The Perfect 10 (4 page)

I already know that I don’t want to talk about the incident, relive it or even think about it. Even with only a few hours’ hindsight it seems strangely unimportant, because I did it, I suppose. I can’t say that to my therapist; he’ll have a field day. But to retell it will make it terrifying, will give me nightmares that I am sure won’t creep up on my dreams unless I am forced to rehash it all. It almost never happened, and in fact it was over in a matter of minutes, and hopefully Dougal is young enough not to be scarred and scared for life. I have come out of it with nothing more than a black eye and a bruised midriff.

I jump up and down on the spot a few times, then lean against a railing, and check my watch. Taxi drivers always claim to be no more than ten minutes away. They are liars. The only time a taxi will ever arrive on time, or early for that matter, is on an evening when you are going out and you haven’t decided which shoes to wear. In these instances they will be tooting their horn angrily outside of your flat before you’ve even hung up the phone to taxi control.

I hear a lung-disturbing cough behind me. I turn round and shield my eyes from the sun, and make out a figure standing rigidly about fifteen feet away under an old Judas tree. I recognise him as the man who chased the Stranger this morning. He is close enough to lean against the tree trunk, but he doesn’t. He is wearing a thick, black roll-neck jumper, and black trousers – doesn’t anybody listen to the weather forecasts except me? It must be thirty degrees, and it’s not even midday yet. His arms are folded in front of him.

He is tall, over six feet. I approximate that he is late thirties, but it’s hard to tell because his face is scrunched up, squinting at the sun, so that his expression makes him seem older than he actually is. He could be thirty, or fifty, but the negativity pinching at his eyes suggests he is one hundred. He is still very red in the face, and I’m not sure if it is the heat or the run that has caused it. He looks like a man who has had the life knocked out of him, who has just lost a custody battle to a promiscuous and alcoholic wife, or finally had his sentence quashed after fifteen years in jail for a pub bombing he did not commit. I wonder what could make a man look so drained. Maybe the Stranger attacked him, and there was some kind of fight …

His face is broad and pale, and he could do with stepping out from that shade and into the sun for a while. His hair is dark and short but slightly bushy on top – he must have to tame it every morning – and I can tell he finds this irritating. I’m sure he hates his hair. It is peppered with grey around his temples, and he has distinguishable sideburns, also dusted with grey. His features are strong but cold, his eyes are deep-set and his nose is positively Roman. He reminds me, standing there staring off into the distance, of those old sepia photographs of ageing Hollywood leading men you see in documentaries, who were a harshly flawed
attractive that seems inexplicable these days. He looks like a closed book that wants to stay closed, and the dust is already starting to settle on his hair. It is hard to see what is muscle and what is fat beneath his black jumper, but I only realise that I am staring when his eyes dart upwards and catch mine. Our gazes lock for a frame – not even a second – but it is enough for my cheeks to flush pink with humiliation. I spin round, and walk two paces forwards to check for my cab, but the road is completely empty, and I feel like a fool.

I hear him cough again, but not to attract my attention. His cough is out of his control – this is clearly not a man who runs regularly. My breathing had regulated itself minutes after the incident, moments even, whereas his lungs sound as if they may still collapse. I glance back over my shoulder to approximate how much he weighs and his eyes dart up and catch mine again.

I touch my toes, for no reason other than to do something quickly, and I feel ridiculous. It must actually look like I am trying to impress him with my arse, or worse, my flexibility. I am giving him the impression that I actively seek out children to rescue on Sunday mornings in an effort to meet men. But can I walk over there and explain that I was merely working out his body-fat-to-lean-matter ratio? I’m not sure, given the circumstance, which version will sound less appalling.

I am going to have to speak to him. If I see him at the trial I will die of shame. I need to clear up this awkwardness, and make it plain that I don’t find him attractive. It’s an old habit that is refusing to die, the need to reject first.

I push myself up from the railing I am leaning on, and inspect my running trousers for specks of my morning vomit, summoning up the courage to small talk. I cross my arms, and walk determinedly towards him with my head down. I
hear him cough again, uncomfortably. I glance up only when I sense that I am a few feet away, feeling the temporary coolness of the shade of the tree above me.

He stands very straight and looks at me, and then away furtively for somebody that might rescue him this time, but we are the only heroes in town today. I’m going to clear this mess up as quickly and as cleanly as possible, and walk away.

‘Hi.’

He just stares at me.

I feel my throat contract, but continue, ‘I’m Batman, you must be Robin …’

I laugh; he stares at me blankly.

‘We both ran after the same man this morning … the man who took the child …’ I can’t bring myself to say the word ‘snatched’.

Even though I am now blocking him from the sun, the scrunched-up expression on his face doesn’t budge.

‘This morning, literally,’ I check my watch, ‘a couple of hours ago? We ran down that alley … I was on the floor, you ran past and told me to go back the other way …’ I am speaking too quickly, I know. And my cheeks are flushed, I know this too. ‘You know, this morning? Surely you can’t have forgotten already?’

‘I haven’t forgotten. Yes.’

‘Yes?’

‘Yes I am that man.’

‘Oh. I thought you meant “yes?” as in “what do you want?”.’

I laugh sharply. He looks away. And maybe even shrugs his shoulders in agreement, but I might be dreaming that. Finding me unattractive is not a reason to be this rude, although most men I’ve met think it is reason enough to cut me dead.

‘I thought I recognised you, but I wasn’t sure because, you know, I was on the ground when I saw you the first time, which is why I was looking at you just then to make sure it was you … Anyway, I’m just waiting for a cab, to take me home.’ I try to finish brightly, but it just sounds needy.

He stands in silence.

I could walk away, of course. I may never meet this man again, we may be on different days of the trial – who cares if he thinks me rude? I could just walk off as if I hadn’t said a word …

‘I can’t believe how long it took, in there,’ I say. I gesture towards the police station with my head. ‘But some of that was the medical. I’m a little bruised.’ I point to my stomach.

I get nothing, no reaction whatsoever. I should just walk away.

‘But of course it’s nothing really, considering what happened. I guess you caught him then? Good for you.’ I give him a thumbs-up gesture, and actually recoil at myself.

Silence. Why can’t I stop talking?

‘I don’t really know what I was thinking, but I guess in those situations you don’t really think, do you? You just do … I mean you just act … or you don’t know how you’ll act … you can’t plan for it … why would you?’ My voice trails off pathetically into a whisper, ‘Or whatever …’

I think I might cry again, from the effort. My eyes start to sting. A lump grows in my throat.

He is properly older than me; a grown-up. I only ever feel like an adult if I am holding a baby. Twenty-eight doesn’t feel as mature as I dreamt it would when I was a child, and it seemed that my life would be sorted and settled by twenty-five at the latest. He looks around, and I look around, and he smiles weakly at me, unimpressed. I thought he might be different from the rest, given his efforts this morning, which
makes me feel stupid. It was a rare moment of heroism that you rarely witness these days, but it doesn’t really say anything about
him
. I never feel that I am meeting anybody new. We are all trying to be the same person, the same ideal, and the result is that we blend into a big ugly gloop of unexceptionality. The same hair, the same clothes, the same trainers, the same opinions, the same jokes, the same lives. Why would I expect this man to be any different? I am not interesting to him, not blonde enough, not bubbly enough, or whatever his criteria, and that is all that matters in his head.

But then he juts out a hand, to be shaken. ‘Cagney, Cagney James.’

My eyes widen involuntarily. That’s not a name, it’s a 1950s detective show, complete with black-and-white opening credits, and old-fashioned sirens under the theme music, and bad edits and childish graphics.

I remember my manners and offer my hand to be shaken. ‘I’m Sunny. Sunny Weston. Just Sunny.’

I see his eyes widen too. He has trained his face into deadpan but this time his reaction was too quick to suppress. I wonder if he is ever caught so off guard that he smiles.

‘Your name is Sunny?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sunny?’

‘Yes …’

‘Like Perky, or Happy, or any of the other dwarfs?’ He looks at me with incredulity.

‘And who was Cagney?’ I ask. ‘The dwarf who liked to drink and sleep with hookers?’

We are still shaking hands, our fingers clenched in a mutual rage. Given the chance I believe we would break each other’s bones. Simultaneously we pull away, equally alarmed.

I wriggle my hand to cast him off me, and pray my cab will arrive and toot its horn and that will be that. I glance up at his face but he is staring at his fist. I won’t call it electricity. It was just … funny. Weird funny, not ha ha funny. Not good funny.

I step backwards when he speaks.

‘That was a stupid thing you did this morning, Smiley.’

‘I’m sorry, Caustic, I don’t understand.’

‘No surprise there. This morning, running after that bastard. You shouldn’t have done it. I was only a few feet behind you; you should have waited. You could have been hurt. Or can’t bad things happen in fairyland?’

‘I was hurt, as it happens, but my ego survived, getting the child back and all, and not losing a lung in the process.’

I stare at him, shocked at my own tone, shocked at his. I need to make this normal. I don’t know why I am behaving this way.

‘Anyway … he looked really scared, actually. I don’t think he quite knew what he was doing …’

‘And that justifies it, does it?’

He straightens his back. I cock my head. I feel angry, and I can’t explain why.

‘Of course not. But it’s not black and white, is it?’

‘Not black and white? Snatching a child is not black and white? Is it the colour of ice cream and butterflies, Sunny? Is it a magical adventure on a unicorn?’

‘No, but it’s not black like your lungs or white like your hair …’

‘Well, Miss …’

I stare at him expectantly until I realise he has forgotten my name, and is waiting for me to fill in the blank. ‘Weston,’ I say irritably.

‘Well, Miss Weston, what is it exactly? I’m dying for the insight.’

‘Look,
Cagney
,’ I enunciate his name with sarcasm, and instantly regret it, feeling ridiculous.

He looks at me with disdain.

‘I obviously didn’t mean that it was OK to do what he did.’

‘How else could you mean it?’

‘I meant that, although not making it right or justifying it in any way, there must be a reason why he did it.’

‘He is a sick bastard. That’s all the reason there is.’

‘Well, yes, he probably is sick, in some way. But he wasn’t just made that way. As a baby, he wasn’t born wanting to hurt people or … snatch children … or whatever.’

‘Of course he was! Some people are born sick.’

‘You don’t really believe that?’

‘Utterly. What do you believe, that he wasn’t breast-fed until he was eighteen and his daddy was a drunk, and it’s all his parents’ fault?’

A line of sweat trickles down the back of my neck. I hate him.

‘Is that your excuse, Mr James?’

‘I think, given who we are comparing me too, I turned out OK.’

‘Yes, ignorant and angry is very healthy.’

‘I might not be hugging this tree but I’m not hurting anybody.’

‘Maybe not hurting, but boring. I pity your wife.’

The skin around his eyes tightens and his jaw locks. My hands are shaking with rage.

‘Do I look stupid enough to be married?’ he fires back at me.

‘You look stupid enough to do most things.’

Two policemen walking into the station glance at us suspiciously as I raise my voice, and I smile at them as sweetly as I can. I wait for them to go through the swing doors,
and turn to Cagney, half expecting him to be gone. But he is standing in exactly the same position, staring at me with what can only be contempt.

‘I wouldn’t be stupid enough to do you,’ he says flatly, and I flinch.

‘I, like most women, wouldn’t be stupid enough to let you try,’ I say, my voice as controlled as I can manage.

‘Well, women today are too busy burning their bras, and lifting weights,’ he motions with his eyes, just in case I didn’t realise he was talking about me, ‘to know a good man when they see one.’