Nobody's Perfect

by Stephanie Butland

  ‘You didn’t have to do that, today. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d let them say what they liked.’ His voice is gentle, grateful.

  ‘They were saying things that weren’t true.’ She tries to shrug but her shoulders won’t move. Her mind goes back, once more, to the first time he came to the flat, and she told him what she’d withheld from everyone else about the day at the hospital. She takes a mouthful of coffee, then slides her biscotti into the liquid in the cup to soften it.

  ‘You’re a good person, Kate,’ he says. ‘I want you to know that I know that. Not just for what you did today, for me, but for all you do for Daisy. I got to see that. All the things that no one else sees. You fight so many battles. I was lucky to see that and I was a fool, too.’ He shakes his head, and repeats, ‘You’re a good person.’

  He looks at her while he says this, and as soon as he stops speaking, his gaze drops to the coffee cup in his hands. Kate wants to say ‘thank you’ and ‘I know’: in the space where she’s deciding which, something else escapes.

  ‘So are you,’ she says.

  He looks up, startled. Kate bites into her biscotti, which has gone too soft now. It’s pulp in her mouth.

  ‘I really am,’ Spencer says, seriously. It’s as though he’s at a job interview, except his eyes say that there is so much more at stake. ‘I think. I mean, I was stupid, over Amanda, and I did the wrong thing, but there is nothing more – sinister than that. I knew it wouldn’t look that way. That’s why I didn’t tell you.’

  ‘I know,’ she says. And as the words come out – Spencer blinks, once, twice, at the sound of them – she realises how true they are.

  And everything might have changed, in theory, since they broke up, but in practice nothing feels different at all. Kate had thought that Amanda altered everything but, sitting here, she can’t believe that Spencer is full of anything except love, and good intentions. She thinks of how she distracted Daisy from finishing her thought this afternoon.

  Spencer is watching her. He isn’t saying anything. He’s just looking at her. Waiting. As though she has said half of a sentence; as though he has asked a question.

  Then, Kate understands. If she wants him, it’s up to her. No one is rescuing her, coming for her, sweeping her up as though she is something to be claimed. She gets to choose – to move, if she wants to. She takes a breath. She’d like to think she’s deciding, but actually it’s already decided. If it wasn’t, she wouldn’t still be dreaming of him, crying about him, wishing for his touch. ‘Spencer, I can understand why you didn’t tell me about Amanda. When I look at you I—’ She fumbles for a word, finds it, and it’s easy and true: ‘I know. I just know. I should have—’

  And she falters because of all the things she should have done.

  ‘I should have told you, at the beginning,’ he says. ‘Then you might have judged me but at least you wouldn’t have felt as though I’d – as though I’d tricked you.’

  She nods. This is it; this is it exactly. ‘I need things to be true,’ she says. And she does. She needs to be sure of everything. Firm foundations are the only way she can cope when the world rocks: when Daisy is acutely unwell, or when her stats fall off a percentile, or when she grows and changes and Kate must understand a new landscape. And, Kate has come to understand, in these last quiet weeks, as she has planned her future, that it’s OK for her to take steps, too. A foundation is good, but it’s only a foundation. Can Spencer be both part of her foundation, and part of her adventure? His face says he’s hers if she wants him. Her heart agrees.

  He made a mistake. She knows what that’s like.

  There aren’t words now, only the possibility of moving, forwards or back, onwards or nowhere new. She stands. She waits for him to move, to take a step towards her, like he did on that first night. But he doesn’t. She realises that he still doesn’t know whether she’s welcoming or dismissing him. That his love is there for her taking. But he won’t know that she wants him, unless she tells him. This is her decision, her moment to tell him that the possible world they talked about once could be theirs. That she wants it, still.

  She steps around the table, sits next to him, takes his hand.

  And then his arms are around her, holding her waist, tight, and hers are around him, his neck, and her face is turned to his shoulder but she hears every word. ‘I didn’t know what love was until I loved you,’ he says, and she smiles, and she feels him smile too.

  ‘I need this to be slow,’ she says. ‘I don’t think I want to – settle down. I want adventures. As much as I can. I don’t think I’ve ever had much fun.’

  ‘We’ll have all the adventures you want,’ he says, ‘though not on school nights.’

  They both laugh, quiet sounds that are a little afraid. Kate hadn’t realised how much she’d missed laughing with him, until now.

  ‘Tell me everything you want to do,’ Spencer says.

  She stretches her legs across his lap, still holding his hand. ‘Highway 66,’ she says, ‘and I want to do some wildlife volunteering. Wild camping. Turtles. Did I ever tell you that before I got pregnant with Daisy I was going to go and save some turtles?’

  ‘You did. You told me everything.’ The sadness on his face tells her that he knows – really knows – what toll his silence about Amanda took on her. And Kate doesn’t want to think about that anymore. She sticks out her tongue, just to make him smile.

  He laughs and reaches for the side of her face, her hair, cradles her head. ‘If I said camper van, would you laugh?’

  She does. ‘Would you fit? Couldn’t we get a caravan?’ She can see it now: beaches, fish and chips, wandering around old castles and racing Daisy along towpaths in the twilight of a different place.

  ‘We could,’ he says. Then, seriously, ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ and Kate is.

  ‘And the other things?’

  She thinks for a minute that he means Amanda, Elise, and she shakes her head. ‘It doesn’t matter now. I wish you’d told me. But I understand.’

  He puts his lips to her forehead; his face might be damp. ‘I meant,’ he says, ‘your life. Physiotherapy. Whatever you want to do next.’

  ‘I’ve got ideas,’ she says. ‘And I can’t – everything can’t change depending on whether we’re together. There’s more to me than you. I mean—’ Kate knows what she means, that she should never have been as diminished as she was when things between them ended, that she should not have lost her plans, her future, in the way she did. That there is so much more to her than Spencer. But he knows that, now. He said as much, at the wedding.

  Spencer pulls her towards him and curls an arm around her shoulders. ‘I understand. Look. It’s two weeks until the end of term,’ he says. ‘We’ve got six weeks of summer, and then when school starts Daisy will be in Miss Ingram’s class, and I’ll have a whole new class of parents to wrangle. None of them will be you. Everything will be easier from here. And we don’t need to decide anything big. Not for a while.’

  ‘It’s not that simple,’ she says.

  ‘I know. But it kind of is. Now that we’re here, I mean.’ He moves his shoulders, settling further back. ‘I’m not explaining myself very well.’

  Kate puts her head on his chest. ‘I know what you mean,’ she says.

  She closes her eyes, and lets time pass. It isn’t sleep, exactly, but it’s peace. And she knows it’s real because, not ten minutes later, there’s the click of Daisy’s door and the gentle shuffle of bare, sleepy feet. Kate sits up, as Spencer says, ‘Hello, Daisy.’ And Kate feels no panic, no worry, no shame. Her mind doesn’t jump to how she will explain this away, smooth it over, how she should never have put herself in this position. It’s just – it’s fine. It’s right.

  Daisy is wearing her butterfly pyjamas. Her hair is tousled by sleep but her eyes are wide awake as she studies the two of them. Kate waits another moment to make sure she isn’t going to feel tense, caught out, for her heart or mind to tell her that she�
��s making a mistake.

  But all she feels is happy. She smiles, reaches out a hand. Daisy makes her way towards them, and stops when she is close enough to touch Kate’s leg. She leans on her mother, palms flat against her thigh. ‘Mummy,’ she asks, ‘are you and me and Spencer going to be our own family again?’

  Spencer’s hand tenses, at her waist, but there’s no tension in Kate. She isn’t fool enough to think that things are going to be easy from now on, but there’s some part of her that knows she’s doing the right thing. ‘Yes, we are,’ she says.

  Acknowledgements

  There’s nothing like writing a novel to show you how little you know about how the world works. Thank you to the many, many people who answered my questions about the experience of cystic fibrosis, in all its forms. I spoke to parents, children, nurses, doctors, adults with CF, and teachers. I also sought advice from those who have studied with the Open University, taught in primary schools, worked in trades unions, and single-parented, as well as parents of children with special educational needs. I’ve been blessed with beta-readers who gave insightful advice on my scratchy drafts and helped make the finished novel far better. I’m hugely grateful to all those who advised me. Any and all errors are my own. Honourable mentions to: Fiona Black, Sarah Collins, Julie Cordiner, David Pringle, Elizabeth Rowan, and Dannielle, Wayne and Finley Shoults.

  I’ve been working with my agent, Oli Munson at A.M. Heath, for upward of a decade now, and am ever more grateful for his wise counsel and steadfast friendship. Thank you. The team at A.M. Heath is all-round amazing, too.

  At Zaffre, my editor, Sarah Bauer, is kind and clever and embraced this novel with love. Thank you, Sarah. Thanks, too, to Margaret Stead and Katie Lumsden for editorial input, and to the talented people who make up the design, sales, production, publicity and marketing teams.

  I’m lucky to have three fellow novelist friends who I can trust with anything, and who all read a painfully early draft of this and were encouraging and positive when I needed them most – Carys Bray, Sarah Franklin, Shelley Harris: you know.

  Kate’s friend Melissa is named for Melissa Conville, as a gift from her sister Katrina Taee, as part of the auction to raise funds for FareShare (fareshare.org.uk), the UK’s national network of charitable food redistributors. Belated Merry Christmas, Melissa!

  Last but not least, thank you to the friends and family who are always supportive: my parents, Helen and Michael; my children, Ned and Joy; my husband, Alan; my friends, especially Louise, Eli, Rebecca, Jude, Scarlet, Kym and Emily. And last-but-not-least of all, beloved Auntie Susan, to whom this novel is dedicated.

  About the Author

  Stephanie Butland lives near the sea in the north-east of England. She writes in a studio at the bottom of her garden. Researching her novels has turned her into an occasional performance poet and tango dancer.

  @under_blue_sky

  @StephanieButlandAuthor

  Also by Stephanie Butland

  Novels

  Letters to My Husband

  The Other Half of My Heart

  Lost for Words

  The Curious Heart of Ailsa Rae

  The Woman in the Photograph

  Non-fiction

  How I Said Bah! to cancer

  Thrive: The Bah! Guide to Wellness After cancer

  If you loved Nobody’s Perfect, you’ll also enjoy even more books by Stephanie Butland…

  First published in the UK in 2021 by

  ZAFFRE

  An imprint of Bonnier Books UK

  4th Floor, Victoria House, Bloomsbury Square, London, England, WC1B 4DA

  Owned by Bonnier Books

  Sveavägen 56, Stockholm, Sweden

  Copyright © Stephanie Butland, 2021

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  The right of Stephanie Butland to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978–1–83877–323–6

  Paperback ISBN: 978–1–83877–322–9

  Also available as an audiobook

  Typeset by IDSUK (Data Connection) Ltd

  Zaffre is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK

  www.bonnierbooks.co.uk