This Perfect World (33 page)

I move before I think. I
don’t
think. I pick up my coffee
cup and I
hurl
it at James. It hits him somewhere between
his face and his chest and he reels back, scraping his chair
across the tiles and yelling, ‘
Jesus!
’ The cup smashes on the
floor, and there’s coffee everywhere, all down James’s chin
and his front and the wall behind him. He’s got his arms
raised up like he’s expecting something else to come flying
at him, and he’s looking down at himself and kind of gasping
– I don’t hang around to see what he’ll do; in seconds I’m
up from that table and I’ve snatched up my bag and my car
keys and I am out of there. I hear him shouting, ‘Laura!’ and
the children calling, ‘Mummy!’ as I slam the front door
behind me, but I don’t stop. I throw myself and my bag into
the car and I am gone.

Though God knows where I am going.

I drive too fast, almost in
panic
. I can’t believe what I
have just done. I’ve got my fingers gripping on to the steering
wheel tight and my teeth digging into my lip, and I can hardly
breathe I am so angry. He referred to me as if I belonged to
him, and I don’t. He spoke as if I’d want to still carry on
living as we do, but I don’t. I really don’t. But what kind of
a hypocrite am I, telling him that I
wanted
to help someone
I was unkind to? I didn’t
want
to help Heddy. I was coerced
into it. All I really wanted to do was get her and her family
out of my life again. And what James said, about my
project with the headcase
– well, that’s nothing worse than what I
might have said myself just a month or so ago. What kind
of people are we, James and I? What kind of lives do we
lead? And what will hold us together now that the glue’s
come unstuck?

There are two main roads out of Ashton – the one into
London and the one out, westwards. I take the latter because
it’s faster and I just want to get as far away as I can. I don’t
even think where I’m going, and I’ve got nothing with me
except my handbag. I can’t go far, but I can’t go back, either.
I need a destination. In my bag I’ve got the keys to the
Partridges’ house: I head there.

My anger’s fizzled out into a kind of low gloom by the
time I get to Forbury, and I pull up outside Mrs Partridge’s
and just stare at the place for a minute. Without curtains,
and in the bright light of the day, the windows are black and
empty. That mattress is still outside, and there are rubbish
bags stacked up around the bin. One of them has been ripped
open by the foxes and there are eggshells and teabags scattered
across the path, and the For Sale sign has slipped over
and is leaning to one side.

I sit there in the false comfort of my car and my heart
slides. I mean, how bleak can one house look?

Mrs Day comes out from next door with a milk bottle
and stops and gawps at me, so I feel I have to get on with
things. I get out of the car and do my best to look composed
and businesslike as I walk up the path. I pick up those
eggshells with unwilling fingers and poke them back in the
sack, knowing full well they’ll be dragged out again later.
The teabags I leave; they’ve split as they’ve dried out, and
their contents are smeared into the concrete like black tar. It
is so weird opening that front door. No safety locks here; one turn of the key and the door flings open onto silence.

They’ve only been gone a couple of days, so there’s not
much mail, just pizza leaflets and other junk. I pick it up,
closing the door behind me, and there’s that smell again, that
Partridge smell, left behind like their ghosts, here forever. I’m
supposed to check the boiler, which clings to the wall in the
kitchen, and the pipes in the airing cupboard upstairs, which
are prone to leak. The boiler seems fine, if a little hissy. But
I can’t help thinking maybe someone should have attacked
this place with some bleach or something before they left;
everything
is coated in grease. Still, the new people will probably
strip it all out anyway.

My shoes are loud on the hall floorboards, but Mrs
Partridge left the carpet on the stairs because it was too old
and worn to lift, and the sudden quiet underfoot is eerie in
contrast; I find myself creeping up into the dark, afraid to
make any sound. Every creak of the floorboards has my
heartbeat picking up. It’s just so dark and so gloomy. What
must it have been like for Heddy having to come up these
stairs night after night, especially as a child? Especially after
her dad had died, with the fear and misery of death lurking
in the shadows. It is just too, too depressing. I remember
how it used to freak me out, just looking up the stairs when
I came round here. And I remember the first time I actually
had to climb up them to the bathroom, when I was here for
Heddy’s birthday, and how I was so desperate to get out of
this horrible house and go home.

Heddy had no such option. For poor Heddy, this
was
home.

I check the airing cupboard and I’m about to go back
downstairs – it feels so wrong, snooping around up here in
the stale, fetid air. But a sudden noise stops me, a creak,
coming from the main bedroom, where Heddy slept. And there it is again. I think that maybe a cat has somehow got
in, or a mouse even, though the child in me is half-frightened
into believing it’s old Mr Partridge’s ghost come back, looking
for his family. It’s stupid to creep, but creep I do, and my
heart is racing away like a jackhammer as I tentatively push
back the door to Heddy’s bedroom.

They left that big old bed there, stripped of its covers. The
mattress is stained and sunken from the weight of so much
use; I try not to look. The huge wardrobe is still there too,
emptied out now and with one door hanging open. This is
where the noise came from; as I watch the door creaks and
moves just slightly, feeble under its own weight. The carpet
has gone from in here and I put my foot down on a woodlouse
and feel it crunch underneath my shoe. I look down
and see another scuttling away. The air is sour and oppressive
with dust and sleep-sweat and other people’s memories.
I can barely breathe. I picture Mrs Partridge, sitting on that
bed, thin, worn hands clutching at the bedspread as she tells
me about Heddy’s untimely birth. I see her eyes, over-bright,
glistening with a lifetime of love and sadness as we sort
through Heddy’s things and pile them up into boxes and
bags, and again I feel myself so wrong, so useless, so shamed.

Your parents have always been very kind to us, Laura, and
for that I am very grateful
. I hear Mrs Partridge’s voice, the
wooden politeness of unwilling need.

And I hear my own pathetic entreaty; I hear myself whining
like a child.
Why did you never tell them what I did?

Like I thought I’d got off the hook.

I close my eyes and I hate myself. I can never make amends
for what I have done. Yet there is something else, something
tugging at the edge of my mind.

I walk over to the window and look out and down. I see the mattress, the bin bags and the squashed teabags, spilling
their insides on the cracked and broken concrete. But in my
head I see myself, at seven years old, nine years old, eleven
years old, over and over, so reluctantly, so resentfully, forced
up that path.

And I remember my dad once, when I objected, when I
sat there in the car outside this house pleading, ‘Dad, I don’t
want to call for her.’ I remember him leaning over towards
me in the car and jabbing his pointed finger right in front
of my face.

‘You, young lady,’ he spat at me, ‘do not have a choice.’

And I remember the unfairness; the anger, rising up inside,
a simmering potent rage.

Your parents wanted the best for you
, Mrs Partridge said.
As I wanted the best for my Heddy.

Is that all?

Mrs Partridge must have known how much I hated being
here. Just as she knew how cruel I was to Heddy. Did she
really think that was the price to pay for their kindness?

Years ago I asked my mother why it mattered so much
that I should be nice to Heddy Partridge all the time, and
she gave me some strange, half-explained reason about Mr
Partridge having worked for my dad, once upon a time. But
what kind of reason was that for foisting such a damaging
kindness upon the Partridges? And for forcing me, so obviously
unwilling, upon Heddy?

Why did my parents do it? Could they really not see what
was happening?

I go back downstairs and lock up the house behind me. In
the car I check my phone, even though I know I’d have heard
it if James had rung. That he hasn’t leaves me with a deep, slow dread. Though, of course, I should phone him. After
all, I threw the cup. And I walked out. These things, I fear,
are final. But what can I say? Somewhere at the sides of my
mind I’m starting to think
What will I do? Where will I live?
And what about the children?
Always, always, the children.
But I cannot let these thoughts in. I cannot. Not just yet.

I don’t phone James, not even to tell him where I’m going.
And I don’t phone my parents either, to warn them I’m coming.
I just drive, picking up the M3 and then the A303, and
joining the holiday crawl down towards Devon. I don’t know
what I’m going to say to my parents when I get there. But
I don’t think they were quite as kind as Mrs Partridge would
like to believe, and I think there must have been something
else binding Heddy Partridge and me.

It’s a three-hour drive down to Devon at the best of times
and this is a Sunday, in peak season. The A303 just crawls
along, and I’ve plenty of time to change my mind.

But I don’t.

And as I drive I feel my marriage seeping further and
further away from me. Across my shoulders, I feel the lightening
of constraint. No more will I be an embarrassment to
James. I can’t even think how angry he must be. First, all
the social humiliation, and now this. And that I should walk
out and leave him like that, dripping hot coffee and unable
to have the last word – he won’t forgive that. Oh no. And
he won’t clean it up, either. The coffee will be left where it
hit, drying into the walls and staining them indelibly, a constant
reminder of my faults.

When I eventually reach the village where my parents live, I
almost do change my mind. I have to slow right down to
drive through narrow lanes crowded with hedgerows and
twee, flower-decked cottages, and I can feel my heart thumping
hard in my chest, and the echo of that thump pulsing out
behind my eyes. I almost feel sick. Tiredness, no doubt, from
the drive and the stress, and I haven’t eaten anything since toast this morning. But it’s more than that. I actually feel
nervous, at the prospect of turning up at my parents’ house
unannounced and without the shield of my children to hide
behind. And what am I going to say to them? I’m supposed
to be coming here again in two weeks’ time with Thomas
and Arianne – though of course that may change now.

Everything, I guess, will change now.

I can see their house, at the end of the lane, and I slow
all the way down to a crawl. I think what an idyllic life they
have for themselves out here. And I think how it must run
in the blood, this need for perfection. How we carve it out
for ourselves, how we build our own walls.

My dad is in the garden with his watering can, making
the most of the late-afternoon sun. He glances my way as I
pull up, but he doesn’t register the car as being mine, and
he carries on again, tending to his plants. And so he is totally
shocked when he looks up again minutes later to see me
walking towards him up the path. I
see
that shock, and how
it blanches out his face.

And I see him in my mind as I saw him the day I cut my
wrist, the moment he looked up from his newspaper to find
me standing in front of him with blood running down my
arm. We never talked about that day; never mentioned it
again, any of that stuff. We glossed over it, shoved it under
the carpet, thinking there it would stay.

He puts down his watering can. ‘Laura?’ he says. ‘What’s
the matter? Is it the children . . .? What is it?’

I shake my head. ‘Nothing,’ I lie. ‘I just wanted to
come and see you.’ But I can feel my face beginning
to dissolve.

‘Rita! Rita!’ my dad calls without taking his eyes off me.
But he stands where he is, like he’s afraid to move.

My mum comes hurrying from around the back. ‘Oh, my
goodness!’ she cries. ‘Laura! Whatever’s happened?’

‘Nothing’s happened,’ I manage to say. ‘I just thought I’d
come and see you.’

I see my mum glance at my dad, very quickly, then she’s
taking off her gardening gloves and telling my dad to put
the kettle on and ushering me around the back. She was
going to take me inside, but it’s just so lovely out there with
the view and the sunlight sliding so mellow. So we sit at the
garden table, my mother and I, while my dad goes inside to
make tea, then brings it out to us, and then loiters nearby,
in the manner of dads.

‘Does James know you’re here?’ my mum asks and I shake
my head, and see her lips thin as she draws her conclusions.
‘Ah,’ she says, with meaning.

‘I’ve been spending a lot of time with Mrs Partridge, and
with Heddy. Heddy’s out of hospital and they’ve moved now,
to be nearer Ian. Just last week. I’m looking after the house
till it’s sold. I did what I could to help them.’ I want her to
pick up on what I am saying. I want her to read between
the lines. And I’m watching my dad; he’s prodding about at
some mini-tree he’s got in a pot there, and he’s listening.
Anger is creeping in small beads through my veins, like ants
on the crawl. I want their approval. All those years of being
told to be nice to poor Heddy Partridge – well, I have been
nice to her now. I want their approval, but I want to throw
it back at them too. ‘Though I don’t suppose it could ever
be enough.’