A Perfect Life (20 page)

‘We lost Foss. We looked everywhere and we didn't know he had fallen in the sinking mud. A man digging bait found him. We thought he was dead when they got him out. He had to have the kiss of life, but the ambulance says he's fine now. I had to cancel the coastguards.'

He stops and walks past Nick, then turns back to him. ‘Why didn't you call me, Dad?' The break in Jem's voice freezes Nick.

Cooking pasta, not the spare ribs Angel had prepared, Nick strains his ears to hear where everyone is. In fact, he knows. They are all in the bedroom with Angel. Actually, they are all in the bed, and Foss, like some Renaissance cherub, is propped in the middle, swathed in pashmina shawls and being stroked by his siblings. Nick knows this because he has been in attendance with a tray. It was Coral's idea to make hot milk and honey, and Ruby's addition was blackberries.

‘It's like in
Peter Rabbit
after he was in Mr McGregor's garden. They are good for shock,' she explained, running upstairs with a bowlful. Nick feels that blackberries being ripe already as it is still only bloody August, is pretty shocking in itself, but no one is in a mood for jokes, and he isn't really either, though he has always enjoyed guillotine humour. Or is it gallows? Maybe both were used. He must look it up some time.

So this is it. Funnily enough, Foss's drama has changed everything in an unexpected direction. When he got home today, Nick thought that he wanted to plead with Angel, he wanted to create a chance to try and make it all work again. He was under some sort of illusion that they were still good together. But now, alone in the kitchen with Angel and all the children upstairs, he is defeated, lonely, and to be brutally honest, not especially interested. Why should he be? Angel has made it very apparent that she doesn't need him any more. Time to be realistic here. And it doesn't much matter now when it is that they talk about it; the details are unimportant.

With this thought he pours the pasta from the colander into a bowl containing cream and grated cheese and yells up the stairs, ‘Come and get the Last Supper!'

They are all too far gone on shock to notice that Nick was not up to the challenge of spare ribs and he still cannot resist gallows humour.

I can't believe it. After all the drama of today, not to mention letting me down for about a week and behaving like a total jerk, Dad has now been to play tennis with Coral so he's not playing with me tonight. I am sick of being the most invisible member of this family – no, actually I am sick of being a member of this family, full stop.

Mum and the little ones are having a baby bunny nesting party in Mum's bed, and I hung out with them for a while, but there is only so much of the Mary Poppins film I can bear. Coral is being all whispery and twitchy and Dad's having a born-again house-husband moment in the kitchen.

I wish I could get out of here. I can't even get out of my head, because I've lost the bit of dope Coral got me and she is way too grumpy for me to ask for more. I would probably be back in Mum's room watching
Mary Poppins
if I hadn't remembered the spray paint.

* * *

Shit. If I had known what was going to happen there is no fucking way I would have sprayed even one letter of graffiti on my bedroom wall. But I didn't know. I was like one of those lambs to the slaughter they have in the Bible or
Aesop's Fables
when Coral came into my bedroom. I was about to listen to ‘All along the Watch Tower', so as well as everything else, one of my favourite songs has been ruined for ever now.

‘Jem, I've got something I want to tell you – oh my God, what are you doing? Mum will kill you!' She is all angles in my room, and she is looking angry.

‘Why? It's my room, I can do what I want.' I don't like Coral criticising me, and the graffiti looks good. I've only written ‘Dub' and ‘vole' as a kind of practice, and then I was going to do some lyrics. She sits on the bed, and Mum comes in too, holding Ruby's hand. Ruby is all clean now, pink and soft in her pyjamas with clean hair.

‘Supper's ready.' Dad appears too, finishing off the audience, and my room is suddenly small and cramped. It stinks of paint.

Jimi Hendrix begins singing, ‘There must be some kind of way out of here.'

If only.

Coral says, ‘Good, now everyone's here. Jem, you need to know something. Nick is not my dad.' And she folds shut her mouth and clenches her fists as if she is about to be tortured.

‘I am sorry, darling, we should have told you a long time ago.' Mum hugs me, and her soft arms flop against the stone pillar I have become.

‘He IS my dad,' says Ruby, never one to be left out. And she scuttles over to Dad. He has his hunted expression on. I never thought he would look like that over something to do with me.

For some reason I ask what is in my head. ‘Are you
my
dad?' and Mum bursts into tears, as does Coral.

Dad nods. ‘I think you should all come downstairs and we can have supper and talk,' he says. This is when I feel like a slaughtered lamb. We all follow Dad down to the kitchen and sit round the table.

‘Where's Foss?' is my next ludicrous utterance. I have no idea what is going to pop out of my mouth, and my whole body feels as though it is moving through cotton wool. No, make that mud. Like the mud Foss was stuck in today.

‘He's fast asleep,' says Mum in her soothing voice – and her tone is about as inappropriate as a sledgehammer at a fairy tea party of Ruby's.

‘Shall I explain to Jem and Ruby?' Coral is calm now. Mum and Dad are cowering at the table, but they don't look at one another once. Ruby seems to have taken the news in her stride and is twirling spaghetti on her fork.

Mum just nods, and pushes her pasta away. Dad sighs, and shovels his into his mouth.

Coral reaches out and puts her hand on mine. ‘When Mum and Nick met, Mum was pregnant from her old boyfriend Ranim. He lives in India and though Mum really loved him, she couldn't find him to tell him about me existing. Nick came along and rescued Mum from being a single mother.'

So Coral is some sort of fairy-tale heroine. Neither Mum nor Dad says a word. None of it is great, but the worst thing is that they all kept this secret from me. Rage, like a red mist heating my brain, begins to swell. I get up from the table and slam out of the door. On the other side I kick it and yell, ‘Why didn't you tell me? What else is there that I have not been told?'

I kick the door again and Dad scrapes his chair back, shouting, ‘Cut it out, Jem. You are way out of order.'

‘Fuck you, Dad.' Even through my anger I am quite shocked to hear myself say that, but I can't help it. They should have told me.

It is his back view. Nick in the grocery shop in town. Angel saw his car when she was parking, so she knew he was there, but buying groceries was never an occupation she would have imagined Nick engaged in, especially now he has been living at the Travel Lodge for three weeks. He is at the checkout, and even though it is only twenty odd days since she last saw him, he looks different. His hair is lank, and his shoulders rounded. He is wearing a grey patterned jumper, a middle-aged man's golfing sweater, the sort of thing her father used to wear. Angel taps him on the back, having fixed a smile ready on her face. Nick turns and the sweater is tight on the swell of his tummy, a swell new to him like a pregnancy and echoed like a pregnancy in his jowls and on his cheeks. An extra layer of Nick. There was definitely enough of him already, Angel thinks spitefully. She gasps, realising she is shocked, groping for a proper reaction to unexpectedly bumping into her husband when she has broken
up with him. Nothing adequate springs into her mind, just a sliver of meanness, a small shaft of anger that he has stepped into her consciousness when she was not expecting him.

‘Hi, Angel.' Nick blinks, stepping back to look her up and down. Aware of this familiar routine, Angel shrinks inside; she had seen him do this so many times and now she is another woman for him to look at.

‘You look well,' he says, his demeanour rueful.

‘Thanks.' The silence needs to be filled, and Angel is smarting from the pain this encounter is bringing. Determined not to allow anger to erupt, and wanting to protect herself, Angel retreats behind a wall of breezy civility, treating him as though he is a passing acquaintance. She smiles brightly, and says, ‘It's very nice to see you, but I've got to go and buy some mousetraps.' She hears herself and has to shut her eyes for a second to regain sense; it may be self-protection, but this is going nowhere and she wants to laugh to break the tension. Nick looks nonplussed, as well he might, Angel thinks. He turns back to the waiting cashier. The shop is about to close, so will the hardware shop across the road. It is true that Angel does not want to miss the mousetraps. And she is flailing for things to say to Nick; ironic and yet it sort of makes sense that with the whole of their life together behind them, it is hard to pick a topic to start with. Impossible, in fact. Angel feels unequal to the challenge.

Nick is still paying, his back turned towards her.

Muttering, ‘See you soon, Nick,' she walks away through the frozen food section towards the exit. It
would be better if she had bought something, but she can't remember why she came into this shop, and she feels she might burst if she hangs around any longer. Beside the ice cream counter she almost steps on a woman's toe. Recoiling, she recognises Jeannie Gildoff. Jeannie smiles. Angel sees alarm in her eyes change quickly to guarded friendliness as she rakes her fingers through her red hair. Why is she here? This is not her local town. Oh God. Like a curtain dropping, Angel watches Jeannie's red hair swing across her face. She remembers the boys on the street in London. Telling her what she already must have known. Nick was kissing a redhead.

Automatically Jeannie and Angel reach forward and kiss one another on the cheek, Angel half aware of how absurd it is to be embracing in a fucking grocery store and to be kissing her husband's mistress. It is the missing piece, the part of Nick he had not told her existed. Jeannie is the one. And now she knows. Angel thinks all of this, and her instinct of self-preservation pulls her back from saying anything.

Jeannie fills the silence. ‘Nick's over there.'

‘Yes, I saw him.' Angel wants to run. And she wants to go and buy mousetraps. But she stands quite still, asking Jeannie about her children, her mind shifting, fragmenting like a kaleidoscope.

She says, ‘Has Heath finished his exams yet?'

And she is thinking,
Oh God. How can I get out of here as fast as possible? Jeannie is the redhead they saw him kissing. How long has it been going on? What is going on? Is this what Nick's been doing?

Nick is no longer in the shop, or so Angel assumes. He would certainly want to escape this scene. If he had seen them meet, he would have been quick to get out.

‘Yes, he's working for Peter now.'

‘Good,' says Angel. As if she gives a flying fuck.

How on earth can she get out? How will this conversation that is about nothing ever end? The two women look at one another and questions tick and ricochet through their minds, while they make polite conversation.

‘The forecast is good for the weekend,' says Jeannie.

Is her stomach flat?

Did he love her?

‘Oh good. I'm actually here buying mousetraps. We're overrun,' says Angel.

Did they have sex last night?

Does she still love him?

‘Oh, they are such a nuisance, aren't they? But at least when you have mice they say you don't get rats,' says Jeannie.

What does she look like naked?

What does she look like naked?

‘Really? I wonder why that is?' ponders Angel.

Does she make him happy?

Did she make him happy?

‘I don't know. I think they each like their own kingdoms,' replies Jeannie.

Will they stay together?

Why did she leave him?

‘Oh look at the time, I must dash,' says Angel, waving her watch in front of her own face.

Was this what was wrong with our marriage all the time?

I've got him.

I've got no one.

‘Yes, so must I. Very nice to see you, Angel.' Jeannie leans forwards and kisses her. Again.

I wonder who she's sleeping with? Peter always found her very attractive.

I miss sex. Even though we never had it, at least I had someone I could have had it with.

‘Bye, Jeannie. See you soon.'

Does he love her?

‘Bye, Angel, take care.'

Back in her car on the street, Angel hurls the mousetraps on to the passenger seat and sighs, trying to collect a million fragmented thoughts. And Nick appears again, walking along the pavement – well, shuffling really. He passes right next to the car; he must recognise it, but he is looking at his telephone, and he appears not to see Angel or their family car. Angel sits quite still, watching him pass by and walk away. In her rear-view mirror she sees him turn the corner into the car park. And that moment is sad and complete. The end of their time together. How strange that the real end should turn out to be so small.

Angel wishes she were addicted to something as her compulsion to be destructive to herself is a flaming heat as she drives home. Unable to think of anything she can do, she turns up the music as loud as it will go and
accelerates. Seeing Nick with someone else has broken the final link between the two of them. They are both free to spiral into nothing or to make new lives. It is sometimes difficult not to succumb to madness. When she gets home, Angel realises she has not bought any food. And she has a thousand other things to do now, but she can't remember what any of them are. The garage on the main road will still be open. Angel sits in the kitchen making a list. On it she writes: