The Perfect Life
Page 25
Perfection. It’s an odd thing to crave, isn’t it? Particularly as, by nature, humans are messy and complex and impetuous and changeable. They are anything but perfect. Yet that is what we’re constantly being told to pursue: the perfect house, the perfect body, the perfect children, marriages, jobs, even bloody plates of food. When really, what all of us needs is something very simple but equally elusive.
Happiness.
Looking back at my life, there are two distinct moments when I felt truly happy. The first was that morning when I’d sat in the kitchen watching Mum singing along to Barbara Dickson, knowing that it was the first day of the summer holidays and I would have her all to myself for six whole weeks; in reality, it would turn out to be our last day. The second was the morning Anne offered me the job at Luna London. In the months after the trial I felt like I needed to recalibrate, to find out who I truly was without the filters and hashtags. So I deleted all my personal social media pages, removed the property app from my phone and set about dismantling the idea of pushing a perfect life on to other people, bombarding them with images of a life that doesn’t exist. And I set about reclaiming the happiness I’d once had. I got back in touch with Anne and, over a long lunch in her beloved Chelsea Arts Club, decided to return to what I love best, this time as Senior Partner of Luna London. I now have shares in the business with the option of buying Anne out when she decides to retire. Some would say working in the beauty business feeds into those toxic ideas of unattainable perfection but, as I remember Mum once telling me as she sat at her dressing table getting ready for a night out, make-up is not about hiding behind a mask but about being the best version of yourself and feeling empowered. As always, she spoke a lot of sense.
And it was with Mum in mind that I set about reclaiming that first moment of happiness. Once I’d got my job back, I spent the next two years living as frugally as possible until I had enough saved for a deposit. With the small sum Mum had left me added to those savings, I was finally in a position to buy. Though I loved living with Georgie, the time had come to find a place of my own. Still, the thought of scouring property websites made me feel ill, like a recovering alcoholic trapped in a wine cellar. In the end, I didn’t need to bother with any websites as I found the house by chance as I drove back from a meeting in Oxford. Curiosity had got the better of me and I’d decided to take a detour through Caversham, the place where I’d grown up.
I’d stopped at the local florist to buy some flowers to put on Mum’s grave and as I drove to the churchyard I’d passed a house I recognized from childhood. It was the house my mother used to point out to me when we went to feed the ducks. Located opposite the park, it was unusual as, unlike the other houses in the terrace, this one had a white clapboard exterior and a yellow door. My mum used to call it the sunshine house as it always made us smile.
My eyes had filled with tears as I parked up outside the house and saw the ‘For Sale’ board. The white clapboard was now grey and dirty, the yellow-painted door badly chipped, but those imperfections made it even more appealing. Even before I found out that the house was in my price range, I knew it would become my home. There was something fated about the moment, something right.
When Phil comes back into the room I’m still standing by the window, memories of Mum and toast and jam and Radio 2 and Geoffrey’s voice flooding my head. This is it, I think to myself, this is the place. As Phil resumes his sales pitch, I switch off and let my thoughts wander. I have seen many houses and have come to realize that none of what Phil is talking about matters – expensive paint, room for expansion, all the marketing guff I’ve heard along the way. No, what matters is the feeling I had when I walked into this little house today. And that is why I make Phil an offer on the spot. I’ve spent so long living through other people, adopting different identities, taking different names, that somewhere along the line I forgot who I was. I guess I was afraid of who I might find if I dropped the act and looked in the mirror. But now I realize that there was no need to be afraid, that to be truly happy, to truly live, I don’t need to hide behind stories. I just need to be me. Vanessa. And that, as my mother always told me, is enough.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my amazing editor, Katy Loftus, for believing in me, and this novel, from the start.
Huge thanks to Victoria Moynes for your excellent insight and suggestions. It has been such a joy to work with you.
To the magnificent team at Viking Penguin. Thank you Ellie Hudson and Georgia Taylor for all the hard work you have put into the digital and marketing campaigns for my novels. I appreciate it so much.
Thanks so much to Karen Whitlock for your meticulous copy-editing.
Heartfelt thanks to my agent, Madeleine Milburn. Eight years on, you are still the greatest inspiration and support.
Thanks also to Giles, Hayley, Rachel, Georgia, Georgina, Mark and all the team at the Madeleine Milburn Literary, TV & Film Agency.
I want to take this opportunity to thank the eternally glamorous Anne Bryce for giving me an insight into the world of property and house viewings and for welcoming me so warmly to Harrogate all those years ago when I was a young mum.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to the children’s fiction that shaped my own childhood and introduced me to the wonder of reading. Here are just a few: Orlando the Marmalade Cat by Kathleen Hale, The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston, Moondial by Helen Cresswell, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, Danny, the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl, The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy, The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter and A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley.
Love and warm wishes go, as always, to my family for all their love and support.
Thanks to my mother, Mavis Casey, for inspiring the character of Penny. Those childhood memories of sitting in the kitchen with you, eating toast and listening to Terry Wogan, before school, will stay with me for ever.
All my love and thanks to my father, Luke Casey, whose voice I hear in my head every time I sit down at my desk to write. You are, and always will be, the person who inspires me most.
A huge thank you to my lovely son, Luke, not only for surviving my attempts to teach you chemistry during lockdown but also for bringing so much love and laughter to my life. You have the biggest heart and you make me proud every day.
Finally, thank you to Jason. My love, always.
NUALA ELLWOOD
Have you read them all yet?
NUALA ELLWOOD
The House
on the Lake
No matter how far you run … he’s never far behind.
Lisa needs to disappear. And her friend’s rambling old home in the wilds of Yorkshire seems like the perfect place. It’s miles away from the closest town, and no one there knows her or her little boy, Joe.
But when a woman from the local village comes to visit them, Lisa realizes that she and Joe aren’t as safe as she thought.
What secrets have Rowan Isle House – and her friend – kept hidden all these years?
And what will Lisa have to do to survive, when her past finally catches up with her?
‘Gripping, poignant’
Rosamund Lupton
‘Eerily haunting’
Jane Corry
‘I literally couldn’t put it down’
Emma Curtis
NUALA ELLWOOD
MY
SISTER’S
BONES
If you can’t trust your sister, then who can you trust?
Kate Rafter has spent her life running from her past. But when her mother dies, she’s forced to return to Herne Bay – a place her sister Sally never left.
But something isn’t right in the old family home. On her first night Kate is woken by terrifying screams. And then she sees a shadowy figure in the garden …
Who is crying for help?
What does it have to do with Kate’s past?
And why does no one – not even her sist
er – believe her?
‘Couldn’t put the lights out until I’d finished it!’
Emma Curtis
‘Rivals The Girl on the Train as a compulsive read’
Guardian
‘Twists and turns until the last page’
Tammy Cohen
NUALA ELLWOOD
Day
of the
Accident
WHAT DID YOU SEE?
WHAT DID YOU DO?
Sixty seconds after she wakes from a coma, Maggie’s world is torn apart.
The police tell her that her daughter Elspeth is dead.That she drowned when the car Maggie had been driving plunged into the river. Maggie remembers nothing.
When Maggie begs to see her husband, Sean, the police tell her that he has disappeared. He was last seen on the day of her daughter’s funeral.
What really happened that day at the river?
Where is Maggie’s husband?
And why can’t she shake the suspicion that somewhere, somehow … her daughter is still alive?
‘A clever, twisty plot that takes psychological mind games to a new level. Nuala Ellwood has done it again!’
Jane Corry
‘This clever, multi-layered novel is simply stunning’
Dinah Jefferies
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
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First published 2021
Copyright © Nuala Ellwood, 2021
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Cover photo © Magdalena Russocka/Trevillion Images
ISBN: 97-8-024-198910-4
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