A Perfect Life (16 page)

‘Hello? Who is this? Oh yes – I mean no – Nick isn't here right now. I'm not sure when he'll be back –'

She clicks the off button with an air of finality. Nick will not be back soon. He has gone. The house is full of people. In the kitchen Gosha is sulkily washing up, her back radiating discontent and dysfunction.

‘She's got an eating disorder,' says Jem, this morning, having watched Gosha eat six pieces of toast and three bowls of Ricicles with cream and sugar on them.

‘She eats that amount every two hours or so every single day and she drinks about three cartons of apple
juice a day and the only way she changes is the amount of spots she gets on her face.'

‘That is so mean.' Angel stamps past him, sighing heavily. She wanted to stop and sit down in the kitchen, to drink coffee and read the paper by herself, but it simply isn't worth it with all those people in there.

She is dressed – not very attractively – in the electric-blue towelling tracksuit she put on at six-thirty in the morning when she got up, intending to go for a run after giving the children breakfast. This outfit is demoralising, partly because it is a loud blue reminder that she had not gone for a run, and it is now midday and much too hot, and partly because it is supremely unflattering, whether she has been for a run or not.

Three days have passed since Nick left and the unreality is becoming thicker. So what was a mist soon became a fog, and now a wall of opaque density between Angel and the world. It feels impenetrable. Unimaginable that she could go down to the village shop, buy some milk and announce to all present, ‘Nick and I are getting divorced.'

The children all know – well, they know something is either happening or not happening and each of them is responding in a uniquely demanding fashion. Foss has found a tin of blackboard paint and has painted the door of the car with it. Now he is watching Jem as he writes ‘FOSS STONE TAXI 7p a ride' in yellow paint on the newly black door of the silver car. The more Angel laughs, the more furious Ruby becomes.

‘Mummy, why do you find that kind of thing funny because it isn't and it looks really stupid having a car like a taxi which isn't a taxi and how would you like it if you had to go to school in that and have all your friends give you seven p and I would make it forty-six because then you might get enough to buy an ice lolly and –'

‘MUM! If you don't stop Ruby going on like that I will strangle her and shoot her and I will have a criminal record and never be able to go to America and it will all be YOUR FAULT!' bellows Jem. He has only ever been angry about three times in his whole life as far as Angel can remember. He is communicating through a loudhailer left over from the fête Angel and Nick hosted in the garden last year, and his booming amplified voice is the only effective competition to his music, turned up to full volume since the morning Nick left.

Coral has vanished. Like a cat, her sixth sense for crisis took her into hiding two days ago. She isn't answering her phone, but she has told Jem she is in Cambridge staying with Matt. Angel is too pole-axed to do anything. Indeed, she feels grateful that one of them is away; the remaining three still outnumber and overwhelm her.

The only way to live through the next nanosecond is for Angel to put down the phone and walk out of the back door and keep walking. Once on the path, she begins to run down the drive, and although the words ‘It's all your fault' pound unhelpfully around her in time with her feet, she is away out of the garden
gate and up the hill towards the church before any of the children notice.

Going running creates Angel's safety net, and within the parameters of running she can exist and know she will not unravel, no matter how far-flung her reality becomes. She is hot now, the tracksuit like a damp towel draped around her legs, heavy, slowing her so her rhythm falters and she gasps for breath. When keeping going gets hard Angel could slow down and walk for a while and then run again, or she could breathe and count. In. Out. One, two, three, four. In. Out. One, two, three, four. And she will get through the struggle and reach the next level. Rather like the children's PlayStation, she thinks inconsequentially.

Slowing down and walking, then trying to run again, has never appealed to Angel. To her it seems harder, and is imbued with failure, to stop and start rather than to keep going through and get out on the other side. Just keep going. Just keep going. She has been running for ten minutes, the tightness in her chest is burning to bursting point, expanding out of her lungs and vanishing into her veins in a throb of adrenalin. And at the point where it is impossible to go another step, it changes, she changes, and her warmed muscles stretch and flex, her lungs inflate and sink into a rhythm as she breaks through effort into ease, her body working with her mind so she can float for three miles, probably more. Breathing evenly, Angel inhales warm sunshine suffused with birdsong and the dusty-bronze hot smell of harvested corn. Her legs have taken her
automatically on her favourite circuit, and she breathes deeply to start the steep incline to the church on the top of the hill, the different vital muscles on the back plane of her body flaring and contracting to change gear. The flooding serotonin delivers an emerging sense of well-being and hope and the possibility of competence. Angel finds these feelings both comforting and seductive. Being fit is not the main reason for Angel's running; she runs for the fix, the high, the mood-altering endorphins pumping through her and making her a smoother, more energetic, clear-minded version of herself.

There was a time when Nick came with her, although he never ran, insisting that he was not built for it, and all the years of smoking would drag him down to the ground and beneath it into oblivion. Whistling and riding with no hands he would accompany her on a bicycle, herding the dog, dragging his feet, pedalling up from behind her and wolf-whistling. There was one autumn evening when she ran round a corner and into a team of ramblers. Nick zoomed past as she was negotiating them and called out, ‘Nice tits and arse you've got there, pussy cat.' Angel started laughing, running faster to push him off the bike, but though he dawdled for her to almost catch him, he had no intention of actually letting her.

‘Come on, chase me more,' he begged, teasing her. Nick used to make her laugh and blush like she did when she was sixteen at school in Ely and was a magnet of attention for the motorbike boys by the bus stop.

The path ahead narrows, a grassy slope takes Angel down to a shady ride between two swollen cornfields, swaying and whispering in anticipation of harvest. Her awareness shifts to the front of her body now and she breathes and pulls back a little to change the pace for going downhill. Beneath her feet, old tractor tyre ruts mould hard furrows into the dusty earth and although it would be exhilarating to let momentum take her faster and faster, she steadies the tempo and runs on at the same speed, focusing all her balance and energy on not stumbling or falling. The path changes again, becoming smooth and narrow, dark grey and cool, like damp unworked clay, and Angel turns in beneath a canopy of twisted crab apple and willow trees snaking back towards the village. Her breathing is even and strong but her calf muscles ache, her lower back thuds with each pace, and sweat sits like a dead skin waiting to be shed, all over her body. It is hot; Angel is thirsty. Ahead of her the dappled shade is cool and inviting. At the end of the path the road becomes visible. The school caretaker's cat is lying in a pool of sunshine outside his gate, writhing to massage its back in the warm sand scattered on the road. Angel picks up speed when her feet hit the tarmac, and she runs the final five minutes home faster and faster, her breath pumping out of her and her feet flying. Getting home is a prize, and she stops short the moment she passes the garden gate, bent double, panting, reeling with exhilaration and breathlessness. If nothing else works again today, this alone is a success.

She opens the door into the kitchen and finds Foss and a tin of black paint occupying the sink together. Gosha is waving the barbecue tongs and saying, ‘Take off the clothes for the bin.'

‘No. I like them.' Foss squats on the draining board, his feet in the sink, and hammers the lid back on to the paint pot. He waves at Angel.

‘Mum, can you put this paint back in the garage? I'll need it again soon. Gosha is really annoying me.' He glares at the au pair, swatting away the tongs she has near his T-shirt.

‘GET OFF!' he roars. Angel takes the paint tin and puts it outside the back door. She smiles at Gosha. ‘Don't worry, I'll get the clothes off him,' she says, still smiling automatically.

‘Come on, Foss, you can come in the shower with me.'

‘And my clothes?' Foss looks defiant.

Angel looks at him; it means a lot to him. What does it matter to her? ‘Yes. And your clothes.'

There is something wrong with my parents. There is something going on. It doesn't feel as though anyone is in charge any more. Mum wanders around on the phone all the time. Her hair is bigger than her face by miles. I reckon she has got really thin and she should watch out or she'll end up like one of those scrawny old bags who are too brown and wear loads of jewels and bracelets in Hello! magazine. I think they are usually celebrity mothers – that sort of thing – and they all live in Miami. Anyway. What is good, though, is that going nuts has made Mum very generous. This morning she gave me forty quid to go and buy some food for a picnic and she said I could keep the change. So I am on the way back from the shop now. I had to walk because my bike has two punctures, and actually I wanted it to take longer because I can't stand being in the house with the little ones all the time. Mum doesn't even ask me if it's all right for me to look after them, she just treats
me like another babysitter. I think she forgets that Gosha is here and works for her. Gosha just goes and sits in front of the TV all day. Yesterday she ate two buckets of raspberry ripple ice cream. I really mean buckets as well. They are on offer in the Spar and the ice cream must be made of pig slurry or something, because they only cost one ninety-nine for the most enormous bucket, big enough to turn upside down and make into chairs. Ruby's got one for her dolls to sit on outside the kitchen door this morning, and four dolls fit on it, no trouble. Anyway, whatever. Gosha managed to eat two whole bucketfuls yesterday. God knows where she was sick, or even if she was sick, but I reckon she must have been. Actually, I reckon she's bulimic because nobody could eat what she does and stay a reasonable size and she is quite small.

So where does it all go? I don't know why I am asking that question because I really don't want to know.

Matt, Coral's boyfriend, does this flick of his hand and I have learned it now. If you relax all your fingers and turn them slightly inwards then flick your wrist hard away and back, your fingers slap together with a whiplash crack, which I find I can use instead of quite a variety of words.

I can use it instead of ‘Sod off' when some random person in the street jostles me. I can use it instead of ‘Excellent' when I'm watching sport and someone scores or takes a wicket. I can use it instead of ‘Oh bollocks' when things go wrong in sport. I can use it
when Mum or Dad does something wicked like tells me we are going on holiday or gives me some money – mind you, the holiday thing hasn't actually happened since I learned how to do this and that was a year ago, but when it does, I will be able to express that I am pleased.

It makes Mum laugh when I do it, and I always like her a lot when I make her laugh like that. I think she may not be the greatest mother – although I don't know what is the greatest mother – but I do like her as a fellow human being at those moments.

I can also adapt the finger flick to be a menacing message if people on the bus start taking the piss or something, or if some creep at school gives me a hard time or a teacher goes nuts about homework. Right now, though, it expresses that I am grossed out by everyone – by Gosha and her ice cream eating, by Ruby and Foss, by Mum. And I have cracked my fingers together so much today that the knuckles hurt. I want to talk to Dad, or even see him and watch the cricket with him. He hasn't answered his phone once today. I haven't seen him for over a week and it's crap. Last time we spoke he said, ‘I want to spend some time with you, Jem, let's fix something up.' I wish he hadn't said it if worrying about it is what's keeping him away.

I bought two loaves of bread, some soft cheese and a packet of my favourite ham and I still had thirty-five quid. I felt a bit guilty keeping so much money, so I bought three packets of chocolate chip cookies, some sausage rolls and a bunch of bananas,
but I still couldn't spend more than seven pounds and I couldn't think of anything else to have for the picnic except cigarettes. So I bought a packet of those too. The picnic is for the little ones and me. I think I'll keep the cigarettes, though. I might see if Foss wants to try one, but that would be evil and corrupting as he is only four. Mind you, because he is only four there is a good chance that he will have a go. No one did that to me when I was his age, but then I only had Coral. And Mum. Mum used to smoke then. She and Dad both did, and I hated the smell like I hate the smell of petrol. For me the very worst of all is still a car with someone sitting in it smoking cigarettes at a petrol station. Bad smell and possible explosion, it's a pretty crap combination. It's funny how it makes me want to puke and yet I can smoke as many cigarettes as anyone else if I'm in the mood. But mostly I don't think about them except as a way to get chatting to people, and as something to do at school. It's so stupid because everyone I know started smoking at school just to have something to do. When I'm on my own I sometimes remember that I could climb out on the roof and have a cigarette but there isn't much point. Dad and Mum know I smoke and they don't mind. Actually, it's more random than that. Mum caught me smoking with Matt watching MTV the other night and she looked at the cigarette in my hand and the smoke, which I couldn't stop creeping out of the corner of my mouth even though I tried to until I could feel my tongue curling up with the poison of
nicotine, and the walls of my mouth probably yellowing and all the taste buds dying because I so did not want to exhale smoke in her face. But she stood there grinning and then she burst out laughing. How humiliating is that? Your mum laughing at the sight of you smoking. I think it has damaged me. Most people think I am really lucky that my parents don't give me a hard time, but I want them to give me a hard time about something. There must be something they care about? I flick my fingers together again and try not to think what I feel, which is that they only care about themselves. I am not important enough.