Nobody's Perfect

by Stephanie Butland

  And she knows she is bringing all of these feelings when she thinks about studying. Spencer says that becoming a qualified physiotherapist doesn’t count as neglect on any official child-protection guidance he’s seen, and she knows he’s right about that. But, left to herself, even contemplating study that necessitates time away from Daisy feels perilously close to neglect.

  ‘You don’t have to decide anything now,’ Spencer had said, one night, when he’d got up to get a glass of water at 2 a.m. and found her putting figures in a spreadsheet and mapping likely university-term dates against likely school-term dates. ‘You don’t have to apply until January and you wouldn’t start until the next, what, October? We have time to work it out without staying up all night.’ He’d kissed the top of her head, rubbed her shoulders, then reached for her hand and taken her back to bed. He had been asleep before she was. And she’d lain in the dark, thinking about that ‘we’, knowing that she could be sure of him. When she’d awoken she hadn’t felt quite so anxious.

  In the here and now, there’s another week of school to go before the Easter holidays begin. Daisy is doing well, and they are finding a semblance of a new routine, spending time with Spencer two evenings a week, visiting Richenda and Blake on another. When Daisy is at school Kate still finds herself a little bit lost, emotionally at least, although her days often fill up with the sort of recklessly deep sleep that is never available in a hospital. When she wakes, she finds herself watching TV programmes she’d normally scoff at. She didn’t think she would ever miss the days of online university seminars.

  She calls Melissa; there’s office noise in the background when she picks up. ‘What’s wrong? Is it Daisy?’

  ‘No.’ Kate tries to steady her breath. ‘It’s just me.’

  ‘Hey, there’s no such thing as just you.’

  Kate sobs anew. ‘I can’t stop crying today,’ she says, unnecessarily.

  ‘Of course you can’t,’ Melissa says, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Let’s get on FaceTime. I’ll just find a meeting room. Hold on.’

  ‘I say this with love, but you look like shit,’ Melissa says, as soon as they’ve connected.

  ‘I know. I feel it. I’m just so – I can’t seem to get it together for long enough to get things going again.’

  ‘Babe,’ Melissa says, ‘what is it, exactly, that you think you haven’t done? How have you failed?’ She leans closer to her phone, so all Kate can see is a nostril, a berry-glossed upper lip. ‘I forgot to pass a message on to my boss on Friday, and honestly, you’d think I’d driven a ship into a bloody great iceberg. Give yourself a break.’

  ‘I know but—’

  Melissa sighs. ‘Listen to me, Kate. You haven’t got it all sorted. So what? You’ve just had a major trauma in your life. We all know what could have happened to Daisy. Of course you feel shit. You’re shaken. You’re upset. And I saw how you held it together when you were in hospital. Don’t you think it’s about time you fell apart?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘But nothing. Kate, we’re twenty-four. You’re raising an amazing kid and I had to buy a toothbrush and toothpaste on the way to work this morning because I went home with some random last night. And I’m wearing yesterday’s knickers. Who’s winning?’

  Kate laughs, despite herself. There would have been a time when she would have envied Melissa last night. ‘How was he? The random?’

  Melissa scrunches up her face. There’s a rap on the door, in the background. ‘Look, I need to go. Kate, I promise, you’ll feel better. Let that man of yours rub your feet, get plenty of sleep, and if I’m not around to talk then watch half an hour of TikTok cat videos. OK?’

  ‘OK. Thanks, Melissa.’

  ‘Love you.’ Melissa hangs up. Kate does as she’s told and looks at TikTok. It doesn’t solve anything, but neither did staring at the spreadsheet.

  *

  The days before the Easter holidays pass, and Kate feels herself start to heal, as Daisy grows stronger. She stops feeling as though Daisy’s life is as vulnerable as a sycamore seed flying down to earth, and starts to sense the roots and solidity of it, again. She notices that she isn’t walking to school pick-up in a panic; she can go to the loo and leave her phone in the other room. The fact that Spencer has texted her, every lunchtime, just a line to tell her Daisy is OK, has definitely helped. And so she herself begins to relax, to remember that she is allowed to be a separate person, to want to be left alone for five minutes or to have an uninterrupted night’s sleep, to laugh with Spencer, to be naked against him. To drink a glass of wine too many.

  One evening, as she is putting a tired Daisy to bed, she hears Spencer pacing in the living room. She thinks, to begin with, that he must be clearing the table, but they had pasta with bolognese and a salad, so that would be three trips to the dishwasher at most. She hears the sound of his feet going back, forwards, back, forwards, for ten minutes, fifteen.

  Daisy has asked for two stories, but she’s asleep before the second book is opened; Kate resists the temptation to curl up beside her – she’s so very tired herself, still – and instead goes back to the living room. Spencer has stopped pacing and is standing at the window, looking down over the street. She goes to join him. He puts an arm around her shoulder, pulls her in.

  ‘It’s so much darker in Scotland,’ he says.

  ‘Is that a literal observation, or are we being metaphorical? Because I think I’m too tired for metaphorical.’

  Spencer laughs and kisses her forehead, where her parting is. ‘Very possibly both,’ he says, ‘but I was thinking about the light. From the sun, not the metaphorical light. If I was teaching in some parts of Scotland it would be darkening when you picked Daisy up, even at the end of March.’

  Kate considers. She has lost so much time to hospital colours and clinical light. It was the end of winter when Daisy was hospitalised. She’s missed the early part of spring – there wasn’t much of it visible in the hospital car park, just a few struggling crocuses and a mildness in the air, but the temperature of any air outside the hospital’s stifling dryness is hard to judge for anything except being blessedly different. Now, with tulips in the village flowerbeds and the last of the primroses in her mother’s garden, with the yellows of impending Easter everywhere, she is almost giddy with it all: the sun and smell of spring in the world outside.

  ‘Yes.’ He has tilted his head so it rests against hers. Even though they’ve been talking about what they’ll do in the summer holidays, and whether it’s feasible for her to apply to do a Master’s that will start in January rather than October, it’s still a novelty to breathe each other in.

  ‘I could hear you pacing. Is something wrong?’

  ‘No. Yes,’ Spencer says. ‘It’s a storm in a teacup, really.’

  Kate takes his hand and leads him to the sofa. ‘I could do with thinking about something other than Daisy.’ Part of her wants to cross her fingers against having said such a thing. What if she makes her daughter ill again?

  ‘It’s just school.’ Spencer sighs. ‘There are times when I wonder whether I’m in the right job.’

  ‘But everyone says you’re a brilliant teacher. Jo has been bringing me up to date with the latest. Your stock is rising.’ She adds a suggestive eyebrow, but he doesn’t notice. Just as well. She’s tired to her bones.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. The playground word is, the children respond well to you, you’re good at quieting the boisterous ones down, and bringing the quiet ones out of their shells.’

  ‘The staffroom talk is different,’ Spencer says.

  ‘Really? I thought that had blown over.’ Although, when she looks back, she realises it’s more that he hasn’t mentioned school than that he’s said that there’s nothing going on. Since she and Daisy returned from hospital she’s learned a lot of small things that she’s been protected from. Her father broke his wrist when he fell on the steps of an art gallery in Florence – only her father would man
age to have such a pretentious accident. Blake has been seconded to another police force, disrupting their lives in a way that neither he nor her mother talked to her about while she was in hospital. One of Richenda’s biggest clients has gone bust; as she says, she’s the bookkeeper, she should have seen it coming, but it had been a quick decline brought on by their biggest contractor going into receivership. Even her friends have felt they can’t bother her with what they consider to be trivia: Jo thought she was pregnant, but it turned out to be a false alarm; Melissa’s internship has turned into a job.

  Spencer shakes his head. ‘Nothing blows over in a school. It just festers. Then comes out again, worse.’ Kate looks into his face in the hope that he’s joking, but there’s no flicker of amusement there.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Well, I came back to the classroom early to do some admin at lunchtime, but Wendy stayed in the staffroom. When she came back after lunch I could see she was upset. She wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. I thought she might be getting a bit of stick about the wedding.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Kate says. Even her mother’s neighbour, who can be what could kindly be described as ‘old-fashioned’ when it comes to non-traditional relationships (well, non-traditional anything), had taken the news of Wendy and Jilly’s wedding and Daisy’s role in it with a smile, when they bumped into her on the way to Sunday lunch. ‘Ladies can love each other in a special way, Mrs Drury,’ Daisy had said, and Kate had been ready to intervene depending on the reply, but Mrs Drury had said only that it’s good that people love each other.

  ‘I know’ – Spencer strokes her hair – ‘but it’s a pretty heterosexual place.’

  ‘That’s no excuse.’ Kate leans into him.

  ‘I wasn’t making excuses.’ He sounds rattled; Kate pulls away, a little, looks into his face. He smiles and squeezes her hand, an apology. ‘Anyway. After school I asked her if someone had mentioned her wedding. That I was her friend and if anything was wrong I wanted to know.’

  ‘Right—’

  ‘It seems there’s a lot of – quite ugly gossip going around, about me.’

  ‘Oh, Spencer—’ Kate fits herself under his arm, feels him pull her in. She knows how easy it is to talk a good game when it comes to listening to gossip, and how much harder it is to truly ignore what people say.

  ‘I know,’ Spencer says, ‘but – they’re talking about you, too, Kate.’

  ‘What about me? I was in hospital for a month. I can’t have done anything worth gossiping about, unless you count not washing my hair for four days.’ Kate is aiming for lightness but knows she doesn’t manage it.

  ‘I mean, they’re saying that you and me – that you’re vulnerable and I’m – taking advantage—’

  ‘Oh, that’s ridiculous!’ Kate’s body has gone from leaning-in to tree-trunk-straight in a heartbeat. Spencer puts his hands on her shoulders, looks into her eyes.

  ‘I know it is,’ he says. ‘We know the truth, and it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. And I know that in my head, but—’ He sits down again. Kate perches next to him, her body turned to face him.

  ‘It’s so unnecessary,’ Kate says, her mother’s phrase. ‘And it’s not fair,’ which is Daisy’s.

  ‘The thing is,’ Spencer says, ‘you don’t teach because it’s a brilliant career choice, or it’s easy, or it’s even well paid.’ He half laughs, though it’s an ugly sound. ‘They’re advertising for a box-office manager in the cinema and I’d make as much there, pro rata, and minus a hell of a lot of hassle.’

  ‘You worked it out?’ In Kate’s head, Spencer is so clearly and absolutely a teacher that the thought of him contemplating another job – however briefly – is astonishing.

  ‘Not really. Well, I was waiting for the film to start.’ Spencer shrugs. ‘Anyway, teaching, it’s a vocation and a profession and it’s hard work, but everyone just thinks I stick old yoghurt pots together all day and then swan about for six weeks in the summer.’

  ‘They don’t think that,’ Kate says, but Spencer isn’t listening.

  ‘And because I’m a man teaching primary level they think there’s something wrong with me, and I have to put down all these stupid rules so that I protect myself from accusations—’ Kate thinks of Daisy when it comes to PE day, insisting on her white knee-socks rather than her navy tights: ‘Mr Swanson says have a go at putting your tights on yourself, or get one of the other girls to help you, but I can do socks on my own.’

  ‘Surely no one’s saying—’

  ‘No, no.’ Spencer waves a hand. ‘I’m not saying that. I’m saying it’s a lot of effort to do this job and I get no credit and a lot of stick from the people who would welcome me with open arms if I was a woman.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Kate says, but she says it without conviction, because she suspects he’s right. She thinks of Mrs Piper, whose superior attitude and snide solicitousness had been unpleasant, even in the fifteen-second interaction they had when Daisy went back to school. She can’t imagine how wearing it would be day to day.

  ‘I do,’ Spencer says, then, ‘Well, the old guard don’t like anyone different. Wendy got a lot of stick about her and Jilly to begin with, I think. She was telling me about it today. When she started, Bridget Piper kept bringing in newspaper articles for her. About anything vaguely gay. Elton John’s new album or Sandi Toksvig presenting QI. Asking her which was her favourite Barry Manilow song. Just – awful. Passive aggressive.’

  ‘Why can’t people just leave people alone?’ It sounds glib, but Kate means it, from every corner of her soul.

  Spencer shakes his head: agreement. ‘And then she started asking whether Wendy was worried about what the “more traditional” families were thinking about her being “so public” with Jilly. Of course, Wendy told Jilly, and Jilly came to meet her from school one day and had a chat with Bridget about anti-discrimination laws, and mentioned that she was in the legal profession. It’s been better since.’

  ‘I should hope so,’ Kate says. ‘How awful for Wendy, though. Imagine if Jilly hadn’t been able to do that.’

  Spencer smiles at her, a little sideways. ‘Is it too late for you to retrain as a lawyer?’

  Kate takes both of his hands, raises them to her lips, kisses his knuckles one by one. ‘You know you’re doing a good job. You’ve nothing to fear from Bridget Piper. And we know what we’re about.’ That ‘we’ keeps thrilling her: we’re taking Daisy to see a film, we’ll see you on Sunday for lunch if Daisy isn’t too tired.

  ‘Yes,’ Spencer says. ‘I suppose I can’t help but resent it. And I’m worried that you’ll believe what they say about me taking advantage of you.’

  They look at each other for a long minute, and then Kate smiles and undoes his top button. ‘If only they knew,’ she says, ‘how much I take advantage of you.’

  ‘You’re right.’ Spencer exhales, his shoulders broadening as tension leaves him. Kate wishes he would smile; there’s a heaviness to him tonight that calls out an answering worry in her. ‘We still have some catching up to do.’

  And all is well, for a while. But later, when he leaves – he forgot his clean shirt for the morning, and decides not to stay – Kate looks out of the window and sees him standing in the street, not moving, looking down at the pavement, and when she goes back to bed she cannot sleep.

  Chapter 17

  Late March

  J

  UST WHEN LIFE STARTS to feel something like normal, Spencer announces that his parents are coming to visit for the first weekend of the Easter holidays.

  They are staying with him for Friday and Saturday night, en route to a fortnight with Spencer’s sister Annie, who needs childcare help over the holidays, followed by a week’s stay in a cottage on the south coast. Spencer will sleep on the sofa and give his parents his bed. And he will introduce them to Kate and Daisy.

  ‘I’m not going to be nervous,’ Kate says to Jo on the Saturday morning. She has taken Daisy to play w
ith Amelia. ‘It’s the twenty-first century, I have a first-class honours degree’ – she still feels a thrill when she says it – ‘I am a woman in my own right, and a role model to my daughter. Spencer can make his own choices, and what his parents think of me is irrelevant. They sound nice, from what he’s said. Also, we’re going to the Italian restaurant for dinner, so I’m not getting involved in some sort of cooking request-for-approval.’

  ‘If you say so.’ Jo raises an eyebrow. ‘Though if that’s the case I’m not quite sure why I’m having Daisy so you can clean your flat. Or why you told me all that without me asking.’

  ‘I will think of an answer to that,’ Kate replies, ‘before I come back to pick her up.’

  ‘I’ll be waiting.’ Jo laughs. ‘It’s good to have you back.’

  Kate hugs Daisy goodbye, and goes home via the florist’s, where she buys peonies for the coffee table. She needs to be back in three hours, so that she’s in time for the lunchtime round of intravenous antibiotics.

  Spencer’s parents arrived last night. He’s taking them around the area this morning; this afternoon, they’ll come to collect Kate and Daisy and take a walk up to Beau’s Heights, followed by dinner at the Italian restaurant. There’s a café halfway up the hill, where Kate and Daisy can wait if it looks as though Daisy is going to be too tired to make it up to the top and down again. Spencer’s mother, apparently, loves dogs, so Kate has invited her mother and Blake to meet them in the car park with Hope and Beatle.