Kate curls her bare feet against the carpet. The floor is solid. He’s here. She’s here. She pulls her cardigan tightly around her body, keeps her arms crossed in front of her. He says, ‘I’m sorry for turning up unannounced. I know it’s not very – usual. I heard you’d had a tough day, and I wanted to see that you were OK.’
And she says, ‘I’m in my pyjamas.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He smiles, and it’s an understanding sort of a smile, sad at the corners. He begins to turn away. ‘I knew this was a bad idea. I’ll see you at school.’ Behind him the street is empty; there is noise leaking from the Italian restaurant, the ruckus of an early works-do Christmas-party laughter.
‘No, no,’ she says, ‘I meant—’ But it’s too difficult to explain what she meant, here on the doorstep, or maybe anywhere at all. Because it’s as though her own loneliness had somehow called to him. Stop it, Kate, she tells herself, it’s that sort of ridiculous romanticism that got you caught up with Mike. She touches his arm. ‘Please. Come in. Daisy’s asleep.’
No one sees. No one is on the pavement, no one has stepped out of the restaurant for a cigarette.
Between Spencer and the Christmas tree that is too wide and too tall but was irresistible to her and Daisy because it’s just so perfectly Christmas-tree shaped, it feels as though there’s hardly room to breathe. Kate asks him to sit down and then she makes tea, without asking whether he wants it, because that way she can watch her own hands, open drawers and cupboards, be busy while she gets used to just the fact of him being here.
‘How was your day?’ she asks, glancing up.
‘I felt bad that I didn’t see you after school,’ Spencer says, seriously; but before she can respond he smiles. ‘I had to go to see the Head about something.’
Kate laughs. ‘That’s OK. I might not show it, but I do know that you have more to do than teach Daisy.’
‘If it was only teaching, being a teacher would be so much easier.’ He sounds both wary and tired. Well, that makes two of them.
Across from the kitchen area, two small sofas face each other, a coffee table in between. Kate puts the mugs on the table and then sits opposite Spencer. The sofa seems even smaller with him on it, too. She sits cross-legged, and takes her own mug – pale-blue glazed, bowl-shaped, a gift from her mother – in her hands.
‘Tell me everything,’ Spencer says. ‘Forget what I’ve heard from Wendy. I want to hear it all from you.’
Kate repeats the tale of the day. ‘It’s all manageable, really,’ she says when she gets to the end. ‘I get so used to dealing with CF on a day-to-day basis that I think I am in charge of it, somehow, and I can forget that it can change, and how quickly it can change. It’s good that her lungs don’t look too bad.’ The result of the X-ray had been comparable to the one that Daisy had at her annual review in August. Her lungs aren’t strong, but they aren’t diseased. This is much more than a small mercy. People in Throckton pity Daisy, Kate knows, but they really have no idea how lightly cystic fibrosis has touched her, compared to some other children. Kate refuses to see her own life as blessed because others are worse off, though. She hates that some of the parents who put their head on one side when they see her and Daisy are likely to be thinking, thank goodness we are not them. If you are what passes for normal round here, though – partnered, solvent, with an apparently healthy child – how little introspection you need. How easy it must be to judge, and find yourself and your life perfect.
Kate drinks some of her tea and notices that Spencer’s is untouched. She gets up again, brings the sugar-bowl that Daisy painted at a pottery café when out for the day with her granny. Spencer smiles and adds two spoonfuls of sugar to his mug, stirs. ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘I know I shouldn’t. It’s my only vice.’
‘We love calories in this house. Feeding Daisy is like stoking a furnace. I keep a diary of what she eats and, honestly, I can’t believe it myself, sometimes.’ Kate thinks of how easy it is to talk to him, about Daisy. We’re having a meeting, she tells herself, it’s just that I’m in my pyjamas. Sometimes you have to be flexible.
He looks up. ‘I suppose the check-ups are exactly because you don’t always notice how things change, day-to-day. They just creep up. No one sees until it’s’ – he hesitates and Kate wonders whether he was going to say ‘too late’ and thought better of it – ‘really a thing.’
‘My mother says something similar. Like how you don’t notice you’re too hot until you’re sunburned, or that when you feel thirsty you’re already dehydrated.’
‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned since I started teaching, it’s that mothers generally know what they’re talking about.’
‘Yes.’ She doesn’t mention that she’d snapped back that if Daisy was hot she would take her indoors, and if she was thirsty she would give her a drink, and surely she is not the only one who can see that this is going to need more than platitudes to fix. She must call her mother tomorrow, apologise for her sharpness. Daisy’s lack of weight gain is not Richenda’s fault. It’s no one’s but Kate’s.
‘It sounds hard for you.’ Spencer looks straight at her; she looks down, at her hands, which she thinks are starting to look old. She has worried hands. She holds one of them up, stopping him before he says what she thinks he is going to say.
‘Please, there’s no need to be sympathetic. There are parents of kids with CF who would give their teeth to be where I am right now.’
‘That doesn’t make it any less difficult for you, though, does it?’
‘No, it doesn’t.’ Kate looks away from the warmth, the empathy in his face. She can’t think of what to say so she opens her mouth and lets honesty out: ‘But please don’t be sympathetic, because I’ve cried my heart out once already today, and I don’t think I want to do it again.’
Spencer puts down his mug. ‘Fair enough. If you’re sure.’
But she’s not sure.
‘Kate? Is there something else?’ His eyes are clear and concerned as they look at her.
‘It’s nothing, really.’
‘You can tell me. If you want to.’ She would like to. But if she couldn’t tell her mother, she shouldn’t be telling Spencer Swanson.
‘It’s getting late.’
‘Kate,’ he says, and he smiles. ‘It’s ten to nine. I know it’s a school night, but even so—’
She laughs, despite herself. ‘Ten to nine? Is that all?’
‘It is.’ He holds out an arm, and a watch pokes out from under his shirt cuff. ‘And I’d really like you to tell me what’s bothering you, if you feel you can.’ Kate half smiles. He half smiles back. ‘Don’t make me use my teacher voice.’
Their eye contact holds. Kate’s skin prickles. She closes her eyes, takes a breath. This isn’t about her and Spencer. It’s about her and Daisy.
‘OK,’ she says, deciding. ‘Like I say, it’s nothing, probably. It just – it just made me think.’ She looks at him, checking that – that what? That he’s listening, that he means what he said, that he’s there? He nods, waits for her to speak. She takes a deep breath. ‘Right at the end, the consultant mentioned that some children learn to use eating or not eating as a way of manipulating or punishing their parents. It makes sense, if you think about it. They know that what you need them to do, more than anything else, is to eat properly. So if they don’t eat, they have power over you. Or it can be a way of them telling you – maybe subconsciously – that they’re unhappy. Daisy’s started school. I’ve been working on my dissertation. I haven’t always been the parent I should have been. I have friends who are finishing uni, travelling, and sometimes I . . .’ Kate looks away from her hands to the place on the floor she scrubbed the Cointreau stain from. ‘Sometimes I resent Daisy. I know I shouldn’t, but I do.’ She’s amazed that her voice is steady, because she has never said these words aloud. She can’t, with her mother, because it would be like admitting she wasn’t good enough. And if she said anything to Melissa it would unleash an avalanche
of ‘poor Kate’ that she would never, ever get out from under. The only way she can function in the world is by having a brave face she can pretend is real. But talking to Spencer, to a relative stranger who’s also, kind of, a professional – it feels OK. And he looks as though he is listening. Not judging. ‘So I think maybe she’s punishing me, because she’s not happy, and it’s my fault.’ Kate is amazed that she’s not crying, although her voice is thinner at the end of her explanation than it was at the beginning.
‘Or maybe,’ Spencer says, ‘Daisy is growing and using more energy at school. I’ve seen her attack a cheese and ham bagel, Kate. She’d eat the pig raw if it was close enough.’
‘That’s what I’ve always thought,’ Kate says. ‘But—’
‘But nothing,’ Spencer says, matter-of-factly. Then, more gently, ‘Of course, it’s possible that she’s watching you, and picking up cues. If you’re worried, she’ll worry. If you’re not eating properly, or not hungry, then even though you’re making sure she eats, she might feel less hungry. I know it sounds a bit – fluffy – but the two of you have a very strong bond.’
‘I suppose so.’ Kate turns this around, looking at the different sides of it. ‘But I can’t pretend not to worry. That won’t work on Daisy. And I am worried, so—’
‘So, take better care of yourself, and then you’ll feel better, and that will make everything easier,’ Spencer says. ‘If you don’t mind my saying something—’
He actually pauses, waiting for permission. Kate smiles. ‘Please.’
‘OK.’ He looks directly at her, his hands on his knees, his mug on the table. ‘Daisy doesn’t need the best mother that there’s ever been in the history of the world. No child does. Daisy just needs a mother who loves her and looks out for her needs. And that’s what she’s got. It’s more than a lot of kids have, believe me.’
Kate pulls her feet up flat on the sofa, hugs her knees. Perhaps she has lost a little bit of weight. Spencer could be right. If she isn’t eating properly, Daisy could be following suit.
‘Sorry.’ Spencer looks unsure of himself, as though he has suddenly realised what Kate saw when she let him in, that he is a teacher who arrived uninvited at the home of a mother who is in her pyjamas. ‘I didn’t mean—’
‘No,’ Kate says, ‘you’re right. You’re so right.’ Her counsellor for postnatal depression had spent a lot of time helping Kate to understand what motherhood meant to her: how she felt the pressure to be everything and more to Daisy, how she believed, on some level, that cystic fibrosis was a judgement on Kate and that she must be a perfect mother to make up for that, and to keep her daughter safe and well. Kate had thought she’d worked through all those feelings. But her reaction to Victoria’s words, and the way she hid them from her mother, suggest not. The postnatal depression was before she had understood – really understood – how she would always be standing on the sidelines of the lives she should have had. She has watched her friends travel, graduate, get great jobs, have relationships that have crashed and burned and that they have moved on from with reckless abandon and no long-lasting consequences. Soon, she knows, she will be going to engagement parties and house warmings, and clicking ‘like’ on news about promotions on Facebook. And she’ll be here, in a flat, doing calorie maths and listening for the sound of Daisy coughing in the night. But only if she can keep her daughter well. Oh, how it all hurts just to think about. She pulls her cardigan more tightly around her. A burst of laughter comes from the party in the restaurant downstairs, and she and Spencer smile at each other, a little blast of mutual sympathy that they are not laughing, they are not drinking and eating and shouting to be heard over the chatter of their friends.
‘I hope I haven’t upset you.’ Spencer is watching her, serious again, worry on his face.
‘No,’ Kate says, and she smiles, to show him that he hasn’t. It starts as a small, reassuring smile, but when he returns it, she feels it broaden. ‘Would you like some more tea?’ she asks, looking away, reaching for her mug.
‘I should probably be going,’ Spencer says. As though the meeting is over. Kate doesn’t want it to be.
She looks into his eyes exactly at the moment that he’s looking into hers; it’s a look that might be happening right now in the restaurant downstairs, at one of the corner tables, between two people who have been working their way up to this moment for weeks.
Spencer leans towards Kate, just a little. They’d have to make an effort to touch. Someone would have to get up, to move round the table; but still, he’s moving towards her. And she almost does the same, which she could do, easily; she’s being pulled that way, a fish on a hook. But Kate has let her heart rule her head before. This time, her head’s in charge, and it remembers: ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Of course. Ask away.’ He leans back.
‘You said it was inappropriate to come to Daisy’s party. But you’re here. Isn’t this more inappropriate?’ The line slackens; maybe it has broken, although Kate suspects not.
Spencer sighs. ‘I honestly don’t know,’ he says, ‘but I’m sorry. There are guidelines about professional behaviour, and it wouldn’t have been appropriate to come, but I didn’t have to be such an idiot about it.’ He has the look of an airbed snagged on a nail, deflated. He’s quiet for a moment, watching her. ‘As to whether I should be here now . . .’
Kate says nothing. She thinks about her breath, the way she tries to when she needs to be calm: when Daisy won’t take her medication, or is crying with distress at a cannula in her hand and the tube that snakes from it and ties her freedom down. When a consultant tells her that there’s no immediate reason to worry, reminding her that there are always worries waiting. Or even when Daisy is doing the things any five-year-old might do – having tantrums over growing out of her favourite T-shirt, refusing to go to bed, asking the same question over and over and over. They both sit quietly for a moment, and then Spencer speaks again, more quietly, his voice a little nervous. ‘This is going to sound terrible, I know, and I know we barely know each other and you have much more important things to think about – but even without what happened at the hospital today, I really wanted to see you, and, hopefully, be less of an idiot this time.’
‘Yes,’ Kate says, finding something safe to stand on for a minute. ‘Yes, you’ve been less of an idiot.’
‘Good. “Less idiocy” is one of my performance targets for this academic year.’
She looks at him and before she knows it she’s laughing, at the ridiculousness of this whole situation; the man she’s been fantasising about is in her flat and talking to her about being a good mother while she wears pyjamas so old she wouldn’t even wear them in front of Melissa. And he’s laughing, too, shaking his head.
But then they stop.
They look at each other again. Spencer’s eyes are dark. There’s the smallest spatter of stubble on his face. Kate cannot think of another word to say. He stands.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘perhaps I should quit while I’m ahead.’
‘Yes,’ Kate says, although she means no, and she stands, too, and he moves towards the door and he is next to her, so close that she can see a dimple in the skin of his earlobe where she guesses he once wore an earring. Her fingers itch to reach for it. She twists her own earring instead. His hand, although not touching her, is exactly where it would be if he was about to put it on her waist.
‘Are you going to kiss me?’ The words blurt from her. He laughs, and she laughs at the sound of his laughter, deep and as clean as the smell of him.
‘Well, I think I was,’ he says, ‘but you’ve kind of blown my concentration.’
‘Sorry.’ Kate is laughing more than she should be. ‘Sorry. It’s just—’ He may not be kissing her, but now his hand is on her waist, and it’s warm, and she really, really wishes she was wearing anything except the awful cardigan. But she’s bra-less under her vest top; taking the cardigan off would make her feel as good as naked.
‘It’s OK,�
� he says. He’s stopped laughing. She wonders if he’s going to try it again or whether he’s thought better of it. She takes a breath and tries to explain: ‘Sorry. I’m so used to being on my own, or being the grown-up. I just – I suppose I just say what’s in my head.’
‘That’s OK. Really it is. I wish more people did. It would make life easier.’ They are still standing. Everything has become uncertain: the kissing-or-not-kissing, the leaving-or-not-leaving. There’s something in his face, too: a distance.
‘Why don’t you stay?’ And then Kate realises what she’s said. ‘I don’t mean stay the night, I mean—’ She’s laughing again. ‘Oh, god, I’m sorry. I mean, don’t go just yet. Please. Sit down. If you want to.’
‘That sounds like an excellent idea,’ Spencer says, and he does. Kate sits next to him, and he takes her hand in both of his and turns it palm-up and kisses it, without looking away from her face, which is one of the sexiest things that Kate can remember happening to her, ever, although her experience is fairly limited. And then he lets go of her hand and Kate feels something inside her start to wake from a hibernation so long that she had thought it may as well have been a death. She leans into him, her head on his chest, his arm round her shoulder, and she closes her eyes.
*
Kate wakes to the sound of the Christmas party discharging itself from the restaurant, in the puzzling glow of the Christmas-tree lights and the unfamiliar sensation of being held. She sits upright, as if stung.
‘Whoa,’ Spencer says. ‘Hold your horses. You’re OK.’
‘I fell asleep.’
‘You did.’ Perching on the edge of the sofa, trying to put the components of the day into order, Kate is looking away from Spencer. That doesn’t stop her from hearing the gentleness in his voice. ‘But that’s not surprising. You had a tough day, and then I turned up and nearly kissed you.’
Nobody's Perfect Page 6
