Nobody's Perfect

by Stephanie Butland

  She and Zhu are becoming friends; after Kate got in touch to ask for advice, Zhu asked her over for dinner, and what started as a slightly stilted conversation ended up with Zhu telling Kate about the places she has travelled and the plans she has to set up her own practice one day. Kate had come away feeling inspired, excited, and had woken the next morning full of something that she identified, after a moment, as hope. She has university open days in her diary for September, and Daisy is going to have a sleepover at Amelia’s during the summer holidays – the first time Kate has trusted her daughter with anyone except Richenda or Melissa overnight. Her dad has offered her the flat for another year, as he’s taking on another long-term project, this one in Scotland. Things are happening. Kate is living her life. She’s excited, for the first time in a long time. And she knows – knows with an ache – that there may well be a point in the future, if Daisy’s health changes for the worse, when she looks back on these years as though they were her luckiest and her best.

  But even if she had been tempted to answer the call to arms on the flyer that Daisy brought home – ‘Your School Fete Needs You!’ – she does not trust herself to smile at Mrs Piper, if she has to be in the same room with her; and from what she knows of her, it’s very unlikely that she will be trusting the PTA to organise anything unchaperoned. Kate wants the lowest possible amount of contact with someone who seems to be little more than a small-minded bully, no matter how the children she teaches love her, or the parents admire her for her firm hand.

  Even being in the school playground makes Kate feel a little sick, in case Mrs Piper should come bustling through. Although Spencer is the one she should be angry with (and she doesn’t know whether she is, really, anymore), at least he acted out of fear, out of a sense of self-preservation, rather than outright malice, which is the only real reason Kate can see for Bridget Piper’s behaviour. Especially as Bridget knows nothing about Amanda, about Elise, about the story that could be constructed about Spencer. If she had known, she’d have made the most of it. What a field day she would have had then: ending Spencer’s career, ruining his life, because she felt uncomfortable with a man doing what she thought was a woman’s job.

  On the day of the fair, Daisy is bouncing with excitement. When Kate drops her off in the morning – the slightest of nods at Spencer, no eye contact – Daisy’s last words are, ‘Remember! Bring my pocket-money purse when you come back!’

  ‘I will,’ Kate promises.

  And after a day of ordering anatomy books and doing some desultory cleaning, she’s back. She’s changed her top, put on lipstick, is wearing the cowgirl boots even though it’s really too warm for them. She doesn’t think about why she has done any of these things, just walks to the school gate and stands amongst the depleted parents – those manning stalls are already in position. Jo waves from behind the tombola on the school field; Kate waves back.

  Daisy makes a beeline for the Whac-A-Mole, and gives it her all, before joining the queue for the tuck shop. Kate stands back, just a little, and looks around the school yard at the rest of the fete: there’s a guess-the-marbles-in-the-jar, a lucky dip, a bouncy castle, a face painter churning out butterflies, pandas and spider-men as quickly as she possibly can. How little things change. The school fairs Kate came to here as a child were much the same.

  Later, Year One will perform a dance, followed by singing from the Year Two choir: Jo’s son Jack will be part of that, and Daisy is excited to see him. And then they will slip away. When Kate was at school herself, she was always the outsider, too studious to be popular. Then, she wished things could be different. Now, she suspects they will never be. But she’s not sure she minds. This seems to be her place, on the edge of things, looking in. Better to be a little lonely than to be part of a group like the one Serena, Sarah and Cara are huddled in now.

  ‘Mummy!’ Daisy bounces into view. ‘I got you a lolly too! Shall we eat them straight away?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you, sweetheart.’ Kate unwraps it – it’s a hard, red ball that smells warmly of synthetic strawberry – and puts it in her mouth, where it sits uncomfortably in her cheek. She takes it out again. ‘Where next? Shall we go to the tombola and see if we can win something?’

  Daisy rushes ahead, and Kate looks around for a bin, to dispose of the lollipop. Walking back towards the tombola, she sees Daisy has stopped, and is talking to Spencer, gesturing around the school field to various stalls – Kate can imagine that Spencer asked her how she is enjoying the fair, and is getting a more in-depth answer than he was prepared for. She pauses, watching, and then hears Daisy’s name close to her, sees, ahead of her and turned away, Mrs Piper and her teaching assistant, looking towards Daisy. They clearly have no idea that Kate is behind them. ‘Of course it’s all supposed to be resolved now’ – Mrs Piper makes air-quotes around the word ‘resolved’ – ‘but I don’t buy it. There’s no smoke without fire, is there? Even without the child being – a special case. And interesting that Miss Micklethwaite dropped him like a hot brick when it all came to light.’

  Kate stops. She’s not sure whether she wants to hear more, whether she wants to be discovered, or whether she should walk up to Bridget Piper and confront her. She stands still, breathes. There’s sticky red residue on her finger, which she sucks at.

  ‘Which tells you a lot. And yet there he is, talking to that vulnerable little girl, in the middle of all this.’ Mrs Piper turns her head, a little, enough for Kate to see the corner of her face, the raised eyebrow. ‘Shameless.’

  There’s a route Kate could take, round to the other side of the tombola, so Mrs Piper will not know she has been heard. She takes a step in that direction, but then she sees the looks on Spencer’s and Daisy’s faces, and the sheer unjustness of what Mrs Piper has said becomes something that cannot go unchallenged. Daisy deserves better than this, and Spencer does, too. Kate remembers what it’s like, to always feel under attack. Why should she, and he, skulk around as though they have done something wrong? So what if she was stupid, once, with Mike, and afterwards, with Spencer, she let her heart run away with her?

  Kate takes a breath. She wipes the last of the residual stickiness on her finger onto the tissue in her pocket. ‘What makes you think you know what you are talking about?’ she asks. She sees the two teachers stiffen, sees that they plan to walk away as though they haven’t heard. She speaks more loudly. ‘Mrs Piper? I was just asking. Perhaps you didn’t hear. What makes you think it’s acceptable to spread malicious gossip like that?’

  When Mrs Piper turns, Kate is satisfied to see that she looks pale, maybe even nervous, for a second, before recovering herself. ‘I’m not sure what you think you heard, Miss Micklethwaite, but it was a private conversation—’

  Kate hears herself snort. ‘No one has a private conversation in the middle of a school fair. And what I heard you say was that’ – she keeps her voice deliberately loud, even though heads are turning. She will not be ashamed – ‘you think the relationship between Mr Swanson and I ended because there was something inappropriate in his behaviour. And that was not the case. Spencer is a good man. Sometimes things don’t work out; not for lack of love, not because someone is a danger. Just because life is like that. Things aren’t always as simple as we’d like them to be. As I’m sure you know.’

  Mrs Piper can’t seem to look Kate in the eye. ‘Are you quite finished, Miss Micklethwaite?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kate says, then, as she sees that Mrs Piper is about to walk away, ‘Actually, no. If I ever hear you talk about my daughter in the tone you just used again, I’ll be making an official complaint against you. And it’s Ms, not Miss.’

  Mrs Piper opens her mouth, closes it again, and starts to turn in the direction of the school building. Kate thinks two things, one fast after the other. First, that if Melissa was here, she would now say something like, ‘I don’t think I gave you permission to walk away.’ And secondly, what a good thing it is that Bridget Piper never found out about Amanda and Elise. She notices
the way that other parents are looking at her, with surprise, with admiration, too, and that Mrs Piper is making her way into the school building, as though she has remembered something important. Kate watches her retreat, breathing deeply, not sure if she wants to laugh or cry. She looks for Daisy.

  Daisy has moved on to the tombola, and is opening her tickets, one by one, solemnly putting them in a pile. She obviously hasn’t noticed anything; from the look on Jo’s face, glancing up as Kate approaches, Jo has seen, if not heard, that something has happened.

  ‘Here’s Mummy,’ she says to Daisy, then to Kate, ‘Is everything all right?’

  Kate nods, though she couldn’t say for sure.

  Daisy looks up; freckles are spreading across her nose, the tops of her cheeks, as summer comes. ‘I have to look for a zero or a five on the end, but not a zero or a five in the middle or at the beginning,’ she says. ‘I’m nearly finished.’

  ‘Take your time, sweetheart.’ Kate stands next to her, and closes her eyes, letting the sun warm her. She’s gone cold, fingertips and face, and she wants nothing more than to be at home. Her speeding heart is slowing.

  ‘I have one with a five,’ Daisy announces, and Jo passes over a plastic bottle of bubble bath that Daisy immediately clutches to her chest. ‘Thank you!’

  ‘See you later,’ Kate says to Jo, and asks Daisy, ‘How about getting your face painted?’

  When they turn away, Spencer is standing in front of her.

  ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she says, though she can feel that there are tears at the corners of her eyes. ‘We’re going to the face painting.’

  ‘I heard what happened,’ he says.

  ‘News travels fast.’ Kate slips on her sunglasses, straightens her spine. It’s strange, to have him next to her, and not to automatically reach out a hand to find his, waiting.

  *

  On the way home, Daisy says, ‘Amelia said you shouted at Mrs Piper.’

  Kate smiles. ‘I didn’t shout, sweetheart. I just – I had to talk loudly, because there was lots of noise.’

  ‘But why did you have to say anything?’

  ‘She had said something she shouldn’t have said.’

  ‘What did she say?’ Daisy is wearing her most persistent expression.

  Kate is too tired to think of a way to dissemble. ‘She said Mr Swanson did something that he didn’t do.’

  Daisy mulls this for the length of a street, and then, as they turn the next corner, says, ‘Because if Spencer did something he shouldn’t do then you would tell someone about it, wouldn’t you? Like phone the police?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Well’ – Daisy gesticulates, an expansive, let-me-lay-out-the-case gesture, and Kate is relieved that the balloon she is holding has a plastic weight on the bottom of the ribbon – ‘if someone in my class does something that is not the rules then you have to tell Mrs-Orr-DeMellow-who-used-to-be-called-Miss-Orr. Or if it was you, we could tell Granny. So if it was Mr Swanson, we would tell the police. Or Mrs Hillier. Or his own mummy.’

  Kate has a sudden, pure moment of pleasure at the company of this clever, thoughtful little girl, blazing through her life with such curiosity and clear-sightedness. She laughs. ‘Well, yes, I suppose we would. But Spencer hasn’t done anything bad, Daisy.’

  ‘But then why isn’t he—’ Daisy says, and Kate knows that she should answer the question, but she doesn’t trust herself not to cry. Instead she interrupts with, ‘Race you!’ hoping that Daisy will forget this train of thought before she gets home.

  Chapter 27

  Mid-July, the same day

  D

  AISY HAS A TANTRUM when the new bubble bath causes some of her face paint to smudge; it gets worse when Kate says it would have come off on her pillow, anyway, so her face needed to be washed. Kate does two things she wouldn’t usually – lets Daisy fall asleep in front of the TV, and puts her to bed without cleaning her teeth. She can make up for it tomorrow. She’s done with trying to be perfect. It’s enough that she’s standing. And she did a good thing today: she fought her and Daisy’s corner. Spencer’s corner, too. She didn’t have to. But she did.

  After she has scooped Daisy into bed, tucked her in, kissed her forehead, Kate breaks another rule: no drinking alone on a school night. There’s a bottle of white wine she unpacked from the supermarket shop but didn’t put in the fridge. There’s ice in the freezer, though. She sends a photo to Melissa – the tumbler, the ice cube, the wine – with a plaintive, Tell me things will get better. Melissa responds with a picture of a sink filled with dirty mugs and plates, another of an almost-empty fridge, and the words It could be that you’re winning. But Kate knows she isn’t. The heart that she thought she had so carefully mended is not healed at all. Yes, she knows now that she does not need a man to complete her happiness. Yes, she is making steps towards a fulfilling life, a life of her own. And yes, she will define herself in more than the terms the world defines her in. All of these things are true. But they don’t exclude the longing for Spencer that is in her bones. She closes her eyes, tries to think of anything except him. She pours another glass of wine. Perhaps tonight is the night to finally delete the rest of the photographs of the two of them from her phone.

  She’s scrolling through the images of their time together – selfies in the hospital garden, wobbly photos taken by Daisy on a Sunday walk, the view from their ill-fated country-house hotel. A family group photo, with John and Sally. Looking at the images has the comforting pain of biting down on a sore tooth, knowing what is coming.

  The knock at the door makes Kate jump. It’s almost nine, though the midsummer sky is barely dimming.

  It’s Spencer. It’s almost as though her longing has conjured—before Kate can finish the thought, she pulls herself together. ‘Hello.’ She makes her voice neutral, or thinks she does.

  Spencer nods. ‘I came to say thank you. For today.’ There’s a question in his voice that she doesn’t know how to answer.

  ‘You said thank you. At the fair.’

  ‘I know. That was before I got the full – information. One of the mothers said you had stuck up for me, so I came over. But afterwards, Bridget’s teaching assistant – the one she was talking to – told me all about it. She said she was sorry for being part of what’s happened. So I thought I should come and say thank you, again.’

  ‘You didn’t need to.’

  But Kate notices that she hasn’t slammed the door in his face, either. She steps back to let him in.

  He’s brought a packet of the Italian aniseed biscotti that Kate likes and he doesn’t. Either he’s made a special trip into Marsham to get them, or he had them at home for her. Wherever they came from, the sight of them makes her happy, and sad. ‘Thank you,’ she says, when he hands them over. Their fingers touch as she takes the biscuits but she cannot look into his face.

  ‘I had them at home,’ he says. ‘I was never going to eat them. I suppose I could have kept them, in case I need something to seal up a hole in a wall.’

  Kate can still taste wine in her throat; it seems important to be sober, now, so she puts the glass in the sink. ‘Would you like a coffee?’ she asks. ‘And you could watch me eat them.’

  He looks surprised; she imagines him making excuses, leaving. But of course, he wouldn’t. If he was going to run at the possibility of coffee, he never would have come over to begin with. He could have texted her, or not said anything at all.

  ‘Sounds good,’ he says.

  Kate thinks making the drinks gives her the chance to steady her hands, calm her heart. But Spencer is sitting on the sofa, saying nothing, watching. His attention makes her drop the spoon, pour a little coffee onto the worktop, wipe it up, turn the tap on too strongly so the water splashes. She could laugh, or cry. She chooses laughter. Spencer has always made laughing easy. ‘Fun day, hey,’ she says.

  ‘None but the brave deserve the fair. Everyone’s favourite afternoon,’ he says.
He’s laughing too, shaking his head. ‘I swear the only time I’ve ever seen Jane Hillier really lose it is after a meeting with the PTA committee about organising this.’ The mention of the Head is enough to dampen them both; the smile drops from Spencer’s face and he looks away. Kate pushes her hair behind her ear. Maybe she will have it cut short for the holidays. A change is as good as a rest. She imagines warm air on her neck, lifts the hair from her nape to see what the lack of weight would feel like. Spencer is watching. She feels herself blush; picks up the coffees.

  Kate sits down opposite him. He holds out the opened packet of biscotti. ‘Here, gnaw one of these.’

  ‘Thanks.’ The cellophane rustles as she takes one.

  Kate doesn’t want to try to unscramble what this means – the coffee, the sitting close to each other, the companionship she feels. She’s tired; there’s nothing left. This is probably what life is like for divorced couples, she thinks: the sweet leftovers of something, and the need for getting on with it. Except divorced couples probably don’t get self-conscious when their ex is watching them make a coffee. Kate remembers the first time Spencer came round; how embarrassed she was, in her pyjamas and the ratty old cardigan that she still wears sometimes. At least tonight she is dressed; she’s still in what she wore to the fair. Apart from her feet, naked now, her boots on the rack by the door. Her toes curl in on themselves, self-conscious.