This Perfect World (15 page)

Tonight I tell him there is this poor old woman who travels
four hours a day on buses just to spend one hour with her
mentally ill daughter. I tell him that the daughter, a woman
of my age, is someone I was at school with, though I don’t
tell him what a bitch I was to her the whole time I knew
her.

‘She’s trapped inside herself, drugged up and shut away,’
I say, and I wonder where all this compassion is coming from.

‘Right,’ James says, curling spaghetti round his fork.

‘I mean, it’s a downward spiral.’ I can hear myself talking
in clichés. ‘It could happen to anyone. You get depressed,
you go to the doctor, you get put on pills. But pills don’t
sort out the problem and you end up needing more pills, and
before you know it you’re caught up in the system and can’t
get out.’ For a second I wonder what on earth I’m talking
about, and I shut up before James asks me the same thing.

He doesn’t, though. He carries on eating, twisting up his
spaghetti and cutting off any unruly tails with the side of his
spoon.

‘It’s terrible that this should happen to people,’ I finish
lamely.

‘It’s a tough old world,’ James says, which is a safe thing
to say, when he clearly hasn’t been listening to a word I’ve
said.

I can’t get over the cuts all up her arms.

The more I think about it, the creepier it is.

I lie awake in the darkness with my eyes wide open and
there are a million questions firing in my head. I listen to
James snoring away beside me and I wonder why it is that
Heddy watched us at school all those years ago, cutting
ourselves. Did she just want to be like us – pretty, popular,
blonde,
included
, all the things Heddy Partridge could never
be? Or was she trying to pick up tips on technique from the
master cutters so that she’d be better able to copy us one
day, when her own time came? I stare into the dark and I
see Jane, Cathy, Amanda and me huddled together in the
playground, close, each of us in turn rolling up our sleeves
and baring the soft, latticed skin of our inner arms, and I
see Heddy, always there, hovering close by, trying to catch a
look.

When we cut our arms it was a very private thing, or so
I thought. Something between just the four of us, binding
our friendship. But all performers need an audience, don’t
they, and now I wonder: did we need Heddy? Did we need
her just so that we could tell her to get lost, just to make
our need for secrecy more intense?

Did I need her, just to make myself look and feel better?

I turn on my side and close my eyes, but the thoughts
won’t go away.

I remember my English tutor at college telling the class
that if you hate someone, it is because you can see in
them that something you dislike about yourself. What
nonsense, I thought.

Heddy Partridge and I are aeons apart in our lives and in
our heads, surely?

Surely?

She is like a shadow that just won’t go away.

What was she thinking when she watched us, all those
years ago? And what was she thinking when she stood looking
down at me as I lay on her mother’s sofa with my wrist so
half-heartedly slit? I squeeze my eyes tight shut, but I can
still see her blank, emotionless eyes, giving nothing away.

And when she so publicly cut up her own arms, what was
she thinking then? Not of me, surely. Not even for a second.
That would be just too creepy for words.

I press together the inside of my arms, inner wrist against
inner wrist. I remember how it felt to peel back the woolly
sleeve of my cardigan, the anticipation, the thrill. I remember
it so well I can almost feel it. The prickle and the tingle of
the blade scraping away at my skin, the pop as it burst
through. The adrenaline, shooting out and making my heart
race while I kept my body oh so still. And the pain, the secret,
glorious pain, beating in time with my heart.

I remember all this, though I want to forget.

I will help Mrs Partridge. I will do whatever I can to help
get Heddy out of St Anne’s. I have to, otherwise they will be
on my back like clawed beetles forever, dragging me down.

Sure enough, there is a message on the answerphone the next
day, when I get back from town with my new shoes. It’s the
third message after the one from Tasha confirming coffee on
Thursday and Liz’s
Hello, how are you? Didn’t see you at yoga.

‘Mrs Partridge calling,’ she announces in a semi-shout, as
if answerphones were the newest of the new and just too
baffling for words, rather than simple taping mechanisms
that have been around for years and years. ‘Violet Partridge
calling. For Laura Cresswell. Phoning to say thank you, dear,
for all your kind help. Will try again later.’

Please don’t, I think, as I wipe off the message. Please don’t
try again later.

But she does, of course. This time, thankfully, I am busy
bathing the children, and again I don’t answer. So she calls
me on my mobile. I hear the distant ring of it from my
handbag, down in the hall.

And I see my life, opened out and crawling with beetles,
eating me up and pulling me down.

*

James and I have sex scheduled in on Wednesday nights.
Obviously if he’s away on business or working late, then we
can’t do it and then there’s the nightmare of rejiggling diaries
to see if we can fit it in on a Tuesday or a Thursday instead,
but more often than not one of us is either out or busy. And
there’s always the Saturday slot to fall back on.

Tonight James is at home, we are on the bed and he has
been working on my left nipple for quite some time now.

I started off with good intentions, but I just can’t concentrate.
I just can’t relax. I mean, how can I, with Heddy
Partridge and her mother permanently stuck in my head? It’s
like they’re here, in the room with us.

I sigh, and James seems to take this as a sign that he’s
getting somewhere at last. His fingers speed up the twiddling,
and he starts rubbing himself against me, and kissing my
neck.

‘I’ve got to help them,’ I say, and James grunts into my
neck. ‘I’ve got to.’

James grunts again, lets go of my left nipple and moves
his hand across to start on my right.

I stare at the ceiling. ‘But how? What can I do?’

James’s fingers stop twiddling, and start drumming on my
breast instead, a sign of impatience, I think. ‘No one can be
held against their will unless they’re a danger to themselves
or to others,’ he mutters into my hair.

I turn my head and we are nose to nose. ‘You make it
sound like she’s in prison!’

‘No,’ he says, finally giving up on my breasts altogether
and taking his hand away, ‘you make it sound like that.’ He
props himself up on one elbow and looks down on me. ‘You
know, I think I preferred you when you were selfish,’ he says.

He means it as a half-joke, but it isn’t even half-funny.
Tears rush into my eyes, and sex is definitely off the menu.
‘I am still selfish!’ I cry as James stares at me, startled. ‘Believe
me, I am.’

I arrive at Chico’s at twelve-thirty on Thursday to meet Tasha
and, surprise, surprise, Penny and Liz are there too. I see
them through the glass before I open the door, heads together
around the table, chatting very animatedly. The chat stops,
of course, when I walk in, and they grin up at me, hungry
as wolves.

Coffee is ordered for me, and more coffees for them.
They’ve clearly been here for quite some time, though they
quite ridiculously try to pretend they’ve just arrived and that
it was a coincidence, them all bumping into each other like
this.

I sip my coffee and wait, and they wait too, all eyes upon
me, blatantly voracious.

‘Well, go on then,’ Liz says at last. ‘You know we’re all
dying to know what you’ve been up to.’

‘Yes, and it better be something good for you to keep us
in suspense like this!’ Penny quips, and I notice she sounds
just the tiniest bit miffed.

‘Teenage lover, at least,’ Tasha drawls, manicured fingers
stirring her spoon around her coffee cup with artificial ease.

‘Well, actually,’ I say, looking at each of them in turn, ‘I’ve
been to see a girl I knew from school, who’s stuck in a mental
hospital. I was wondering if any of you’d know how I could
help get her out.’

All three of them stare back at me, mouths open, eyes
wide.

‘Oh, my God, what did she do?’ gasps Penny. ‘I mean,
what kind of mental?’

‘Do you mean mad-mental or is it just some kind of breakdown?’
Tasha asks, and when she says mad she shakes her
head a little, and crosses her eyes, cartoon-like, lest I should
doubt her definition of the word. ‘Who is the girl? Do we
know her?’

‘No of course not. And she’s not a girl now; she’s a woman.
She’s a mother.’

‘Oh, my God,’ says Penny again. ‘Now that is awful. You
shouldn’t go having children if you’re, you know—’

‘What?
Mental?
’ I ask and my voice is tight and dry. ‘Well,
maybe she wasn’t then.’ And square up before my eyes rises
that image of Heddy Partridge trapped in her box-house in
Barton Village, beaten down by her life, new baby in her arms.
Suddenly, mortifyingly, I’m going to cry, and I have to dig the
nails of one hand into the other to fight back the tears.

I see Penny look at Tasha, and Tasha look at Liz.

‘Where’s the hospital?’ Liz asks.

‘St Anne’s. Other side of Hounslow,’ I say, over the lump
in my throat.

‘Why would you want to get her out?’ Penny asks. ‘I mean,
I’m sure she wouldn’t be in there in the first place unless
there was a very good reason, Laura.’

I can’t answer this. Again, I see them all exchanging glances.

‘She might be
dangerous
,’ Tasha suggests, and Penny nods,
vigorously, in agreement.

They’re waiting for me to tell them more, but I can’t. I
should never have mentioned it at all. I should have stuck
to clothes and houses and children and the general bitching
with which we normally amuse each other. My throat is
burning, the skin under my hair prickling up with heat.

Tasha shivers slightly, and pulls her cardigan a little closer
around her. The silence drags on.

And then Penny suddenly sees someone she just has to
wave hello to across the other side of the room, and Tasha
remembers it’s at least five minutes since she checked her
phone for messages. Liz picks up her cup, stares into it for
a long moment and eventually notices that it’s empty, again.

‘More coffee, anyone?’ she asks stoically, breaking the
silence.

‘Oh, yes,’ Tasha says, ‘good idea’, and the relief is palpable.

‘Me, too,’ Penny says and, turning towards Tasha, and
away from me, she says, ‘I’ve been dying to ask: how is your
floor coming along?’

And swiftly they are back on floors, and wall coverings,
the debatable progress of the children’s book-day costumes
and the new summer collection already appearing in Flavia’s
in the village, as if I had never done anything so gauche as
to throw a nutter into the conversation.

It’s a while before I can join in. It’s a while longer before
any of them can meet my eye again.

Mrs Partridge catches me in the next time she phones.

We are just in from school, with Thomas tearful and angry
inside the sad remains of his Baloo outfit. I’d be just the
tiniest bit angry myself if I didn’t feel so sorry for him. He’s
torn his school trousers trying to rip the felt off them, and
the white furry patch on his tummy is covered in dirt from
rolling around on the ground, fighting. The tail is gone altogether,
thrown around the playground apparently, until it
got stuck up a tree.

‘There’s been some silliness,’ Mrs Hills said when I went
to pick him up. She kept him back with her as the rest of
the class dispersed, always a bad sign. She kept Milo
Littlewood back too, at her other side, which was doubly
worrying as we were supposed to be going back to the
Littlewoods’ for tea.

‘Oops,’ Fiona Littlewood whispered into my ear as we
waited, as required, until all the other delightful little
Jungle
Book
characters had been claimed.

Oops, indeed. Thomas was sporting a scowl that would
sink battleships on his tear-stained little face. Milo, who was
clad in a Baloo costume worthy of a stage production,
was sporting two large red scratches on his.

The silliness turned out to be fighting and name-calling
and all manner of inappropriate behaviour, rounded off most
effectively by Thomas digging his nails into Milo’s milky-white
cheeks. Naturally, Mrs Hills hoped never to see such
behaviour again, and certainly not during book week.

I felt like a six-year-old myself, and thoroughly told off.
This I covered with a profusion of apologies on Thomas’s
behalf in a voice slightly lower than my normal tone. And
Fiona Littlewood graciously accepted my apologies with vocal
and smug generosity. Although she did go on to say that
perhaps the tea arrangements might be postponed as the children
seemed a little tired after their rather exciting day. She
smiled as she said it – a smile at once superior and understanding
– and for just a second I wondered how she would
look with a couple of scratches to match Milo’s on her beautifully
maintained face.

And so we came home, Thomas, Arianne and I, with
Thomas and me feeling, I imagine, equally deflated and
Arianne piping up every two minutes, ‘Has he been naughty,
Mummy? Has Thomas been naughty again?’

‘They kept calling me a rat,’ Thomas cries when we are
home, and he is clinging on to my legs and pressing his face
into my tummy, just above the belt of my jeans. ‘They said
I looked like a rat, not Baloo.’

He lets his tears bubble up, and I hold him. He cries, and
I cry too. Soon Arianne is holding on to both of us, and
joining in. Thomas is crying over the humiliation of his
bodge-job Baloo outfit. Arianne is crying over Thomas. And
I am crying over a million things that I couldn’t even begin
to explain, not even to myself. And so we launch ourselves
off onto a family crying jag. And this is how we are when
Mrs Partridge phones, and catches me in.