This Perfect World Read online

  ‘Pull your coat down,’ I snapped as she got into the back of my dad’s car. ‘And make sure you’re sitting on it.’ I noticed exactly how much of her was covered by that anorak and exactly how much of her horrible self was in contact with the seat of the car, and I swore I would never, ever sit on that side again – not ever.

  I hated that we had to give Heddy a lift to ballet, and to Brownies too. I wouldn’t have minded so much if it had been Melissa or Claire, but why Heddy?

  ‘Because she wouldn’t be able to go if she didn’t have a lift,’ my dad would answer, irritated, for the umpteenth time.

  Well, good, I’d think. I didn’t want her at ballet or Brownies. I didn’t want her always there, following along behind me like a lost dog. It was embarrassing. People might start thinking I was her friend. Just to make sure they didn’t, I’d leap out of the car before Heddy, leaving her to say goodbye to my dad and shut the door, and I’d run on in to the Brownie hut or the village hall where we did ballet, and I’d ignore her for the whole time we were there. Pointedly. One hour at ballet on Saturday afternoons. One and a half hours at Brownies on Thursday nights. I’d see her standing on her own with her long, dopey face and I’d dismiss her; I was too cross with her to care. And when it was time to go home again she’d annoy me even more, hanging around me when I just wanted to chat with my friends and say goodbye.

  I didn’t see why we had to give Heddy a lift at all. I didn’t see why we had to even know the Partridges. But my mum said that Mr and Mrs Partridge had always lived in Forbury and that Mrs Partridge had done a lot to help other people when she was younger, looking after other people’s children and calling on the old people, that sort of thing, and now Mrs Partridge herself was in need of a bit of help. ‘And I really don’t think it’s too much to ask that you try to be nice to poor Heddy Partridge, either,’ she said, yet again.

  Once, I dared say that it was too much to ask. ‘But I don’t like her,’ I wailed. ‘She’s stupid and she smells.’

  My mum flinched, visibly. And for a second I thought I saw something like pity flash across her face, and I thought that maybe I was getting somewhere, because I thought that pity was for me. But then she trussed her face back up into its usual sanctimonious mask, closed the kitchen door so that my dad wouldn’t hear and hissed at me, ‘A long time ago Mr Partridge used to work for your father sometimes, fitting carpets. Well, for Grampy, really. Grampy was still in charge then. Your father was in the office, but it was still Grampy’s business.’ She spoke fast, as if she wanted to tell me and didn’t want to tell me. And she stared at me, hard – like I was supposed to have a clue what she was going on about. On her cheeks there were red mottled splodges of anger. ‘Mr Partridge was a good and loyal worker,’ she snapped. ‘And I really think that the least we can do is give that poor girl a lift sometimes.’

  As if that was answer enough – which to me, when I was only eight or nine or whatever I was, it wasn’t.

  We used to own Forbury Floors, in the High Street. It was a family business; my grandfather set it up and then my dad took it over.

  God knows what Grampy would say if he could see it now; it’s a pizza takeaway. My dad sold up, before they went to Devon. I don’t think he got all that much for it in the end; that’s partly why they had to downsize. Though my mum would die rather than ever admit that, of course.

  The Partridges lived near us, in the little road that separated our road from the council estate; Tin Town, we all called the estate, because the council houses were prefabs, slapped up after the Second World War. Heddy didn’t live in a prefab, she lived in one of only two tiny cottages on their own, the only two houses in her street. Next to them was open space and overgrown bushes backing onto the reservoir, wasteland, fenced off, and next to that was Tin Town. Fairview Lane, Heddy’s road was called, which is ironic, because there was nothing very fair about the view from her house.

  She was never ready when we picked her up. We’d always have to park up outside her house and my dad would send me to call for her, and I’d have to run up the pathway to her door while the dogs next door barked at me. They had a bell that chimed the first three notes of the national anthem, and those long, multicoloured plastic strips hanging down, just inside the door, like a curtain. Heddy’s mother or her stupid lump of a brother would open the door and I’d have to go inside, and those strips would smack me in the face as I parted my way through them.

  The house always smelled of eggs and the fat they were fried in. Heddy was never ready; she was always upstairs, hunting for a shoe or her scarf or something, and I’d have to go into the living room and wait while Mrs Partridge yelled up the stairs for Heddy to hurry up, as Heddy’s brother slouched on the sofa and stared at me. They always had the TV on too loud and the gas fire up too high, for the benefit of Mr Partridge, who’d had to give up work because of his chest and now sat all the time in his chair, getting smaller and paler and more and more deaf. He died not long after we started at secondary school. My parents went to his funeral. And I remember looking at Heddy soon after, to see if she looked any different. She didn’t. She looked just as dopey as ever.

  Fleetingly I imagined how I would feel if my dad died, and panic spread across my chest – cold, terrifying. But it wasn’t the same. You couldn’t attribute the same feelings to Heddy.

  And now poor Heddy is in a mental hospital, closed in, spent out.

  It would seem that poor Heddy did have some feelings after all.

  TWO

  The next day I take Thomas to school and head straight on to nursery with Arianne. Tuesday mornings are always a rush; I’ve a yoga class at nine-thirty and the traffic is usually dreadful first thing.

  The nursery is run by Carole, in a huge old house in Gloucester Road. It’s actually called Les Petits Génies – there’s a big sign out the front with the letters all in bright colours – but you feel just a tiny bit self-conscious saying that all the time, so we tend to just call it nursery or Carole’s. Everyone in Ashton wants to send their children here, but only some are successful. There’s a waiting list like you wouldn’t believe, and then there’s the interview to pass. I did hear a rumour that Carole is thinking of setting an entrance exam, which has got to be the world gone mad, though I wouldn’t say that to my friends, of course. Nor they to me. Just like no one says it’s madness to send three-year-olds home with homework every week, and to grade them at the end of term.

  No, we don’t say anything because we are the lucky ones, and everyone else can see our little darlings with their Petits Génies purple book bags and know that we are the lucky ones. As in all areas of life, it is better to be in than out. So Arianne is in, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, nine-fifteen until two with a good lunch included, and the odd extra hour here and there. Carole is flexible like that. With the fees she charges, she can afford to be.

  Carole is marvellous; we say that to each other often, Penny, Tasha, Liz and I. Marvellous; the children are getting such a good start.

  Penny pulls up outside Carole’s in her Land Rover with Sam in the back, just as I’m pulling away. I honk my horn to get her attention. ‘Speak to you later,’ we both mouth simultaneously at each other through our windscreens as I drive past.

  The traffic isn’t too bad on the back roads, but once I’m up on the High Street I get stuck in the queue for the lights. It’s always the same here. It can take ten minutes sometimes just to clear the lights. You’d be better off walking, if you had the time. I check my mirrors for police cars and phone Liz on my mobile to see if we can put coffee back half an hour, because I’m going to have to dash into town straight after yoga to get the stuff for Thomas’s book-week outfit.

  As it is, I still end up running late. There’s a bit of a furore after the class because one of the women is thinking of buying a bread-making machine and isn’t sure which sort would be best. Should she go for the top-of-the-range deluxe model with slow-bake and fast-bake, simulated kneading facility, plus an option
for muffins and buns? Or should she go for the slightly smaller model, which doesn’t do the muffins and buns, but does come in a stainless-steel finish and would therefore sit so well in her kitchen?

  Honestly, you’d think she’d said she was planning to take a lover, the way the others react. Bags are dropped and sweatshirts and jackets abandoned half-put-on as they clamour around, almost shouting over each other in their efforts to get their recommendations heard.

  Selina says get the top-of-the-range, definitely; you never know when muffins and buns might be needed.

  Felicity says it’s the bread that matters, not the buns. And so a debate ensues: do we want buns, do we not want buns? I find myself caught up in it all, strangely fascinated, and lose a good five minutes trying to escape.

  ‘It all comes down to the rise,’ Steph declares at last, and everyone agrees with this. ‘Other features are all very well, but what you really need to be sure of is a good rise. Mine’s excellent,’ she says. ‘I just bung in the ingredients before I go to bed and I’m guaranteed a nice, big, hot loaf in the morning.’

  I never saw so much excitement after a yoga class.

  Then when I finally get to John Lewis’s haberdashery department I find all the grey fake-fur has gone, which sends me into a panic. I mean, why can’t Thomas just go as Mowgli in a pair of red pants, for God’s sake? Why does he have to be Baloo? Why does the school have to go and pick The Jungle Book for its theme this year?

  The assistant suggests that I buy grey felt, and some white fake-fur to sew onto the tummy, but I’m not so sure about this. I can’t remember seeing Baloo the bear with a white furry tummy, but she assures me it’s what other people will be doing.

  ‘There’ve been loads of them in since the grey fake-fur ran out,’ she tells me cheerfully, ‘and it’s what I’ve suggested to all of them. Little bit of white fur on the tummy will make a nice bear.’ And it would have to be just a little bit of white fur, because that’s running low now too, and so is the grey felt.

  John Lewis’s haberdashery department is packed with women I recognize from the playground. We must keep the department in business, with all these costumes we have to make. If it’s not concerts, it’s book week; if it’s not book week, it’s hat parades. I sometimes wonder if the teachers do it for a laugh. Clearly they think we have nothing better to do all day than sit at home and sew.

  I just have time to grab a sandwich from Costa, which I eat in the car on the way to Liz’s because I’m starving, and I promised Arianne we’d go straight on to the playground when I pick her up from nursery, and Thomas has got a tennis lesson after school.

  And in the evening James will come home to his supper and ask me how things are in Ashton. He loves to hear about the little social intrigues that go on here during the day. And the distance between the school playground and Sainsbury’s can be quite a hotbed of domestic drama. There’ll always be something to tell him, something to make him chuckle and smile fondly.

  How easy it must be to look so affectionately upon the little world when you don’t have to be in it all day.

  To James, life in Ashton is a pleasant diversion from the real world where important things happen, the world of city finance and city law and city men. This is his little escape, his weekend retreat, and to listen to me recounting tales about my little day in my little world is easy entertainment indeed.

  I didn’t tell James about Mrs Partridge phoning last night. I didn’t tell him about Heddy. Instead I told him about Belinda and her French songs and about the madness of French classes for three-year-olds. He laughed, as I knew he would. And tonight I’ll tell him about the excitement at yoga over the bread-making machines, and he’ll laugh about that. And he’ll probably say something like ‘Don’t you ever get a bread-making machine’, and then I’ll laugh too. But sometimes, just sometimes, I think the laugh might be a tiny bit on me.

  I’d like to say I don’t even have time to think about Heddy and Mrs Partridge in my busy, busy day. I’d like to believe I’ve forgotten all about them. I’ve certainly convinced myself that Mrs Partridge won’t ring back, but she does. On the dot of half-past seven. The phone rings and before I even answer I know that it’s her, just as I know, then, that she won’t give up.

  ‘Violet Partridge here, dear,’ she says. ‘I do hope this is a convenient time?’

  And what can I say to that? I think she’s got it worked out already: seven-thirty, I’ll be here.

  She carries on, ‘I was wondering, dear. Have you had a chance yet to speak to your husband?’

  ‘Well, not really, no,’ I say. ‘Mrs Partridge, he is very busy.’

  ‘Only I was thinking it might be better if I popped over. We could have a proper talk then, you know. It might be easier for you, dear.’

  ‘Mrs Partridge, really, there’s no need—’

  ‘Oh, it’s no trouble, dear,’ she says. And then I stand there, frozen, with the phone clamped against my ear while she tells me how she’s already worked out the bus route to Ashton and that she’ll only need to change twice. ‘It won’t take me long, dear,’ she says. ‘Hour and a half at the most, and I’m used to the buses. So perhaps if you could just tell me your address, dear, and which day might be convenient . . .’

  I cannot imagine Violet Partridge on my doorstep, in my house. It cannot happen. Yet she knows my name, my phone number, the town in which I live. How difficult would it be for her to track me down? I picture her, walking the streets of Ashton, knocking on doors until she finds me. I picture this, and panic has me saying, ‘No, Mrs Partridge, please. I’ll come to you.’

  And two minutes later I’ve arranged to go to her house, the following Thursday.

  THREE

  Violet Partridge’s house is just as I remember it. I pull up outside in my car and sit there for a moment, looking at it.

  I’m surprised at how nervous I feel. It’s always odd, going back, revisiting the past, so to speak, but this is doubly unsettling because I never liked being here. I never wanted to come back here, to this house, in this dreary little road. I never thought I’d be here again.

  Memory suddenly flashes up of the last time I was here, some twenty years ago now, but I force that memory back, right back. I just can’t bear to think about it. And I can’t bear to think about Mrs Partridge remembering that time too, though she does. Of course she does. That’s why I’m here.

  At least, that’s part of the reason.

  The house looks strangely empty. It’s a bright, beautiful day already, but the windows are all shut and darkened by heavy net curtains in great need of a wash. The paint on the upstairs window frames is badly blistered and peeling; I can see it flaking from here. Both cottages are pebble-dashed, but the people next door have painted theirs an unlikely turquoise colour, in harsh, brutal contrast to Mrs Partridge’s original, time-darkened grey. A large crack is spreading down from under the guttering, starting in the middle of the two houses and then veering off down Mrs Partridge’s side. I try to remember if it was always there, but I can’t.

  It must be hard for Mrs Partridge to look after the house by herself. It must have been hard for her back then, too, when Heddy’s dad was alive but sitting in that chair all the time, slowly fading away. I can’t imagine Heddy’s brother ever doing much to help.

  There’s a car outside next door, up on jacks, where the garden used to be. It’s one of those big American cars, black and mean-looking, with its bonnet propped open and rusting, like a wide-open mouth. They’ve taken their half of the front fence away, to get this car in, but the gate post is still there, complete with gate standing closed and idle on its own. I wonder if their dogs would still bark at me, but when I open the car door there is silence except for the twittering of birds and the distant, dull hum of traffic.

  Mrs Partridge’s garden is overgrown; mostly it’s concreted over, with a square patch in the middle planted with shrubs and bushes whose unpruned stalks have grown tall and thin and now thrust out at random, spar
sely leaved, fighting for air with the weeds and stinging nettles. The gate is stiff and catches on the concrete when I push it open. I give it a hard shove and glance down, and see millions of ants swarming in and out of the cracks on the pathway, a shocking burst of activity in this unnerving stillness.

  I press the bell at the front door, but it doesn’t chime the tune I’m expecting, the tune I remember so well. Instead it just gives a short, flat buzz – as if it would have been a ring, only the batteries have worn right down.

  She opens the door straight away as if she’s been watching me, and this unnerves me even more. I’d half-convinced myself no one was home.

  ‘Come in, dear,’ she says and steps back, into the darkness.

  The plastic strips have gone. I walk straight into the hall and it’s the smell that hits me, it’s always the smell. We had a boy next door to us when I was a girl, Andrew; two years older than me he was, and sensible. He went on to be a policeman when he grew up. Neighbours the other side of him left him in charge of their cat when they went away and he took me with him once to feed it. I remember how strange their house smelled, and how I didn’t like it.

  ‘It’s just their family smell,’ Andrew said. ‘Every family has its own smell.’

  Ours didn’t, I was sure. I never smelled it.

  Mrs Partridge’s house smells of her whole life. You could pick it apart if you were an expert, some sort of smell-pathologist. You could trace every meal eaten, every circumstance, every celebration and counter-celebration. Every moment recorded by Mrs Partridge’s cooking, the food and the odours from the people eating the food. The smell of their clothes, their hair and their bodies, the cigarettes they smoked. The smell of their emotions, of their stillness in rest, of their fear, all trapped within the closed-window timelessness.