Goodbye, Perfect

by Sara Barnard

  ‘And how long will that be?’

  ‘I don’t know, Eden! As long as it takes, OK?’

  ‘And what about me? What about Rowan? What about your parents?’

  Bonnie doesn’t answer.

  ‘You’re being so selfish.’ The words fall out of my mouth, unintentional but burning with truth. There’s a long, weighted silence.

  ‘Maybe I am,’ she says finally. Her voice is cold. ‘But maybe I’m allowed to be. Maybe it’s not the worst thing in the world to get what I want for once.’

  ‘You’re ruining your life. You know that, right? You know that’s what you’re doing here?’

  There’s a short laugh at the other end of the phone, humourless and entirely un-Bonnie-like. ‘Now who’s being dramatic?’ she says.

  9

  When I get home, I go straight through the side entrance and head for my section of the garden. I don’t even bother to change my clothes, just tie my hair up into a ponytail and grab my outdoor gloves from the shed, pulling them over my hands. I can’t be around people right now. I can’t bear the thought of Carolyn asking about the revision session. I don’t want to think about what Joe Journalist at the Guardian thinks of Mr Cohn’s motives. I just want the earth under my fingers and things I can understand.

  When Bob and Carolyn first adopted Daisy and me, they gave us each a small part of the garden to make our own. Daisy lost interest almost straight away, but I fell in love. My section has grown over the years, first taking over Daisy’s plot, and then growing ever further as I learned how to garden properly, experimenting with different types of flowers and plants, fruits and vegetables. My very favourite is my cherry tree, which I bought as a bare root when I was thirteen with the allowance I’d been saving for months. It’s growing into a thing of beauty, if I do say so myself, and it’s not even producing fruit yet.

  People are always surprised when they find out I like gardening. I don’t know if that’s because they assume things about me, or they assume things about gardeners, but either way I like seeing the faces they make when I tell them. The first time Connor came round to my house and I showed him my garden, he looked at me like he was waiting for the punchline. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ he said, in that nervous voice he used a lot right at the beginning of our relationship, ‘but you just don’t seem like the kind of person who likes flowers.’

  The truth – and I told him this at the time – is that it’s more than about just liking flowers. ‘Everyone needs a place of their own in this world,’ Bob says, and my garden is mine.

  I know that the garden is a therapy thing. I know that my adoptive parents have done a lot of research over the years, back when they were fostering and then when they decided to adopt us. How to care for damaged kids, or something. Hints and tips for raising a second-hand child. Something like this, my garden, is practically textbook. Give them a space that is just theirs: a sense of ownership. Give them something to take care of: a sense of responsibility. Give them something to grow: a sense of accomplishment.

  I don’t mind. I’m not complaining. I’m glad Carolyn and Bob read those books, that they are the kind of people who try. And I’m glad I have my garden. This patch of land is mine – the first thing that truly was mine, except maybe my name, and I lost half of that when I got adopted. It is beautiful, and it is mine.

  I didn’t know a single thing about gardening before Carolyn and Bob. It’s funny how your life’s passion can just be there waiting for you before you even know. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep and my head goes on its wild tangents, I think about how easily I could have not known, not realized. If I hadn’t been fostered and then adopted by two professional gardeners, how would I ever have found out how the soil feels when it gives underneath my fingers? Who else would have thought to show me how to nurture the earth? Daisy and I could have been fostered by anyone; so much of it is about timing, and Carolyn and Bob just happened to have a room at a time when we needed one.

  I got lucky; I know that. I’m so aware of that. I thought everyone had thoughts like this, about the almosts and the could-have-beens and the lucky chances. The lives that aren’t lived alongside all the ones that are. But when I asked Bonnie, she looked at me with such genuine confusion, I realized that for her, family was just a given, a fact of life, and she’d never thought, What if I’d been born into a different family? What if I’d grown up in Scotland or New York? What if I’d had a brother instead of a sister?

  I never asked anyone else, even Connor. Maybe it’s just a thing that adopted kids do. Or maybe it’s just me.

  But I still think about it. All those passions that never were, just because life went one way instead of another. How many would-have-been violinists grew up in homes without music, or, more likely, where there wasn’t any money for instruments? I think about the ballerina who never danced, never wore the shoes, never even had a lesson. The lives some people never get to lead.

  These are the kinds of things I think about when it’s just me and my garden. I stay for a good couple of hours, losing myself among my flower beds. My mind empties and my nerves stop jangling. I take a few slow breaths, the familiar earth soft beneath my knees, before I pull myself up and head slowly back towards the house.

  I take a late lunch of toasted cheese sandwiches and Quavers up to my room and settle down with the cat, who stretches across my thighs, claws digging into my skin, and purrs.

  I open my laptop and click on to a few news sites to see how up to date they are. The Daily Mail is running with a huge CCTV picture of Bonnie and Mr Cohn at the Tesco garage from right after they disappeared, along with the headline WHERE ARE THEY? – which seems a little unimaginative to me. The BBC has a timeline of their known movements from Friday evening through to Saturday afternoon, which only reminds me that the trail has gone cold. The Guardian has a comment article about whether ‘we’ (who is this ‘we’ in opinion articles, I always wonder?) put too much pressure on ‘young women’. It talks about the ‘sexualization of girls’, the ‘abundance of porn’, the ‘inherent competitiveness of a social media world’ and the ‘ever-present pressure to meet the expectations of even the most loving, supportive parents’.

  And then, this:

  By all accounts, Bonnie Wiston-Stanley is the model pupil and daughter: high-achieving and responsible; well-mannered and polite, with not a detention to her name in all her years of schooling. What this cannot tell us is what was going on behind the smile, and the danger is that we don’t even try to find out. We equate intelligence and academic success with happiness, even though we surely know such equivalences are futile. How many high-achieving young people go on to experience high levels of anxiety and depression? How many, colloquially, go ‘a bit off the rails’?

  Perhaps Bonnie Wiston-Stanley, with all her intelligence, saw this coming. Perhaps she saw an escape in her handsome, charming teacher, offering her love and acceptance, irrespective of her test scores and university prospects. This is surely a tantalizing thing at any age, but how must it feel for a fifteen-year-old? A fifteen-year-old who has only learned to value herself through exam results?

  We all deserve the opportunity to expand ourselves, to spread our wings and see how it feels to fly. We all need that time to do something wrong because it feels right, to face the consequences of a decision made in passion, to learn what it means to fail. I hope when Bonnie does return, after what she will likely come to remember as her wild phase, that there is sympathy, and we don’t forget how young fifteen really is.

  I read the article three times, trying to figure out how I feel about it. I keep coming back to that word ‘sympathy’. It seems to me like people are already being pretty sympathetic to Bonnie. All this stuff about a wild phase, about spreading her wings . . . Aren’t they just fancy ways of saying fucking up? Why is it that when girls like Bonnie have a ‘wild phase’, people try to understand it? But girls who aren’t like Bonnie, girls who don’t get the A grades, don’t have the ‘loving, su
pportive parents’ and have many detentions to their names, get written off?

  Take me. I’d tried having a wild phase of my own, mostly because that seemed to be what was expected of girls like me – troubled girls, whatever the hell that meant – but it hadn’t stuck. It wasn’t satisfying, basically. It didn’t make me feel good. The kind of things I did, things that were meant to make me feel free, actually made me feel lost.

  Carolyn and Bob had been well prepared. I think they’d been planning for it since they decided to adopt my nine-year-old self. One day, they must have thought, she’s going to be a troubled teen tearaway. We should prepare. So when it happened, a couple of years ago now, when I started staying out, answering back, smoking and drinking, they were ready. They chose the room-to-breathe, unconditional-love approach. And I don’t just mean they told me they loved me even when I swore at them, or whatever. I mean things like this:

  Picture me, fourteen years old, stoned and trippy, tiptoeing through the back door to find Carolyn sitting in the kitchen, nightgown on and a smile on her face. ‘Hello, darling,’ she said. And then she made me hot chocolate and warmed up a cinnamon bun. I am not kidding. Do you know hard it is to keep up some kind of bad-girl act when you’re drinking hot chocolate with your adoptive mother in the kitchen with the lights dimmed low? Especially when she starts telling you the story about how she got stuck once trying to climb back through her childhood bedroom window, and had to call for help? And then you snort on your hot chocolate, and the cinnamon bun is cosy and warm, and she says, ‘I like how you’ve done your eye make-up,’ and it makes you love her, despite everything that had made you want to leave.

  Being wild is all about boundaries, right? You either have none, and so being wild is all you know, or you have them, and you resist them. You rebel. With Carolyn and Bob, I had boundaries, but, it turned out, nothing to rebel against. It would be like trying to punch a bean bag; the blows just get soaked up and it’s still so comfortable, warm and snug. So the thrill of night-time wanderings wore off, and the friends I shared cars and joints and adventures with just didn’t know me like Bonnie did, and joyriding was terrifying, and so I just stopped. The whole thing only lasted a few months.

  So yeah, I get it about the whole ‘wild phase’ thing. And I know that even good girls like Bonnie have their moments . . . but this? This is beyond wild, right? This is major, potentially life-ruining stuff. This is front page of the freaking Sun. This is trending on Twitter. This is running away with your teacher.

  I scroll down the page to look at the comments, and immediately regret it. Why are you wasting space on some teenage slapper and her paedo boyfriend? asks one of the politer ones. I shudder and close my entire browser as if this will somehow cleanse my laptop – and me – of the below-the-line dirt of the internet.

  Daisy gets home from school after four and comes straight into my room, curling up next to me on my bed.

  ‘What’s up, chuck?’ I ask.

  ‘Got a detention.’

  ‘Oh, Daze. What for?’

  ‘I asked Mr Hale if he’d picked which one of us he was going to run off with yet.’

  It feels good to laugh as hard as I do. ‘Worth it, then?’

  At my reaction, the sulk vanishes and she grins. ‘Everyone else thought it was funny. ’Cept Rowan, but she’s a square anyway.’

  ‘Hey, be nice to Rowan!’ I say. ‘Imagine how you’d feel if I took off.’

  I’m saved from having to hear her answer to this by footsteps in the hall, followed by my door opening. I look up, expecting to see Carolyn, but it’s a different smiling face that appears.

  ‘Valerie!’ Daisy shrieks, leaping up for a hug.

  ‘Daisy!’ Valerie replies, wrapping her arms around her and squeezing. Over Daisy’s head, she grins at me. ‘Hi!’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I ask, a little more bluntly than I’d intended.

  ‘Seeing you,’ Valerie says cheerfully.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because everything must feel so crazy and I figured you could use a friendly face.’ She stretches out her grin deliberately so it takes up her whole face, then points at it. ‘See? Friendly face.’

  ‘Are you staying?’ Daisy asks hopefully. She’s still cuddled up close, her arm around Valerie’s skinny waist, and I’m struck by something that might be jealousy if I think about it too hard. Daisy reverts back into cute-little-sister mode around Valerie. Me, I get total-pain, talking-back, super-snarky Daisy. Great.

  ‘Yep,’ Valerie says. ‘My exams start next week, so I’ll have to head back on Sunday, but I can revise here instead of York.’ She grins at me and gives my knee a poke. ‘We can revise together, right, Eeds? Share the exam hell.’

  ‘Do you even need to revise?’ I ask, only half kidding.

  ‘Like a demon,’ Valerie says. ‘Final-year exams, man. You think GCSEs are tough? Mine are all three hours long. Three hours! It’s like they’re trying to kill us. Whoever survives gets a degree.’ She smiles. ‘How about you? How are you feeling about yours?’ I mime choking to death, and she laughs. ‘When’s the first one?’

  ‘Wednesday. Biology. Then Chemistry on Thursday.’

  ‘Ooh, the sciences!’ Valerie says with a grin. ‘Those are the best ones. What time? We could get lunch before and I could help you cram.’

  ‘They’re both morning exams,’ I say.

  ‘Breakfast then,’ she amends, her cheerfulness unwavering.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say, trying to think of a good reason why not, except the fact that Valerie and her A-grade perfection is not the kind of thing I want shoved in my face just before an exam, which is the kind of true thing you can’t say out loud. ‘There’s a lot going on.’

  ‘All the more reason to let your big sister drive you around and buy you food,’ Valerie points out. ‘Come on, Eeds. I came all the way from York to be here for you.’

  ‘You drove?’ It’s like a four-and-a-half-hour drive from York to Larking. Usually she gets the train. ‘Why?’

  ‘To be here for you,’ she says again, like it’s obvious. ‘And I brought the car because of the aforementioned driving-around-and-buying-you-food thing.’ Who uses the word ‘aforementioned’ in an actual sentence? This is why Valerie and I will never be as close as she wants us to be.

  ‘Fine. OK,’ I say. I can’t exactly say no when she’s driven for that long, can I? I’m not that horrible. I can think of an excuse later.

  ‘Great,’ Valerie says. ‘Hey, Daze, want to help me make dinner? I’m doing fajitas.’

  I feel a buzz under my leg, which is where my phone ended up when Daisy jumped on my bed. It’s probably Bonnie, so I stop myself reaching straight for it.

  ‘Can I do the fun bit?’ Daisy asks, meaning stealing scraps of cheese while Valerie cooks and not helping with any of the prep or clean-up.

  ‘Sure,’ Valerie says, too easy on her as usual. ‘Want to come, Eeds?’

  I shake my head and point at my textbook. ‘I’m revising.’

  If Valerie was like me, she’d shrug and leave at this point. But, because she’s Valerie, she lingers. ‘Aw, come on,’ she coaxes. ‘Everyone should know how to cook fajitas.’

  ‘I can cook fajitas,’ I say, which is kind of true. They come in one of those ready-to-make kits, right? I feel my phone give another buzz against my leg and I bite down on the inside of my cheek to stop myself grabbing it.

  ‘But—’ Valerie starts.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ I interrupt. ‘Make them properly spicy, yeah?’

  Valerie looks at me for a moment, then sighs a little and shrugs. ‘OK, fine. Come on, Daze.’

  When they’ve gone, I pull out my phone from under my leg and unlock it.

  Ivy

  I’m sorry about earlier ☹

  Eeds?

  I stare at the messages, trying to figure out how to reply. Bonnie and I don’t argue much, not really. And when we do, they’re short, sharp snarling matches that flare up and burn out to
o quickly to cause any real damage. The argument we had earlier was more passive-aggressive and somehow deeper, which is not like either of us, and now I don’t know what to do.

  My fingers are still poised over my phone when another message comes through.

  Ivy

  This is such a weird situation and I’m trying to deal with it but I don’t really know how.

  Me

  I’m just worried about you, Bon.

  I know. I’m sorry. ilu xxx

  ilu2 xxx

  I really AM fine though. Jack is just so amazing, you have no idea. I love him so much. And he loves me. This is all worth it, I promise.

  You get why that sounds so weird to me, right?

  Haha yes of course! He’s just Mr Cohn to you. You don’t know him like I do.

  Probably for the best.

  Right!

  Are you HAPPY, Bon? Really?

  Yes! Look, I’ll show you! One sec . . .

  An instant later, a photo appears, and I’m so stunned I almost drop my phone. It’s a selfie of Bonnie and Mr Cohn, cheeks pressed together, beaming into the camera, like they’re just another ordinary couple and not actual fugitives with a fourteen-year age gap between them. I’d forgotten that she’d cut and dyed her hair, and the sight of her is a shock. She looks like a different person. Bright and dazzling. I can’t stop looking at her.

  Mr Cohn – I just can’t call him Jack – looks just the same as I remember him, except the glasses have gone and he’s wearing a baseball cap. I try to see him like Bonnie does, but I can’t. He doesn’t look like a teacher any more, but he’s still, undeniably, an adult. A grown man.

  Ivy

  Well??? Aren’t we the CUTEST?!