She sits up in bed, looks down at him. Her hair swings forwards and she tucks it behind her ear. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says. ‘This isn’t very – this isn’t what you’re supposed to do, is it? Talking about your ex on a first night.’ She laughs – there is something about them, together, they will both think, separately, later, that makes laughter happen as easily as touch, as breath.
‘We can do what we like, can’t we?’ he asks.
She nods. ‘How about you?’
He counts on his fingers: ‘Girlfriend in Edinburgh, when I was sixteen. We were together for three years and then she went to uni in Swansea and got a better offer. Six months of one-night stands to heal my broken heart. Serious girlfriend who was on the same course as me. She took a teaching job in Ireland and we just – it just sort of fizzled out. Then’ – he stretches his arms above his head, closes his eyes for a moment – ‘well, nothing serious since.’
‘Something – not serious?’ She’s not sure what makes her ask, apart from a sudden sense of disquiet, the sounding of a long-ago bell. But he doesn’t answer, and when she looks at his face, she thinks he’s sleeping.
*
Kate wakes earlier than Spencer, but it’s still late, by her standards, the church clock chiming nine. She thinks about waking him; knows how it would go, with warm morning kisses and eyes-open sex. (They’d woken at 2 a.m. and, surer then than the first time that they would not easily break or shock each other, reached with more confidence.) But it’s almost Christmas and there’s everything to do, including promising to be at her mother’s by noon at the latest so they can have an early lunch and Richenda can go shopping in the afternoon. So she gets into the shower (warm water, aching thighs, tension in her shoulders from the unaccustomed shapes her body has made when sharing a bed), wraps herself in the pale-blue towelling dressing gown she’s been wearing since she was seventeen, brushes her hair, and takes the wine glasses from the table, washing them up and leaving them to dry, side by side, on the drainer. Then Spencer emerges from the bedroom, in his boxer shorts, and smiles a sleepy smile at her.
‘Well, I hope that wasn’t a one-night stand,’ he says.
‘Unlikely,’ she answers, ‘but you’ll have to wait for the final votes to be counted and verified.’ He laughs. There’s something in him that allows her to be silly, funny, bright. With her mother she’s serious, and vulnerable, because Richenda is her champion and her support and the place where she takes all of her worries. With Melissa, she ought to be an equal, but their lives are too different for Kate to feel parity. With Spencer she might just be able to be herself. She stretches out her hands and he takes them in his own, pulls her close; she rests her face against his shoulder, then nips at his neck with her teeth, laughing as he jumps away.
Spencer takes a shower, and Kate dresses and goes down to the café, returning with almond croissants and lattes. She feels shy, suddenly, as she walks back up the stairs to the flat. But then she sees that he’s found plates and knives and laid them at the small dining table in the corner that isn’t occupied by the Christmas tree, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to sit down opposite him, to slip off her own shoes and tuck her feet against his calf.
‘So,’ he says, dusting icing sugar from his fingers, ‘what happens next?’
‘You don’t mean wrapping stocking presents, do you?’
‘No, I don’t.’ He pauses and looks at her, seriously.
Then he takes a breath, reaches for her hand, looks into her face. ‘I would like us to be together, Kate. A couple. I think we could be’ – he pauses again, for breath, to glance down at the table then up again – ‘I think we could be happy.’
She almost says, ‘I need to think about it,’ or, ‘it’s a bit too soon,’ or, ‘what about Daisy?’ But instead she remembers his voice, last night, telling her that she could trust him. She’s entitled to a life. She’s been happier in herself, in the last twenty-four hours, than she can recall being in almost any moment since Daisy was born. Daisy brings her own joy, of course. But why shouldn’t Kate have more happiness, in the parts of her life where she isn’t a mother?
‘I think you’re right,’ she says.
Chapter 8
Mid-December, the week before Christmas
D
AISY HAS BEEN AWAKE since dawn, despite Kate’s attempts to cuddle her back to sleep. Her bed has gone from being her quiet, undisturbed, thank-goodness-I-got-through-the-day space to somewhere where she aches for company, even though the time she and Spencer have spent in it has been so short. But Daisy was almost vibrating with excitement, her body wriggling top-to-toe against Kate. Kate tried holding her tightly – it worked when she was a baby, and still calms her when she’s unwell, or distressed – but Daisy is unquashable, even at 5 a.m. When she said, in a whisper, ‘It’s the Day, Mummy, it might be better than Christmas Day!’ Kate realised that she wasn’t going to get any more sleep, and got up to make hot chocolate and porridge. If she was lucky she might get a second breakfast into Daisy before school.
While Kate is heating the milk, Daisy goes off to get dressed ‘all by my own self’. Kate lets her – this tiny, independent streak pleases her and breaks her heart in roughly equal proportion. Ten minutes later, a small star sits at the breakfast table, buttons undone at the back but otherwise everything sparklingly in place. Kate tries not to laugh.
‘You did very well, Daisy. But you know you have to wear your uniform to school, don’t you, sweetheart? And you’ll get changed after lunch, before everyone comes to watch the play?’
Daisy looks at her mother with doubt. ‘I don’t think that’s quite right, Mummy. Today is Christmas Play Day. Mr Swanson said it was.’
‘Yes, it is. But the morning is going to be a bit more like a normal day.’
‘Then why is it not called Christmas Play Afternoon?’
‘I don’t know. But I think everyone goes with their uniform on so their costume stays nice and clean. That’s what Miss Orr said.’ Wendy Orr is a useful form of absent authority in many situations. She’s also becoming their friend; she often chats, after school, and once she and Daisy met her and Jilly in the bakery and shared a table, making a plan to go dog walking together before they said goodbye. Kate puts the porridge on the table. She’s stirred dried fruit into Daisy’s, and drizzles honey on top.
Daisy already looks tired. Kate sighs to herself. Christmas is lovely, especially now that Daisy is old enough to be excited, and young enough to still believe in flying reindeer and Father Christmas. But it would be so nice to not feel quite so on her own with it. This will be her first Christmas in the flat, a Christmas morning of just the two of them, although they’ll spend the majority of the day with Richenda and Blake, and she feels the weight of being a lone parent. It would be so good, later, to bring a tired child home and then go out for fish and chips while someone else does bath time. Or, after a fractious bedtime (Kate can see the fractious bedtime already, as inevitable as Daisy’s desire to sleep in her star costume tonight), to have someone to open a bottle of wine with. Maybe next year she and Spencer will be spending Christmas together.
‘Oops, Mummy.’ Daisy has dropped porridge down her front, and her eyes are glistening with tears ready to fall.
Kate swallows her sigh. ‘Never mind. Let’s take it off and I’ll wash it.’
‘But the play is today!’
‘I know, darling, but it’s early, so I’ll wash it straightaway and put it on the radiator and then it will be dry in no time.’
Daisy looks suspicious, but she agrees. She balks at her antibiotics – ‘I’m sure I did already eat these ones once today, Mummy’ – and turns down a second helping of porridge, even when Kate offers to add sprinkles to the top.
Eventually, Kate violates her no-TV-before-school rule and settles Daisy on the sofa in the hope that she’ll rest, doze, even, before they need to leave. She tucks a bowl of peanut-butter granola next to her. She might nibble at it if she doesn’t sleep.
<
br /> But by the time they get to the door of the classroom, the pale skin under Daisy’s eyes is already grey with tiredness, and Kate goes to speak to Miss Orr, explaining the slightly damp costume that needs a little more drying, and Daisy’s everything-is-impossible mindset.
‘Everything OK?’ Spencer appears at the door, and Kate’s stomach does a quick round-and-round; she would like to walk over to him, put her head against his chest, feel his arms go round her, automatically, glad that her absence is over. She realises that all of the other parents have gone, while she and Wendy have been talking about how tiring this time of year is for the children, how much there is to think about, to do. Wendy goes back into the classroom and Kate hears her clapping her hands, saying something about pegs and coats and shoes.
‘It’s fine,’ Kate says, ‘but Daisy’s been up since five.’
‘Oh, that does not sound like fun.’ In the four days since she kissed him goodbye at the top of the stairs, their mouths tasting of butter and almonds and the hot bitterness of coffee, they’ve texted and talked on the phone, but only seen each other, briefly, at school. They’ve agreed that they need to go carefully with Daisy. And anyway, the week before Christmas is full of busyness of one sort and another, so trying to arrange babysitting or mutual free time would be next to impossible. Spencer is going to see his family at Christmas; Kate will miss him, half-misses him already. Now, she itches to touch him, all the more when he smiles exactly the way he did when he came out of her bedroom and looked at her on Sunday morning. He reaches for her wrist, the exposed place between coat and glove, wraps his fingers round her flesh, squeezes. Happiness rushes through her, chasing the tiredness away. This is how it must be for people who have a partner, as well as a child. She wonders whether it would really be so impossible to see him, later. They don’t have to do anything special. They could sit on the sofa together, Kate’s feet on Spencer’s lap, and talk about how tired they are. That would be something. In a way, it would be better than a date, because Kate would not be alone for the part of the day that she dreads.
Spencer glances over his shoulder, to the hubbub of classroom. ‘I need to get back. I was thinking, though, if you like – only if you think it would be OK, I could come over, later, when Daisy’s in bed.’
It feels like a mind-reading trick. ‘I was just thinking it would be nice to have some company tonight,’ she says.
‘I can’t wait.’ He releases her wrist, and she pulls down her sleeve to cover the place where the skin feels chilled now his hand has gone. ‘I can’t kiss you here but I’m thinking about it.’
*
By noon, Kate is on her knees with tiredness. She wraps three gifts, realises she hasn’t put labels on them, can’t remember what they are, and has to unwrap them and start again. So she lies down on her bed and goes to sleep. She has rarely slept during the day, not since Daisy was small and she snatched what rest she could. She assumes that she’ll doze for half an hour, maybe an hour, maximum. That will give her time to tidy the flat, change into something clean – she pulled on yesterday’s jeans this morning, and there’s a peanut-butter handprint on the thigh – and get a seat near the front. Daisy will want to be able to see her.
But as soon as Kate lies down, a deep and still sleep overwhelms her, and she wakes with a start only fifteen minutes before the concert is to begin. She pulls back her hair to disguise the fact that it needs washing, pulls her smart, navy coat out of the wardrobe – it’s long enough to cover the mark on her jeans – buckles up her boots and runs.
She’s there in time, technically, but of course everyone else has arrived before her. Pairs of parents fill the rows of chairs. Richenda is coming to the after-school performance at 3.30, so there isn’t anyone here who could keep her a seat.
Jo, in the second-to-front row, mouths a ‘sorry’ when she sees Kate, indicating the chair at the end of the row that she must have tried to save. Kate shrugs and smiles in reply. She’ll stand at the back; that way Daisy will know she’s there.
Her phone buzzes in her pocket. It’s a message from Spencer. Seat in the front row at the end has a reserved sign on. It’s for you. She looks up, sees him smiling through the window that leads from the hall to the classroom, where he’s waiting to lead the class in. Kate finds the seat he means and sits on it. ‘That’s reserved,’ says the woman next to her.
‘Mr Swanson says I can sit here,’ Kate answers, then keeps her eyes front and ignores the noises of disapproval from her neighbour.
Kate is ready to cry from the moment the class files out, led by Spencer and chaperoned into place by Wendy Orr. The children all look so happy, so serious, as they seek out their parents in the audience, wave and smile, before settling into silence and then singing an enthusiastic, if ragged, version of ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’. Daisy remembers her words, and waves her star-wand exactly the way she’s practised, standing on a chair at home for full authenticity ‘because I do have to climb onto a block on the stage, Mummy’. There’s a tricky moment when she has a coughing fit right over the arrival of the Three Kings; Wendy asks them to repeat their lines, and Kate hears a sigh and a tut from behind her, imagines a whisper about Daisy. If she was Melissa, she’d turn in her seat and give those parents a stare. But she isn’t. She’s had to learn to choose her battles.
Kate is almost dry-eyed until the final chorus of ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’, which everyone is invited to stand up and join in with. Suddenly she cannot hold in her tears; it’s as though the worry and hope of the year that’s gone erupt from her. Daisy is lucky, she knows: many children with cystic fibrosis are much more limited in what they can do. Daisy doesn’t have it easy, certainly, and Kate hates the way she has to feed her constant antibiotics and watch every child that comes near her for fear of infection. But at least Daisy might lead a halfway normal life, for a normal amount of time, if luck is on her side. As Kate looks around at these other parents, heedlessly happy, parents who do not feel they are constantly trying to beat back a tide, she’s overwhelmed with tiredness, with happiness that she has got Daisy this far. And that she might not have to keep doing it alone for much longer. She sits on her chair, puts her head in her hands, and sobs.
‘Miss Micklethwaite? Are you all right?’ Kate looks up to see the woman who tutted at her when she sat down; she recognises her, now, as one of the other teachers.
‘I’m fine,’ Kate says, ‘just a bit – overwhelmed.’
‘I see,’ the woman says in the tone of one weary of parents, and pats her shoulder. ‘Would you like some water?’
‘No.’ Kate shakes her head. ‘Really. Thank you. I’m fine.’
She manages to wave at Daisy as she leaves the hall, hand in hand with one of the shepherds. Kate hopes he wasn’t the one that was sniffing all the way through the performance. Parents are to meet their children in the playground for a few minutes before leaving them to prepare for their next show; Kate will have time to dry her tears, find a smile, and be ready to act like any other happy and proud mother.
‘Kate? What’s happened?’ Spencer, under the guise of straightening the wooden benches at the front of the dais, steps over to her, touches her shoulder.
‘Nothing.’ She looks up into his face, smiles, then repeats, ‘I’m just a bit overwhelmed.’
‘I’ve offered to get Miss Micklethwaite a drink of water.’ There’s a tone in this woman’s voice that Kate really doesn’t like at all.
‘I know these events can be difficult for some parents. Especially with children like Daisy. Is no one with you?’
‘Oh, I didn’t see you there, Mrs Piper,’ Spencer says, and Kate knows him well enough to know that the polite expression on his face is a mask for dislike.
‘Evidently,’ Mrs Piper says. ‘Do you need to get back to your class, Mr Swanson?’
Spencer nods and turns away, glancing the smallest of smiles at Kate as he does so. Kate looks to see Mrs Piper watching her with a bully’s speculation. Don’t worry about it
, she tells herself, as she gets up and walks away. But she remembers when her life was nothing except looks like that one. She won’t let history repeat.
*
When Spencer arrives at 9 p.m., Daisy is snoring, Kate has showered and washed her hair, and the world feels calmer and happier. They kiss at the bottom of the stairs, and again at the top.
‘Well done,’ Kate says. ‘It was lovely.’
‘Thanks, but to be honest Wendy’s the one who really made it happen.’ He rubs his hand across his chin, a gesture she already recognises as meaning he is tired. ‘It seems to have gone down well. One of the mothers had a meltdown, which means we got the emotional depth spot on,’ he jokes, before looking at her seriously. ‘Are you sure you’re all right? When I saw you with your head in your hands I didn’t know—’
‘Honestly, it was just – it was a bit much for me. But I’m fine, now.’ She thinks it’s true, though when Daisy insisted on going to sleep clutching her star wand, she could have sobbed her heart out all over again. ‘The playground chat is all very positive. Five-star reviews all round.’
Spencer laughs. ‘Not from the the first camel’s dad. He thinks his kid was underused. Should have been third shepherd, at least. There’s always someone.’
Kate puts the kettle on. ‘I’m having tea, if you’d like some? Or coffee. There’s wine. And’ – she looks in the fridge – ‘Orange juice. Pineapple juice. Milk. All of the best beverages.’
‘I’d love some tea,’ he says, ‘and to not think about school anymore for today.’
‘Done,’ Kate says, but he must pick up the uncertainty in her tone.
‘Are you sure? Did Bridget Piper say anything to you?’
‘Why do you ask?’
Spencer sighs. ‘Because she’s always stirring things. Most teachers are great, but there’s the odd one that isn’t. Bridget is like that. It’s all gossip and meanness, and if they see anything they don’t like they blow it out of proportion. She doesn’t like me, because I’m a man, and so if she can get a dig in, she will.’ He comes over to where she is pouring boiling water onto the teabags, touches her waist. ‘I’ve already had a conversation with the Head about it.’
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