will, dear. It would
be lovely to see the children growing up.’ She says it in the
same tone that I imagine she might say she’d like to win
the lottery one day, or travel the world. Like it’s in the never-never,
the dreams that are not for her. And I realize that this
is just one more thing for Mrs Partridge to deal with. However
good the outcome, she can’t see beyond the getting there,
beyond the
one more thing
. The future is a luxury Mrs
Partridge has never dared to think of; she’s too crippled by
the struggle of now.

‘Mrs Partridge, I’ll do whatever I can to help you,’ I say
and my eyes are suddenly burning with tears.

We’ve time to see Heddy first, before we see the doctor.

More than anything, I don’t want to see Heddy again.

I don’t want to see her eyes, looking into mine, and remembering
again what I did to her. I don’t want her mother to
see it.

And yet I walk along that corridor beside Mrs Partridge
with my heart pounding out my dread, and I know that this
is my punishment. This is the circle, turned all the way and
closing up again. I’ve no choice but to see it to the end.

She’s sitting up on the bed, against newly plumped pillows.
She looks at us as we come into her room, her mother and me,
and what can that be like for her? I force myself to say, ‘Hello,
Heddy. I hear that you are feeling much better.’ And I load my
voice with kindness, with brightness, as if I could make her
think that I am nice now. As if I could make her forget.

‘Say hello to Laura,’ Mrs Partridge chides, bustling around
Heddy, adjusting her pillows, smoothing her sheets. She shifts
Heddy over a little; Heddy’s dress is caught up underneath
her and I get a glimpse of the fat underside of her leg, white,
naked. Like a firework exploding in my head I see her falling
head first, the plump flesh of her twelve-year-old thighs exposed
and quivering, her pants, tired and old, sticking to the
crack of her bum. I see it and I see it.

And I hear myself laughing, gorged up with hysteria,
ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Heddy’s hands are on her lap, clasped tight. I can hear
her breathing, the heavy, whispering puff. I feel her looking
at me, but I cannot meet her eyes.

Mrs Partridge fusses over Heddy. She says, ‘Laura brought
me in the car today. So kind of her, so much quicker than
the bus. We’re to see the doctor, in a little while. About your
coming home, Heddy. What about that then, eh? What you
got to say about that then, Heddy?’

Heddy says nothing, so Mrs Partridge carries on, ‘Ever so
grateful to Laura, aren’t we, Heddy?’ She perches herself on
the edge of the bed. ‘Cat got Heddy’s tongue again today,
Laura. Funny that. She was quite chatty, at the weekend. I
think perhaps she’s a bit shy around you, Laura.’

And, coward that I am, I say, ‘Listen, I’ll go and wait for
the doctor. Give you some time on your own.’ I force myself
to look at Heddy and I see her face, down there in all the
grass and the weeds, deadly white, stripped raw with pain,
twisted round and staring up at me, terrified.

And in the shadows at the edges of my eyes I see the
powder-white chunk of her bone, fresh as a new tooth,
forcing its way out through the skin of her arm.

I blink. I swallow. I feel a thin bead of sweat trickle its
way down between my shoulder blades, inside my shirt.

‘All right, dear,’ Mrs Partridge says. And, ‘Don’t you go
minding Heddy now. She’ll talk to you when she’s ready.’
She reaches out and puts her own thin hand on top of Heddy’s,
and squeezes Heddy’s sausage fingers, and then pats them.
‘She’s much better now, aren’t you, Heddy? Much better.’

I make myself speak. I say, ‘I’m glad. Really I am. I’m so
glad.’

Mrs Partridge doesn’t really need me with her to see the
doctor. It’s a short meeting, a mere tying up of ends so that
Heddy may be dispatched upon her way.

We see Dr Millar himself this time; he’s older than the
other doctor, and relaxed and to the point. In his hands he
has a large file with Heddy’s name on it. I wonder what is
written inside. More to the point, I wonder if I am in there
somewhere, and I feel the colour rising in my face.

Dr Millar looks at Mrs Partridge and at me, and he smiles.
He bends that file between his two hands like a card pack,
about to be dealt. ‘We’ve a final assessment scheduled for
Thursday,’ he says. ‘And social services will have their own
report. But I see no problem. Helen has made remarkable
progress.’

‘Is she ready to come home, though?’ I ask, on behalf of
Mrs Partridge, who in the presence of authority has once
again shrunk into herself.

‘Of course she is.’ His smile deepens. ‘We can’t keep Helen
here forever. There are other people waiting, who need to be
here much more than she does.’ I sense Mrs Partridge bristling
a little at this, but then he says, ‘The best place for Helen
now is at home, with her family, leading a normal life.’

Normal, he says, but however do you define normal?

‘I’ve plans for Heddy and myself and little Nathan to move
up to Birmingham, to be nearer to my son and his family,’
Mrs Partridge says suddenly, and the way in which she says
it leaves me in no doubt that this plan really has been there
for a long time. And that she just chose not to mention it to
me.

‘I think that’s an excellent plan,’ Dr Millar says.

We make the journey home in near-silence, Mrs Partridge
busy no doubt with her thoughts, and me tortured by mine.
I’ve a splitting headache and the sun is too bright, too intense,
driving into my eyes.

When we pull up outside her house I say, ‘Do you plan
to move soon then, do you think?’

And Mrs Partridge says, ‘Oh, I think so, dear. There is no
reason for my Heddy to be wanting to stay down here.’

She looks at me and she’s going to say something else, but
stops before she’s begun and instead says, ‘You’re ever so
pale, dear. Are you well?’

‘I’ve got a headache,’ I say. ‘That’s all.’

And Mrs Partridge reaches her bony hand across the gear
stick and pats me on the arm. ‘Dear, dear, and all this rushing
around on our behalf. Come inside and have a cup of tea
before you go, dear. Do.’

Her kindness is my undoing. I am so wretched with my
own guilt that I follow her into her house, into the dark,
creeping stillness, redolent with cigarette smoke and the rancid
memory of chip fat. She unbuttons her coat and hangs it on
the rack. Already I’m regretting coming in with her, but there
is something I have to know. I stand in the doorway of the
kitchen, the soles of my shoes sticking tackily to the lino, as
she unplugs the kettle and fills it at the sink. The water hisses
in the pipes and spurts out from the tap in angry bursts. The
morning’s breakfast things are stacked on the rack, washed
and waiting to be put away, and hanging over the edge of
the sink is an old dishcloth the colour of slate.

‘Mrs Partridge, I haven’t got time for tea,’ I say. ‘I’ve got
to get back for the children. I’d love a glass of water, though,
if you don’t mind.’

She hands me a tumbler; on it are engraved the words
‘Happy Christmas’ and the faint remains of a snowman. ‘Sit
yourself down, dear. Make yourself comfortable.’

The kitchen table is tiny, and pressed up against the wall.
To sit at it, I have to pull a chair out half into the hallway.
On the table, next to the ashtray and the salt pot and a pair
of folded-up socks, is a pile of papers and letters, some of
which are from estate agents. I don’t want to pry, but there
they are, right in front of me.

Mrs Partridge catches me looking. ‘Ian picked those up
for me. At the weekend. I’m to read through them all,’ she
says, ‘and choose.’

‘I can help if you want,’ I say. ‘You know what estate
agents are like.’ Though, of course, she doesn’t.

She makes her tea, squeezing out the teabag with her bare
fingers and dropping it into the sink. The fridge, when she
opens it, smells of old milk, and starts up a rumble. The pain
in my head is throbbing harder now, in time with my heartbeat.

Mrs Partridge sits herself down on the other chair, wedged
in between the table and the sink. We are very close, crowded
in there. Too close. She pats her pockets and finds her cigarettes,
and sticks one in her mouth. It hangs there, bobbing
from her lip as she fishes again for her matches. She strikes
one, lights up and exhales upon a sigh. And I am engulfed
in smoke.

‘Mrs Partridge,’ I blurt out and my head is really pounding
now. ‘That time Heddy hurt her wrist, when we were still at
junior school . . .’ A wave of nausea rushes up inside me
and I have to swallow it back. ‘Do you remember?’

Of course she remembers. She sucks on her cigarette and
her face is tense, shadowed with remembering. ‘Yes, dear,’
she says. ‘A terrible business.’

I swallow again and force myself to carry on.

‘We’d gone to the graveyard. There was this boy—’

She talks right over me. Loudly she says, ‘A gang of boys.
My Heddy was chased by a gang of boys. On her way home
from school.’

‘No, Mrs Partridge, it was—’

‘Yes, yes, dear. She was chased and she tripped. On her
way home.’

‘Mrs Partridge, I—’

‘She was chased and she tripped,’ she insists. ‘That’s what
happened, isn’t it, dear? That’s what I told your parents.’ She
grinds out her cigarette and her face is tight, pinched. ‘Always
so kind, your parents.’ I’m about to speak again, and again
she talks over me. ‘Did you have to get back for your children,
dear?’ she says. ‘Don’t want to rush you, but goodness
it’s getting late.’ And she stands, leaving her tea untouched.
‘And my Nathan will be home soon. I need to be thinking
about dinner.’

But I cannot leave it like that. ‘Mrs Partridge,’ I say desperately
on my way out of the door. ‘I wasn’t kind to Heddy.’

‘No, dear. Maybe not always, dear,’ Mrs Partridge says.
‘But your parents were.’ And there is something in her voice,
something more than just gratitude and denial.

She knows.

She knows what I did to Heddy, and I think she’s always
known. But who is she trying to protect by denying it? Not
me, surely?

Herself, maybe. Maybe she just doesn’t want to face it.

Or is she trying to protect my parents? Is she covering up
for me to spare them the pain of what I have done? But why
would she bother to do that? And why, oh why would she
want to have anything to do with me now?

If anyone ever hurt one of my children the way that I hurt
Heddy Partridge, I would want to tear that person apart,
ripping at their limbs and clawing out their eyes. I wouldn’t
sit there drinking tea with them. I wouldn’t be giving them
second chances.