Nobody's Perfect

by Stephanie Butland

  In the orangery, rows of white chairs, blue organza bows on the backs, are filling up with people. Wendy and Jilly have invited sixty guests to their wedding. It had sounded like a lot to Kate, but she realises, as she surveys the six rows of five chairs on either side of the aisle, that sixty isn’t that many people at all, and Spencer is going to be unavoidable. She reminds herself, for what feels like the millionth time, that today is not about her and Spencer, and if she focuses on the wedding, on Daisy, then she will be fine. She and Richenda sit at the aisle-end of the third row, so that it’s easy for Daisy to find her mother if she needs to. At the front, the registrar is waiting next to a table bearing a quill pen in a pot, a wedding register, and an arrangement of blue and purple blooms with silver-green foliage.

  Then, music swells and the waiting family and friends stand, with a rustle and hum of expectation; the registrar moves to the front and centre of the space at the end of the aisle, holds out her hands in welcome. As rehearsed, Daisy walks down the aisle ahead of Wendy and Jilly, a freesia-and-ivy crown on her head, holding a pillow on which two rings lie. There’s a chorus of ‘oohs’ as she comes. Kate feels Richenda’s hand on her arm, but she’s not sure who is steadying whom, because all of a sudden she wants to cry, and for the first time in weeks it’s nothing to do with Spencer. Daisy looks beautiful, of course she does. But she also looks solemn, and serious, and a lot like Kate and a little bit like Mike. She looks strong and healthy and a million precious minutes from when she was in a hospital bed four months ago, and the next time she will be. Kate is filled with love and pride and the pure, sheer joy of being Daisy’s mother, gratitude for her wellness, hope for her future. She stops being brave and lets herself admit that dealing with everything that Daisy faces is hard, a constant stone in the shoe on even the happiest days. Her mother hands her a tissue.

  When Daisy has delivered the rings, and been kissed by Jilly and Wendy, she does exactly as rehearsed again, and goes to her designated chair on the front row and sits down. But she can’t resist looking round at Kate with a big smile that sets Kate’s tears off all over again. Fortunately, she manages not to sob; fortunately, almost everyone in the room is in tears too, as Jilly and Wendy repeat the vows the registrar takes them through, and then make their own. Jilly’s sister sings ‘It Had to Be You’ and then Spencer – who must have been sitting behind Kate and Richenda, because Kate hadn’t seen him until now – comes to the front and reads a poem that begins, ‘I want to be your friend for ever and ever without break or decay.’ Kate grips her own hands, tight, in an attempt to stop her wedding-appropriate tears turning into a heartbroken bawl. Spencer is wearing a navy suit with a pale-blue shirt and a dark pink tie, and is more handsome than ever. He looks from the book in his hand only to Wendy and Jilly as he reads, but as he goes back to his place he grins at Daisy and then catches Kate’s eye, gives the gentlest of smiles, and puts his hand to his heart. Kate looks from his face to her hands, gripping each other in her lap, and wishes love was as easy as Wendy and Jilly have just made it seem. She reminds herself that Spencer did the reading because Wendy’s family haven’t spoken to her since she came out. Nothing is easy. But nothing seems as hard, all of a sudden, as being in the same room as Spencer, but not by his side.

  The table plan is kind to Kate. She and Spencer are not in each other’s eyelines, so she isn’t constantly catching herself sneaking a look at him, or trying not to. Daisy runs between her mother and granny and the brides, and when she is thanked and given a gift she gets a laugh when she looks over and asks, ‘Mummy, can I open it now?’ When the main celebration is over, people start to wander around; Kate is waved over by Wendy, standing hand in hand with Jilly. Kate leaves Richenda in conversation with one of the other people at their table, a retired school librarian who’s worked with Wendy before, and goes to talk to the brides.

  ‘That was beautiful,’ she says. ‘I trust Daisy behaved? I tried to explain that today was all about the two of you, but I don’t think she was convinced—’

  Wendy and Jilly smile at each other, and Wendy says, ‘She was lovely.’

  Jilly adds, ‘I’ve never seen anyone – adult, let alone child – eat so many croissants at one sitting.’

  Kate laughs. ‘I know.’

  Wendy adds, ‘She’s had all of her meds and she actually fell asleep in the car on the way here, which we thought was probably best.’

  ‘I wondered if she would,’ Kate says. ‘Thank you for asking her to be your bridesmaid. She’ll never forget it.’

  ‘Neither will we.’ Jilly touches Kate’s arm above the elbow. ‘Thank you. It’s been a joy to have her as part of our day.’

  And then Spencer’s there, filling the space in front of them, and Kate can’t breathe, for a second. He embraces Jilly and Wendy, then looks at Kate, straight into her eyes, and says, ‘Kate.’ She realises that she’s missed every single thing about him, even the way he says her name.

  ‘Spencer.’ Her voice is steadier than she thought it would be. ‘Hello.’

  She feels Jilly and Wendy start to move away, quells the impulse to take one of them by the hand, to make them stay.

  ‘I’d really like to talk to you,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Kate says. She really doesn’t. Talking might make things worse, though she can’t imagine how. It might make things easier, but she’s not sure that she’s ready for that, either. She realises that she doesn’t want to be over him. Not really.

  ‘Please,’ he says.

  ‘Not here.’ Kate feels panicky, teary.

  Wendy is closer than Kate thought, still within earshot. ‘There’s a room,’ she says, ‘out of the double doors, on the left. Where we left our things. You won’t be disturbed. If you want some privacy.’

  Kate leads the way, aware of Spencer behind her; she looks around and sees that Daisy is sitting on Richenda’s lap, talking, laughing. She won’t be missed. The room Wendy mentioned is a small sitting room. There are bags – including Daisy’s – and jackets, an opened bottle of champagne in an ice bucket on a table. ‘This must be where they waited,’ Kate says, just for the sake of there being something in the air that isn’t the sound of their breathing.

  ‘Looks like it.’ Spencer nods. He runs his hands through his hair. He’s jacketless now and Kate can see the soft lines from where his shirt has been creased in the packet. ‘Now I’ve got you to talk to I don’t know what to say,’ he says. ‘I have no idea where to start. Except that you look beautiful.’

  Kate ignores the compliment, or perhaps stores it away in case she needs it, later. ‘Do you think there’s anything to say?’ She means it as a simple question – she’s not sure of the answer herself – but it sounds like accusation. ‘You haven’t been in touch before now.’

  He sighs. ‘I know. But I couldn’t, could I? Because after everything with Amanda, all I told you, what would you think? If I tried to talk to you when you asked me not to? I would be doing the same thing as I did with her. That’s how it would look. You’d think it was a pattern.’

  ‘I—’ Kate begins, but she stops. She feels as though she needs a whole new vocabulary, nuanced words for love and fear and disappointment, a way to express herself that will take them back to where it seemed that they belonged.

  They are both still standing. ‘I’ve been wishing I’d explained it all better,’ Spencer says.

  This stings. ‘I don’t know whether that would have helped. It wasn’t the quality of the explanation that was the problem.’ Everything she says sounds trivial; whenever she opens her mouth it seems she’s starting from the wrong place.

  ‘I mean, the whole thing,’ he says. He’s walking, two steps one way, two steps another, while Kate stands still, watching him. She can’t take her eyes off him. He can’t seem to look at her for more than a second or two. ‘From the beginning. I should have told you everything. But I knew right from the start that this was it – that you are it, for me – and I didn’t want to mess it up.’
>
  Kate tries to speak, but she only succeeds in making a noise, a sort of sigh that seems to mean something to Spencer, because he pauses, looks at her, nods, and stops, facing her, too far away to touch.

  ‘Although I suppose it didn’t matter,’ he says.

  The cat releases Kate’s tongue. ‘Why didn’t it matter?’

  Spencer sighs and looks at her, straight at her, and her arm goes out to touch him, an involuntary motion, although she stops it mid-air and brings it back to her side. ‘Because,’ he says, ‘whenever you found out about Amanda that would have been it. I might as well have told you at the start. It was – insurmountable.’

  ‘Spencer—’ He’s said what she’s thought, over and over, through all of these nights, but there’s something not right, when she hears it. Now she can’t find another word to come after his name, which she finds that she has spoken softly, a bedroom word.

  ‘And when I thought about it,’ he continues, ‘not that I’ve thought about anything else – I thought, well, if I was you, and I had a child with CF, and I found out that the person I’m with had a relationship with someone with a child with Down’s syndrome – well, I would have seen a pattern. I think.’ He shrugs, and his shoulders seem to land at a lower point than where they began. ‘I would have done the same as you. To be safe. Of course I would.’

  ‘But—’ Kate says. Spencer looks at her, waiting, but nothing else comes. Her arm, so eager to reach for him a minute ago, won’t move. He looks away, down to his shoes, over her head, through the place where the door is ajar as a trolley, rattling with glasses, is pushed past. When it becomes clear to both of them that she has nothing to say, he continues.

  ‘What I’m saying is – I know it’s too late. I can see that. I asked to talk to you because I wanted you to know’ – Spencer falters, puts a hand to his eyes, takes a breath, and looks straight at her – ‘if you can believe it, and I know it seems unlikely, but I want you to know it was just stupid chance. Not a pattern.’

  ‘I—’ Kate wants to say ‘I know’ but she can’t, quite.

  ‘I keep thinking that if I were you, I’d feel’ – he grimaces, as though the coming word is bitter – ‘targeted. I need you to know that it wasn’t like that. I loved you. Love you. Amanda had nothing to do with it.’

  Now that Spencer has given voice to everything Kate has been thinking she has nothing to say. Her stomach feels empty and her fingertips shake. All she has to do is reach. She sees that he has tears in his eyes.

  The door opens and Daisy is there, looking from one of them to the other, and Kate’s automatic reactions kick in: ‘Hello, sweetheart,’ she says, and reaches out a hand.

  Daisy says, ‘I came to put the box for my bridesmaid present in my bag because it’s precious.’ She holds out her little arm to show Spencer: Kate’s already seen the sweet, charm bracelet with the butterflies and daisies attached. Despite her best efforts to suppress them, Kate feels her tears come.

  ‘That’s lovely, Daisy,’ Spencer says. Kate can hear the tremor in his voice.

  ‘Wendy says it’s really gold,’ Daisy says, ‘and she says that when I’m bigger and the bracelet part doesn’t fit I have to tell her and she’ll buy me a bigger bracelet and we can put the butterflies and daisies onto that.’ She beams at both of them, then looks at her wrist again.

  ‘I’ll put the box away for you, Daisy,’ Kate says, trying to avoid what she fears is coming, ‘so you can go back to the party.’

  It’s too late. ‘Why are you crying, Mummy?’ Daisy asks. ‘Why is Spencer crying?’

  ‘We’re just a bit sad,’ Spencer says. He looks at Kate over Daisy’s head, the way they used to when Daisy asked them something, or said something, that they had to coordinate a response to. It makes her tears come faster, rather than slow down; she realises that she gave the pack of tissues from her bag to her mother during the ceremony, and so she dabs at her face with her fingers, then the heels of her hands. Daisy comes and stands next to her, puts a hand on her leg. Spencer holds out a handkerchief, blue like his shirt. Kate takes it. ‘That’s not a tissue,’ Daisy says.

  ‘It’s a tissue from the olden days,’ Spencer says, ‘though we should use them more often, really. I got this out because it’s a special occasion.’

  ‘And grown-ups often cry at a wedding,’ Kate adds. It’s a feeble attempt at distracting Daisy from her line of questioning, but it’s worth a try.

  ‘Why are you both a bit sad?’ Daisy is nothing if not persistent.

  ‘We were talking,’ she says, ‘about why we’re not a family anymore.’ Spencer wipes his eyes with the side of his hand.

  Daisy looks at them both. ‘I liked it when we were our own family,’ she says.

  Kate and Spencer look at each other. There’s a sad smile between them.

  Daisy is on her way to the door when she turns and says, ‘Mummy, I thought you said that you and Spencer really loved each other.’

  ‘I did say that,’ Kate says.

  ‘If you and Spencer really love each other’ – she puts the emphasis on the ‘really’, rolling it from her mouth – ‘why aren’t you getting married like Jilly and Wendy?’

  ‘It’s—’ Kate starts, then realises that saying, ‘it’s complicated’ to a five-year-old won’t work. ‘Sometimes—’

  Spencer looks at Kate: I’ve got this, his eyes say. She nods. He says, ‘Sometimes, Daisy, one of the grown-ups behaves in a way that means the other grown-up can’t trust them anymore, and if they do that, they might still love each other, but it makes it too hard for them—’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Jilly is standing in the doorway, one foot in the air, mid-stride. ‘I thought when I saw Daisy come in here that you must be finished.’

  ‘I think we were,’ Spencer says, not looking directly at anyone, then holding out a hand to Daisy. ‘Shall we go and find Granny?’ And then they’re gone.

  Kate sits down, puts her head in her hands. It feels as though even her bones are shaking. Everything Spencer said was right, and sounded wrong, like a speech incorrectly translated that starts a war.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jilly says again. ‘I said I’d come and get the other Mrs Orr-DeMellow’s handbag for her.’ She stands next to Kate, touches her shoulder.

  ‘That’s OK. I don’t think there was anything else to say.’

  ‘From what Wendy says, it’s been a hard situation.’

  ‘It’s just one of those things.’ Kate wonders if she’ll feel better if she reapplies her lip gloss. She knows the answer.

  ‘I know it’s none of my business, but what Spencer said about trust. Is that fair?’

  Kate closes her eyes. Fairness is complicated. Trust is complicated. Parenting is complicated. Love is complicated. And yet it seems that everyone manages these complicated things, except her. ‘Probably. He wasn’t – honest – about something.’

  ‘That’s hard,’ Jilly says. She looks as though she is waiting for Kate to say more.

  ‘Yes,’ Kates says, then, in a rush, ‘but I wasn’t always honest. When I was having Daisy, I lied. Her father was married. To someone else. No one knew, until – until afterwards.’

  Jilly takes Kate’s hands in her own; her wedding ring shines with newness and certain love. ‘Nobody’s perfect,’ she says.

  After a moment, Kate says, ‘I just – I thought he was.’

  Chapter 24

  Mid-June

  M

  ELISSA MEETS KATE’S TRAIN, much to her surprise. ‘God, you look like shit,’ she says.

  ‘Thanks.’ Kate can’t help but laugh. ‘I feel it.’

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘I could do with a coffee,’ Kate says.

  ‘I think you could do with an espresso martini.’ And before Kate knows it, she’s sitting in a booth in a cocktail bar, eating from the various bowls of food that Melissa has ordered – calamari, sweet-potato fries, olives, some sort of pickled salad. It’s all delicious – salty and fatty and easy to pick at. Between t
hat and the alcohol and the caffeine, and maybe the fact that Melissa has taken charge so Kate is not the adult, for once, Kate starts to feel something other than numb misery.

  ‘We can talk about him,’ Melissa says, ‘but as soon as we start speculating, or repeating ourselves, we’re done. There’s more to life than men, honey. And there’s a lot more to you than Spencer.’

  ‘Actually, could we just not? Talk about him?’ Kate feels strange saying it, but Melissa didn’t ever meet him – they missed each other at Christmas, and on the day Melissa came to the hospital Spencer stayed away so there wouldn’t be so many visitors. Whenever they talk about what’s happened, Kate finds herself in the strange position of defending Spencer or explaining the assumptions that Melissa makes. As she has thought about little else other than Spencer, her soul and heart are ready for a rest. Even when she gives herself a talking-to and tries to concentrate on thinking about finding a job, or a work placement, or a way to keep studying, she can barely manage ten minutes before her mind wanders away to a memory, or sideways to a what-if. She even googled Amanda Lomax, and found a smart, serious, bright-eyed woman who now chairs a charitable trust that campaigns for disabled children’s rights. It made her feel inadequate. What is she doing for Daisy, that’s more than the basics? What sort of a role model is she? (Well, her sleepless mind countered, at least you never hid Spencer in a wardrobe. At least you loved him. Love him.)

  Melissa raises an eyebrow. ‘If you’re sure.’

  ‘I’m just – I’m sick of thinking about it.’ Kate shakes her head. She really would have her hair cut short, if it wasn’t such a break-up cliche.

  ‘OK,’ Melissa says. ‘We’ll get back to mine, have something to eat, and then there’s the party.’