Perfect Ten

by Jacqueline Ward

  I slam the laptop shut. What the fuck was I thinking? Almost feeling sorry for these women. Frances, with her fucking cat and her tea shop. Frances, who held my baby son and smiled for your camera. And now Pam Harding. Nine out of ten. You fucked her in my wedding dress on my bed. And now I have to go back there.

  You deserve everything you’re going to get, Jack. And so do your women.

  Chapter Eighteen

  This is a turning point. I can feel it. I know that I’m a good person and my mind keeps making excuses for you. Telling me to leave it, leave it. It’s not worth it. But I know this is how you trained me. Telling me I was insane when I half suspected something. No smoke without fire.

  Now I am sure. I was before with Christine and Julie and Frances, but now smirky Pam is in my room with you, wearing my stuff on my bed. I run home and burst into the house. I don’t even check my phone, which, naturally, I left on the kitchen table because I can’t be in two places at one time, can I? I run upstairs, past my absent children’s bedrooms, and kick our bedroom door open.

  I keep my wedding dress wrapped in tissue paper in a box on the top of my wardrobe. I keep it there because I wanted to pass it on to Laura when she marries. Now you’ve spoiled all that. I can’t pass it down to my only daughter because your mistress has worn it to pose for photographs. Then you’ve had sex with her. In our fucking bed.

  I pull down the box and it’s crumpled on top of the tissue paper. The zip is still down and I can’t believe I never checked it before. But why would I? What married woman would ever imagine that particular scenario? I pull at the side seams where the zip meets the white pearls. It’s a beautiful dress and it’s a shame. It tears easily and I rip savagely at the rest of the dress, seed pearls flying everywhere, tap, tap, tapping on the laminated floor and bouncing to a halt onto the wool carpet.

  The tiara is beautiful. I had it specially made when I still believed that our marriage would last. I supervised the placement of every Swarovski crystal and every pearl. Paula came with me and chose her bridesmaid tiara at the same time. I pull that out of its box as well. We made a pact to save them for our daughters’ weddings. All that has fucking changed now. No daughter of mine will ever wear either of these witches’ crowns. I twist them into each other, the crystals popping onto the floor and spinning through the tiny pearls. My tiara snaps into bits. Paula’s is a little bit more durable and it takes a few hard stamps to shatter it into pieces.

  I’m breathless and sweating and I turn to the bed. I can’t sleep in there any more. Not where you slept with all your whores. I can’t. It was difficult before, but this is the last straw. I rip off the sheets and the duvet and run down to the kitchen. I pull the largest carving knife out of the cutlery drawer but it’s not big enough. So I locate the ‘kitchen utensil’ section of my Amazon stash and open boxes until I find a knife set. I take the biggest, sharpest knife and run upstairs.

  I slash and hack at the Tempur mattress and feather pillows. My arms flail and my body takes on a life of its own and I lose control. It feels good again to not have to be the person everyone thinks I should be. Perfect. To do what I feel. I hack away until the whole room is white and I am white and only then do I feel pure again.

  I must have fallen asleep with the knife in my hand because when I wake up at 2 a.m. I’m covered in feathers and cuddling a chef’s carver. I check myself for alcohol and hope that I haven’t been to the in-between with this knife, but it’s OK because I remember everything about last night. The dress is lying in shreds and the tiara is bent and broken. Our wedding album is in shreds on the floor beside me, every picture destroyed.

  I look at the cover and the stab marks in it. It’s OK because I know now that I never should have kept it sacred. That I was right to begin with. Our marriage was a sham and no amount of explaining away your behaviour as stress or boredom or that’s just what men do sometimes could make any of it right.

  It’s OK because I know, in that moment, that I have a plan.

  I take off my clothes and leave them in the feather-strewn bedroom. There are clothes in the tumble dryer and I walk through the house naked and dress in the kitchen. I catch my reflection in the kitchen window and I look almost childlike, my hair hanging over my face. This feels like some kind of an exorcism, washing that man right out of my hair, and I pull out some stray feathers.

  I open the back door and go to the hole. Fucking Rover barks but my security light doesn’t switch on. I watch to see if my neighbours’ lights come on but they’re desensitised to this particular alarm. So I lift the lid and pull out the holdall and the journal. The pictures, loose now, spill out and I scoop them up and push them into the briefcase. I feel around until I find a box inlaid with jade and bring that with me.

  I go back into the house and sit down at the table. Rover’s quiet now and I open the box. It’s black silk inside, all compartments for your toiletries, except you used it as a dumping ground for bits of tat from your pockets. I pull out single cufflinks and a tiny chrome spanner. A lighter. Some coins that were your father’s. Not that you gave a fuck about your poor father either, come to think about it. You built a case against him too, didn’t you?

  Right at the bottom is a bunch of keys on a D ring. I pull up the ring and roll a Yale key around it. I zip on a black hoodie and pull on a black beanie. I open the front door as quietly as I can and Rover is silent. I hurry across the drive and around the skip and run over to the park, your bag over my shoulder.

  The laptop and the flash drive are still on the floor of the car. I eventually park up in a city-centre back street and hop onto the Manchester free Wi-Fi. I open Monica’s Facebook account and find the offending photos. Pam Harding still smirks out at me and she’s still wearing my wedding dress. No time to feel angry now, though. I’m on a roll. Instead, I write a status – ‘#drunkenselfie #notmydress’ – and add a picture of the back of Pam with the dress unzipped. In the ‘who were you with’ section I select ‘Jack Atkinson’ and in the ‘where were you’ I tag my own postcode. It’s obvious that this photograph is taken in a bedroom, and anyone who knows me will know it’s my bedroom because behind Pam is a huge picture of my children looking down on her smirking face. I add the hashtags #notmyhouse and #notmykids and post the picture, knowing it will immediately post to Twitter and be dissected by #teamCaro and #teamJack.

  I turn off the computer and I continue on my journey, this time back towards my house but I turn off three streets before. I park outside a three-bedroomed detached house and switch the computer back on again. Because it’s night-time not so many people have shared the picture yet, but some of your friends have liked it and tagged you. I can imagine you now, phoning DS Percy in the middle of the night and demanding that she goes to my house and arrest me straight away.

  If she is half the copper I think she is she will be using ‘find my phone’ right now to see where I am. She’ll ring my mobile and when I don’t answer try to trace its location. She’ll see that it’s right there in my house and that obviously I am in bed asleep. She’ll probably ask the police IT people to trace the IP address of made-up Monica’s post and the location. I’ve helpfully switched on ‘location’ on this laptop now so that when I post the next picture, the one of Pam naked in my bedroom, with the status #ooopsIdiditagain and tag you, eventually, when I’m long gone, the police will trace it to this spot.

  It will take them a while, which is good, because I’ve got more business here. I leave the laptop glowing in the four-wheel drive and take your holdall from the seat beside me. I tiptoe up the drive of 6 Gimble Lane and push the key in the door. To my relief it turns. I thought it would – only a small percentage of me doubted it. Most people neglect details like changing the locks regularly because we are all hard-wired for optimism.

  Your mother is no exception. The key turns but there is a door chain stopping it from opening. Fuck fuck fuck. I lean hard against the wooden door and push and push, and finally the cheap metal breaks. I wait for a full m
inute, hidden back against the wall outside, in case anyone heard the crack, but all is quiet. I know this house; bedrooms at the back, away from the traffic on the road.

  I creep into the house I lived in after we married. It’s mostly the same as last time I was here. I hurry through the hallway and push the bag into the cloakroom. Her new kitchen is cavernous and opulent and the low lighting is automatic, so as I pass the doorway it comes on and startles me.

  It’s then that I see a pair of trainers under the table and a schoolbag slung over the back of a chair. I turn back to the cloakroom and pull out an anorak and bury my face in it. My daughter. It’s the nearest I have been to her for months.

  I hear a movement upstairs. Heavy footsteps. There’s a creak of a floorboard and my muscle memory recalls from when we lived here when we were first married that someone is on the way to the bathroom. I duck into the cloakroom and pull the door closed behind me. In seconds the strip of light below the door disappears and I breathe out. The kitchen is in darkness again and no one knows I’m here.

  I wait for the toilet to flush and hear the footsteps on floorboard, tracing them by memory back to your mother’s room. It’s a treasure chest all around me, with my children’s shoes and bags. I open a gym bag and pull out a leotard and pumps. Dirty football boots in another. I hold one of the muddy boots close to me. I’d hoped that they’d kept up with things. These were the minutiae that lined my bigger worries about their health and happiness.

  I’d follow them, trying to see their lives. Sneaking around their school and waiting to see them. Peering through the community-centre windows to watch Laura perform her first pirouette. Watching from the sidelines of the football matches in disguise, cheering every time my son kicked the ball. Watching them go to Christmas parties and school trips, all dressed up and excited.

  But it wasn’t fair. They needed to acclimatise to their new world. I told myself that it was better for them, better that they didn’t actually see me for a while. I never really believed it. But I’d see them. Every day that I could. Better for all of us. All this was ultimately about them for me. But not for you, Jack. It was about you. And because of that I’ve been denied these boots and the pumps and the proud-mummy moments. Worse, so have they.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I wait another ten minutes – studies show that’s the average time for someone to fall asleep when woken in the night. Then I open the door very carefully and stand in the hallway again. I listen but hear nothing. As I walk towards the front door without the holdall I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I wonder if I should have left the laptop too. No. That would be too risky. I’m already worried that the journal will reveal my DNA.

  But why wouldn’t it? I was your wife. I would have been near that bag, touched your stuff. I wore surgical gloves when I took it apart so I’m not worried about fingerprints but a stray hair? Then another more urgent thought invades. My children are asleep upstairs.

  My overtired, frazzled brain protests but my heart wins as I turn to go upstairs. I know where the creaks are and I avoid them. My feet make a familiar pattern on the soft carpet and I’m strangely calmed. I pad up the landing, knowing that if your mother wakes and comes out of her room it’s game over. I head for what used to be our room and turn the doorknob.

  It’s like turning back time and looking at myself lying in my bed. Laura is bigger than last time I saw her this close up. She’s no longer a tiny child. She’s changed so much in a year. Her blonde hair is long and spreads across the pillow. I step closer and she moves, so I freeze. My God. I feel a warmth in my soul, one that I haven’t felt for so long. She’s moving more now and I back out of the room.

  I sneak across the landing to your old room. There’s a red ‘Keep Out’ sign and I realise that Charlie is almost ready for secondary school. I missed it all. I missed this important transition. I push the door open and there he is, in a bedroom full of football posters. There’s a computer in the corner and a pile of school books. I feel full of pride. My son’s at school working hard.

  I start to read a certificate on the wall, squinting in the darkness. He’s been chosen for a football trial. I almost start to cry, then my wake-up call in the form of car headlights outside arrives. I worry for a moment that it’s the police already, that they’ve traced the IP address, but the car passes.

  I need to go. I’ll see my children soon, if it kills me. I will. As I stand looking at Charlie I realise that, if I am going even to stand a chance of getting them back, I need to stop all this. I need to get back to Caroline. Mummy. The pull of revenge is strong, like an addiction, but this needs to be over.

  I take a last look at my sleeping son then hurry back across the landing and down the stairs. I take made-up Monica’s phone and log it into her Facebook account. Despite myself, I post another status: ‘Hope everyone is enjoying my updates. Show your appreciation by texting me on 07924321875.’ I switch on the location tab, then I wipe my fingerprints from it and hide it under the pile of newspapers beside the landline. It’s Missy’s phone now, sitting in her hallway. The screen lights up with texts immediately. It should be easy for the police to trace to here.

  I’m out of the front door and into my car. I drive through my tears with a heavy heart, and under the cover of the trees I struggle to put Frances’s phone together and I realise I’m sobbing as I check her messages. One call from Mum.

  ‘Pick up, Fran. We’re having a great time, don’t work too hard xx.’

  Seven text messages from different people. None from you. Which probably means that you have called her before I did the factory reset to warn her she’s next. I check the local news and still no reports about a tea shop incident. It is the middle of the night, though.

  I turn off the location on Monica’s laptop, and when I check her Facebook I cheer up a little. The Pam posts have exploded into outright accusation. Quite a lot of ‘How could you, Jack?’ and a few ‘Is this in your house?’ One I particularly like says: ‘What sort of a man would do this?’ Perfect. It’s been shared far and wide and when I check your profile you’ve made a statement: ‘This is not what it looks like. This is an ongoing police matter. My solicitor is dealing with this.’

  No likes. No shares. No one is paying attention to you now. Everyone’s too busy feeling sorry for me. Realising that I’m not mad and I was right all along. There can be no doubt now.

  I dismantle all the devices so that they definitely can’t be traced back to this car. I hide everything under the seat and sit there for a minute. Where is this going to end? I’ve set your mother up and she deserves it. I try to recall a moment in my life when she gave a shit about me. I’ve known her since I’ve known you, at first just as my boyfriend’s mother, then as my children’s grandmother. You told me that even when you were a child she was too busy keeping up with the Joneses to notice much. She was certainly like that when I met her. She barely noticed me until it became clear that we would get married.

  She mocked me when I told her how I would rather be reading in my room than playing hockey. Or going to discos. She sat impatiently in the audience in our first year at university, just weeks after we met. My Juliet to Jack’s Romeo. Everyone smiled on as we appeared to fall in love before their eyes. I did fall in love with you, but inside I was trembling. I pushed it down so you wouldn’t see it and so that your mother’s warmth and applause would last. She made me feel like that, even then, with her disapproving gaze. I wanted you, but first I had to appease your mother. I should have known then.

  The majority of the time she was icy cold. Functional and organised, it was a rare treat that she would laugh and hug you. Her pride lay in impressing other people. Not everyone, just the people she considered to be important.

  She never made any secret of the fact that she didn’t think I was a good mother. Right from the start she objected to my Primark baby-grows and second-hand prams. Charlie and Laura would come back from a weekend with her wearing designer children’s
wear and clutching a bag of expensive toys. The most surprising thing was her rationale.

  ‘I just want them to have the same kind of upbringing that Jack had.’

  The thing about liars is that they forget who was there. They happily lie their way through life and lose track of the evidence. She forgot that I had you to tell the other side of your childhood. You told me that she spent all her money on herself, and that she rarely bought toys or took you on expensive trips. After your father died she became even more self-centred. I weighed the situation carefully and realised that this wasn’t a case of you and her against me, rather that you were using her just like you were using me, and I sometimes felt sorry for her. Her one saving grace, and the reason I didn’t, couldn’t, cut her off completely was that she does love Charlie and Laura. She used them to point score, but she does love them. With them, her smile is soft and her hand is light in a way I’ve never seen before. Perhaps she sees them as her second chance to perfect motherhood, but they’re my children not hers. When I first had them I was her favourite too. But as they grew and became independent of me she cooled. Later, as your partner, I was so far off her trajectory of expectations that she virtually ignored me. So now, sitting here in a strange car in the middle of the night, I feel a little bit sad.

  Even after she’s manipulated the situation so far that she took my children, I still feel sad that this will be the end of our relationship. I suppose it’s a bit like Stockholm Syndrome. I’ve been stuck in a destructive relationship with her all my life, but it’s always been one where we have related. It might have been via a solicitor or manipulative actions, but we’ve always communicated.

  Now I’ve won, she will be gone. When the police knock on her door and find the phone and the holdall they will think it’s her who has posted on Facebook. It will look for all the world like she has betrayed her beloved son, that she disapproves of your behaviour and has protested by posting the journal. Only she and you will know the truth. Her world will crumble because she really didn’t think that I was capable of setting her up.