Nobody's Perfect

by Stephanie Butland

  ‘I know, darling,’ Kate says. She sees the dogs running down the path to greet them, and she’s grateful. ‘I’m sorry things are different, but they just are. We need to get used to them.’

  ‘What about the summer holiday things we were going to do with’ – she looks puzzled for a moment – ‘Mr Spencer?’

  ‘I expect we’ll still do some of them. But on our own, or with Auntie Lissa or Granny and Blake.’

  She follows Daisy into the garden; Daisy greets Hope, Beatle, and Richenda, in that order, then gets on the trampoline. Her cough is receding as spring starts to edge into summer. Kate hopes that by the time autumn comes again her lungs will be strong enough to withstand the winter.

  ‘Do you want to make a bouncing routine, Granny?’

  ‘I can’t think of anything I’d like more, Daisy.’

  Kate goes into the kitchen to say hello to Blake and see if there’s anything she can do. There isn’t, so she sits on the sofa and pretends to read the paper until lunch is ready.

  After their meal, Richenda and Kate sit in the garden, drinking wine; Blake and Daisy have taken the dogs for a walk.

  ‘Tell me how you’re doing, darling,’ Richenda says.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Over the last week, Kate has collected up the things Spencer has left at her place over the months. It’s a sad little bagful – a toothbrush, a razor, deodorant, shaving balm, the tie she kept under her pillow, socks, a book about cinema classics he’d lent her – and she feels sorry every time she looks at it sitting at the top of the stairs. But, all of that week, even though she’d had times when she could see, very clearly, why he had done the things that he’d done, and that after the first untruth it was more and more difficult to undo the situation he had got himself into, she kept coming back to the hurt of the lies, the roadblock those lies had created for them. She knew she was right when she had said that she couldn’t forgive him.

  ‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’

  Kate shakes her head. ‘It doesn’t matter now. All that matters is that it did.’

  ‘Well, if you change your mind, I’ll always listen.’

  ‘I know, Mum.’ Kate hears how her voice is frayed and shaken. She won’t cry. She is so sick of crying. Just for a moment, she wants to tell Richenda all of it, from the beginning, but she cannot imagine saying the words ‘Amanda’ and ‘Elise’ out loud to someone else, seeing her mother’s face as she understands Spencer’s history and what it means for Kate. Instead, she says, ‘He told me. The first time I met him. He said, “You should watch out for me.” And you warned me, and so did Melissa. If I’m miserable—’ she almost says ‘heartbroken’, but that’s such a romantic word, and what she’s feeling is a brutal pain, in bone and muscle and blood, ‘—it’s my own fault.’

  ‘Oh, Kate.’ Richenda looks as though she is going to hug her, so Kate gets up, quickly. She does not trust herself with comfort, with touch.

  ‘I’ll be OK,’ she says, but she doesn’t believe it.

  Richenda sighs. ‘Have you given him his things back?’

  ‘That’s not going to make me feel any better,’ Kate says. The only thing she dislikes more than walking past the bag of Spencer’s things at the top of the stairs is the idea of not walking past it.

  ‘It won’t make it better, but it might make it easier. Have you and Daisy got plenty of plans? Things to look forward to?’

  Kate sighs. ‘Melissa did invite me to a party. Not for a month or so.’ She’s delighted that Melissa’s paid internship has turned into a permanent job, but not sure she can celebrate as a friend should. And anything further ahead than tomorrow feels an unimaginable stretch of time away.

  ‘There you go, then. Book your trains now. Daisy can stay here. At least you have half term coming up in a few weeks.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kate says, but she means ‘no’. Because however awful a possible twice-a-day glimpse of Spencer might be, definitely not seeing him feels worse. She wonders if he’ll go to Scotland, if he’ll tell his parents that it’s over; and she realises with a thud inside that, however much his parents might have liked her, they will be relieved. For them, she will always be an echo, an extension, of Amanda, of their son’s ability to find trouble in the shape of women like her.

  *

  Later that evening, when Daisy is soundly asleep, her cough rocking her frame, but her eyes firmly closed, Kate texts Spencer and asks him to come and collect his things.

  ‘Is this really it?’ he asks when she answers the door.

  ‘I can’t trust you,’ she says. She tries to make it sound like a fact, not an accusation. She’s so tired.

  He stands for a moment, arms crossed, looking at his shoes, and then he says, ‘Well, I suppose it’s what I deserve,’ just that, and he takes the bag and goes. After the way they have conducted their relationship – the talking, the touching, the deliberate, committed closeness – it seems the wrong ending, or no kind of ending at all. But it’s the ending I’ve got, she thinks as she makes her way back upstairs. It’s time to be an adult about it, and try to feel good about my decision.

  *

  Kate counts down the time to half term. As the next few weeks grumble past, she feels as though she’s mastering the art of not-quite seeing Spencer if he’s in the school playground. It’s easier than pretending to smile. But she can’t handle even the glimpses anymore, and Wendy’s sympathetic, school-gate looks make everything feel worse.

  As it happens, half term isn’t terrible. Daisy goes to two birthday parties, both of which delight her and wear her out; one of them is Serena’s daughter’s, so Jo offers to collect Daisy and drop her off. Kate imagines she’ll have an afternoon of moping – she can’t seem to do anything else, no matter how many talking-tos she gives herself – but she falls into a dreamless sleep so deep that the bell doesn’t wake her immediately when Jo returns three hours later. When she opens the door, Daisy has her hands on her hips and greets her with, ‘I was starting to think you had forgot me.’ Kate and Daisy go walking with Blake and the dogs on the days that he’s not working; her mother takes a day off and she, Kate and Daisy spend a day in London at the Natural History Museum. There’s a morning at the soft-play centre, and a day when Kate and Daisy take the bus to Marsham, go to the cinema, and then go out for lunch, and Kate is almost happy as she and Daisy share a pizza and talk about what they would put on a pizza they made themselves. (‘Bananas and avocados and cheese,’ Daisy says, ‘because then in your mouth there will be a beautiful squish,’ and Kate laughs and thinks, look at that, I can laugh.) Wendy and Jilly are on what they are calling a pre-honeymoon in Italy, because Wendy can’t take time off during the term; but on the weekend before school starts again, Richenda and Blake invite them all for lunch, and Kate looks at her daughter and her family and her friends, and thinks about Melissa and Jo, and decides that if this is her lot she’ll be happy. Happiness still seems a long way off, but she’ll get there.

  When she sees Spencer on the first day back to school, though, she thinks, perhaps, that not-unhappy is a more realistic goal.

  The bed is still too big, and the flat is still too quiet, the evenings too long and her body aches for sex and laughter and having someone to match her stride. She supposes she will get used to it, sometime; life, after all, is not so very different to the way it was before she met Spencer. Daisy is thriving in the warming days, all of her test results showing she’s as well as she can be. At the hospital, Chantelle asks Kate if she might be anaemic, as she’s paler than usual; Kate says she’s just tired. But it does feel, a little, as though the colour has gone: from her, from everything.

  The next weekend, Daisy pleads for a sleepover at Granny’s house, and Kate agrees, even though the last thing she wants is a night in the flat on her own. She’ll do some sorting, maybe get together Daisy’s too-small clothes and those things of hers that she will never use again, ready to go to the charity shop.

  ‘And tomorrow’ – Richenda
twinkles at Daisy when she collects her – ‘why don’t we get the train to Marsham and buy Mummy something beautiful to wear for the wedding?’

  ‘I was going to wear what I wore for your wedding,’ Kate says.

  ‘That was December,’ Richenda says. ‘This wedding’s in June. You can’t wear velvet. And if Daisy’s having a new dress, you should, too. My treat.’

  Kate closes her eyes. She thinks of Marsham, Saturday chatter, couples everywhere; the fact that she can’t justify a new dress but has to have one bought by her mother. She would much rather spend tomorrow under the duvet, dozing, crying, pretending she isn’t checking her phone. But when she opens her eyes, ready to make an excuse, Richenda and Daisy are looking at her, expectantly, and she thinks, Well, at least Mum will talk to Daisy and I can be quiet.

  *

  By the time they have arrived in Marsham, had coffee, and been to a bookshop, Daisy is hungry and ready for an early lunch; afterwards, they head to the department store that Richenda favours and Kate would never think to go into, where it transpires that Richenda has booked an appointment with a personal shopper. Kate doesn’t know whether to run or be grateful; she wishes she’d put on a better pair of knickers, as the ones she’s wearing have the elastic coming away around the leg. ‘How long have you had this planned?’ Kate asks.

  ‘Oh.’ Richenda shrugs. ‘I made the appointment on the off-chance. I need something to wear for the wedding, too.’ Richenda is coming with Kate, as Blake has to work; Spencer will be a guest too, and Kate is almost sure he won’t bring a date.

  ‘Hmmm.’ Kate is unconvinced, but she does have a mild hangover – she somehow drank a whole bottle of wine herself, last night – and a not improved by the shop’s lighting, so she decides on the path of least resistance. Daisy sits on a velvet pouffe and watches as Kate tries on half a dozen dresses. Daisy ‘oohs’ at them all, and Richenda nods encouragingly, but none of them feel quite right to Kate. One dress is too flouncy, another too low, another too long, another too busy. Then the personal shopper brings in a jumpsuit in dusty purple and a pair of cream mules with gold embroidery and a low wooden heel. Kate puts them on, and looks in the mirror; all three of the adults exhale, in a way that says, mission accomplished, and Daisy claps her hands. The jumpsuit is a perfect fit, tailored and elegant. The personal shopper has brought ‘statement earrings’, which would look fantastic on Melissa, but Kate will wear plain silver studs, or the daisy earrings Spencer gave her for Christmas, if she can bear to, just to show him that she isn’t petty. She has a silk scarf she’ll wrap at her throat. But – ‘It’s awfully expensive, Mum,’ Kate says. ‘For one day.’

  Daisy frowns. ‘But it’s the most important day of our life, Mummy,’ she says. Kate makes a mental note to talk to her about whose important day it is, along with the relative importance of marriage in a woman’s life. She knows that princess games are a favourite in the school playground at the moment; maybe she needs to find a way to offset them, somehow. She’s been lax of late, letting Daisy watch TV shows she would normally distract her from. Something else to fix, she thinks tiredly to herself, when I have the energy.

  Richenda laughs. ‘There are going to be a lot of important days, Daisy. When you become a champion trampolinist, for one.’

  ‘Is that really a job?’ Daisy asks, and Kate says of course it is, and goes to change back into her jeans and T-shirt, feeling shabby in more ways than one.

  Daisy falls asleep on the train home. She lies with her head on Kate’s lap. Richenda, sitting alongside, rests her hand first on Daisy’s head and then on Kate’s knee. ‘You’re doing fine,’ she says.

  Kate shakes her head. ‘That’s easy for you to say.’

  Richenda tips her head towards her daughter, so that their heads touch. ‘Well, it isn’t. Trust me. I know what it’s like to be unhappy.’

  Chapter 23

  Early June

  F

  RIDAY NIGHTS NOW ARE usually a sort of relief, with the school week over, but not when there’s a wedding that Spencer will be attending the next day. Kate goes to bed early, but then lies awake until one, wakes at three in tears, and goes back to sleep an hour later. It feels as though Kate has only just closed her eyes when Daisy is in bed with her: ‘Mummy, Mummy, it’s Bridesmaid Day!’

  Kate looks at the clock. ‘It’s twenty to six on Bridesmaid Day, Daisy,’ she says. ‘So we really should stay in bed for a bit longer. Come and cuddle in.’ She pulls the warm, wriggly body next to her, and tries to get back to sleep. Kate feels as though her heart ought to be starting to mend by now. It isn’t. If anything, she feels worse as time goes on. She puts it down to tiredness. That and the fact that she was a little late collecting Daisy from school yesterday, and it was just her in the playground and Spencer at the classroom door, waiting. He’d looked at her, into her face, for just a second, and she had wanted nothing so much as to put out a hand and say – but that’s the thing. Say what? Why didn’t you tell me the truth from the start? I wish things had been different? I miss you? All of those things would be true but none of them took her anywhere. And by the time she’d thought about it, he’d said, ‘See you at the wedding, Daisy,’ nodded to Kate, and gone back inside. And she had felt any healing of her heart undone.

  There’s no way Daisy’s going to settle and Kate isn’t going to get back to sleep, so they get up and Kate microwaves pancakes and grills bacon and they eat them in front of Finding Dory, to fill the time before they need to go to Wendy and Jilly’s. Kate will leave Daisy there and go to her mother’s, and from there the two of them will go to the hairdresser, then back to her mother’s to get ready, and they’ll take a taxi to the hotel. Kate would have been just as happy without the fuss, but Richenda insisted, booked and will pay for everything. Kate wonders if it would have been different without her broken heart. But her mum seems to be at least as excited as Daisy about the wedding, rather than taking pity on Kate. Perhaps the elaborate preparations will cheer Kate up. Or at least make her feel sufficiently armoured to get through the day.

  As soon as Kate and Daisy leave the flat, look up at the story-book blue sky, and say that it’s a lovely day for a wedding, a momentum begins that carries Kate through. She has a glass of Buck’s Fizz with the brides, gives Wendy the pack of tablets and snacks and the list of timings, waves to Daisy, who is having her fingernails painted, and then arrives at Richenda’s with time for a coffee in the garden before they walk to the hairdresser. Richenda has her hair cut while Kate’s is put up, a feat only a hairdresser can manage because it’s so soft and slippery. Then it’s back to her mother’s, for more coffee, and sausage sandwiches provided by Blake, who says, ‘You never know how long it’s going to be until you get fed at a wedding.’ Richenda changes into a fuchsia-coloured dress, and wraps a cream pashmina round her shoulders; Kate puts on the jumpsuit, slips her feet into the mules, and looks in the mirror, where she sees someone who looks – well, like an adult, like a confident, well-put-together woman. That’s something. She slides her shoulders back and holds her head high, tries a smile at herself in the mirror. Then she adds her usual slick of mascara and a sheer red lipstick. Her mother’s make-up takes a little longer, and Kate sits on Richenda’s bed and watches as the foundation, eyeshadow, blusher go on. ‘I don’t remember ever watching you do this before,’ Kate says.

  Her mother’s reflection pauses, eyebrow pencil in hand, and looks at her. ‘I don’t think I wore make-up much when you were little,’ she says. ‘And – well, things are different now.’

  Kate nods. ‘Did you ever think about being on your own? Instead of with Blake?’

  Richenda doesn’t hesitate. She’s dotting highlighter along the tops of her cheeks, blending it in. ‘You say that as though I went from one man to another. But, actually, I went from being lonely and’ – she pauses for a moment, takes a breath – ‘unseen, to finding real love for the first time in my life. When I split up with your father it was because I had finally worked out who I was and wha
t I needed. I’d have been happy on my own. Though I’m happy that Blake’s here. If you see what I mean. Your happiness shouldn’t be entirely contingent on someone else loving you, or someone else being there.’

  ‘Yes.’ Kate looks at her hands. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—’

  ‘There’s no need to apologise,’ Richenda says. ‘But you of all people know that how things look might not be how they are.’

  ‘Me of all people?’

  Richenda turns from the mirror; Kate is struck by how bright her eyes are, how the happiness of the last few years has made her mother virtually unrecognisable compared to her childhood-memories mum, who was dull and carping. ‘The assumptions that people make about Daisy are a long way from the truth, aren’t they?’ Richenda asks. ‘And the assumptions that people have made about Spencer, too. You know the truth is different. It’s not about drawing a line from one thing to another. It’s about understanding how complicated life can be.’

  ‘Yes,’ and Kate would like to take hold of her mother, hug her; but there’s the sound of the taxi’s horn and they are on their way. They are driven through Throckton and up, over the hill, along country lanes, towards the country hotel where the wedding will take place. As the car turns up the drive to the hotel, Richenda takes Kate’s hand. ‘Are you going to be OK? Seeing Spencer?’

  ‘I’m going to have to be,’ Kate says, ‘and I have to see him at school, most days, anyway.’ It’s not about me, she reminds herself, as she steps from the car, finds her balance and breath. But it’s not school, either. This is the first time, since he collected his things, that she will have seen Spencer in a setting where they are free to talk to each other if they want to. Kate cannot help but feel herself pulled to him. There is more to her than Spencer. But despite all of her effort, the talking-tos that Kate is giving to herself almost constantly, the yearning for Spencer isn’t fading. It’s quite the opposite. But the fact remains that – although cystic fibrosis is not Down’s syndrome, and Kate is infuriated by people who think medical conditions, physical disadvantages and learning disabilities are all interchangeable – there’s something in Spencer’s behaviour that she cannot argue away, cannot make peace with.