Goodbye, Perfect

by Sara Barnard

  Valerie looks up and sees me, her expression turning neutral but not unfriendly. She lifts a hand to acknowledge me and says into the phone, ‘Eden’s just come in. I’ll call you back later, OK?’ She hangs up and drops the phone on her bed. ‘Hey, you,’ she says to me. ‘What’s up?’

  There’s no trace of anger in her. People like Valerie are too good for this world. If I was good, like her, I’d jump on to the bed and give her a hug. I’d say that I was sorry for snarling at her. I’d say all the right things.

  Instead, I lift up my revision guide so she can see the cover. ‘Could you help me revise?’

  Valerie smiles at me. It’s just small, nothing like her usual full-body smile and actually more sad than anything else, but it’s there. ‘Sure,’ she says. She pats the space on the bed next to her. ‘Come on up.’

  Conversations That Took on a New Meaning after Bonnie Disappeared

  The ‘Perfect’ Edition: five months before

  ‘Are you OK?’ Bonnie asked, peering at me, concern all over her face.

  I put my fingers on her chin and pushed her away. ‘Obviously.’ She was still looking all anxious, so I laughed. ‘Seriously, I’m fine. It’s what I expected. No surprises here.’ I glanced down at my list of mock exam results again and shook my head. ‘Hey. At least I passed most of them, right?’

  She frowned. ‘Is a D actually a pass?’

  ‘Bonnie!’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said quickly.

  The expression on her face was starting to get on my nerves. So when I asked, ‘How did you do, then?’ it came out a bit more harsh than I’d meant.

  She shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘Come on, just tell me. All A stars?’

  ‘Not all of them,’ she said, which I knew meant the rest were just plain old As.

  ‘Smile, then,’ I said, trying not to get annoyed. ‘That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? At least own it.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I just thought . . .’ She hesitated, glancing at me and then away again. ‘I thought I’d feel a bit . . . more. But they’re just letters, aren’t they?’

  I didn’t say anything, because what could I say? We both knew that we were on polar opposite sides of the scale when it came to education. Usually it didn’t matter, not to us, but in moments like this . . . well, it felt like the elephant in the room we’d always ignored suddenly trumpeting in my ear. Looking at her, with her A*s in her hand and a frown on her face, she felt like someone I didn’t know at all.

  The silence between us was just starting to shift into awkward when Mrs Berwick walked out of the main building into the courtyard we were sitting in. When she saw Bonnie, she beamed. ‘Ah, Bonnie,’ she said, ignoring me. ‘Congratulations on your fantastic results.’

  I watched Bonnie move flawlessly into perfect mode. The Head Prefect with straight As and not a detention to her name. Her shoulders unhunched, her smile bloomed, her chin lifted. ‘Thanks, miss.’

  ‘They’re only mocks,’ I said. ‘They’re just letters, aren’t they?’

  Mrs Berwick glared at me. ‘Maybe that attitude is why your “letters” are so unimpressive, Miss McKinley.’

  I shrugged. ‘Maybe I’m just thick, miss.’

  ‘You’re not,’ Bonnie said immediately.

  ‘Well,’ Mrs Berwick said loudly, in the voice she uses when she wants everyone to shut up. ‘I’m glad you have the right priorities, Bonnie. We’re all very proud of you.’

  Bonnie smiled back. The wide, confident, teacher-pleasing smile I hated the most. ‘Thanks, miss.’

  I waited until Mrs Berwick had walked off before I spoke, but it wasn’t long enough for the snap of irritation to leave my voice. ‘Don’t you ever get tired of being perfect all the time?’

  Bonnie, back to her hunched-shoulders, tense-smiling, chin-lowered self, swept her hair behind her ear and looked away from me. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Thursday

  16

  I wake up the next morning confused and groggy. I’d been dreaming about being with Bonnie in her sunny garden, the two of us blowing dandelion clocks across the grass, the feel of her arm around my shoulder, the sound of her laughing beside me. It’s disorientating to open my eyes to my own bedroom, still dark, even as the first morning light is starting to leak through the curtains.

  I try to go back to sleep, but I can’t. My brain is too alive. As the room gets lighter I unlock my phone and find a reply waiting from Rowan, sent after I’d fallen asleep. Yeah, I had to tell, she’s written. Did it on Mon. Mum showed me the letters Mr C had sent Bon and told me about grooming and stuff and I caved. This is all so messed up. Didn’t want any part in it. Mum wasn’t even mad I hadn’t told her before. See the pics for some of the letters. Hope you’re OK. Good luck with the exam. Row x.

  Poor Rowan. I send a quick reply and make a mental note to tell Daisy to be nice to her again before I open the pictures she’s sent and squint to read the contents properly.

  The letters are . . . intense. One is explicit (it contains a line about Bonnie’s mouth that I will never be able to unread), but the others all come across as mostly sweet and romantic, even funny. At least, they would, if I didn’t know who’d written them. They’re full of song lyrics and lines of poetry, reassurances and compliments, dreams and promises. No wonder Bonnie went and bloody fell in love with him. They’re like every letter any girl has ever wished she’d get from a boy. Except Mr Cohn isn’t a boy, is he?

  If I was allowed to love you, I’d do it properly. You’d never feel lost or worried or under-appreciated again, not with me.

  Seeing the handwriting I recognize from school writing words like this makes me feel first uncomfortable and then full-out weird. He’s our teacher, I keep thinking. He’s a grown man.

  I see the way you are at school, how you carry it all on your shoulders, how it diminishes your beautiful light. Those friends who don’t know you, but think they do. Your parents who expect too much from you, but all the wrong things. You’re so much more than all of this. You’re special. Bonnie, do you know how special you are? I want to take you away from here. I want to protect you from the world.

  But Bonnie didn’t need protecting from the world until you changed it by taking her away, I almost say to the screen, right out loud. God, why didn’t Bonnie tell me? Why didn’t she show me these letters? I would have said . . . What would I have said? It’s a bit weird to be that intense, Bon. Maybe tell him to chill out a bit. How old did you say he was? He’s not too old for you, is he? He’s not committing a crime, is he?

  One day we’ll be together, and I can give you everything you want and deserve. No more hiding. I know we have to wait, but I don’t want you to think that means what I feel isn’t real. I love you. One day I’ll tell the world.

  I look back at Rowan’s message, then google ‘grooming’ and click on the top result that comes up.

  There’s a lot on the page I read that fits Bonnie, from ‘personality changes’ right down to ‘the child or teenager may not understand that they have been groomed’, and when I’m done I feel itchy all over, hot and cold. I try and reconcile what I’ve read with Bonnie insisting that she’s happy, that she’s in love, that this is all her choice. I bite down on my nails and then the pad of my thumb.

  I take out my phone to message Bonnie, but just stare blankly at the screen for a while instead. What am I supposed to say? Er, Bonnie, do you think you’ve been groomed? There’s no point, I already know what she’ll say. She’ll say no, we’re in love. And who am I to know the difference?

  I wish I could talk to her properly, face to face. WhatsApp and the occasional phone call is part of the problem. Besides, even if I did speak to her about this over the phone, she’d just hang up and speak to Mr Cohn straight after, and he’s going to be way more convincing than me.

  Oh God, maybe I should just tell everyone where she is. No. I can’t. But maybe I should?r />
  But I promised. It’s Bonnie.

  ‘Eden?’ There’s a rap of knuckles at the door and Carolyn’s voice. ‘Time to get up, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ I call, tossing my phone to the side and closing my laptop. At the very least, I decide, this can all wait until after the exam.

  I walk to school alone. There are still journalists hovering near the Kett school gates, but there are definitely fewer of them, and they’re not yelling this time. Mr Sudbury, the lower school PE teacher, is leaning against the gatepost like he’s keeping guard, which is probably why.

  I try to put them out of my mind completely when I walk into the hall, my clear pencil case clutched in my hand, but it doesn’t really work. I’m wondering what information they have and don’t have, what stories they’re trying to write, what will be in the papers tomorrow. I’m thinking about Bonnie waking up in bed with Mr Cohn in Scotland and how completely weird it still is. I’m thinking about grooming. I am not thinking about chemistry.

  But then I have to think about chemistry, because the exam’s starting and I don’t have a choice. I skim through the paper before I write a word, looking for questions that don’t make me panic outright. I try and channel Valerie, remembering how she’d sketched out an atom on to a notepad for me the night before. The electrons on the outside, the nucleus in the middle. It helps, just a bit.

  But still, the best thing I can say about the exam is that it ends.

  When I get outside of the hall, I find Connor waiting for me, leaning against the wall. He doesn’t say anything at first, just smiles hopefully and raises his eyebrows, like, Well?

  ‘Ugh,’ I say.

  His face falls. ‘Really?’

  ‘Ugh, ugh, ugh. Let’s go.’

  ‘Was it at least better than yesterday?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t cry, so I guess so. You?’

  ‘I think it was OK,’ he says cautiously. ‘That whole section on halogens was a bitch, though.’

  I make a face as he opens the door for me and I walk out into the sunshine. Deconstructing an exam after it’s over is almost as bad as having to go through it the first time around. ‘Do you want to go to Costa or something?’ I ask, shielding my eyes from the sun and wishing I’d thought to bring my sunglasses.

  ‘I need to get home,’ Connor replies, an apologetic twist of a smile on his face. ‘Gran’s picking me up and I’m going to make a brunchy lunch. Eggs and bacon. I was thinking about it all the way through the exam.’ He laughs a little. ‘Want to come?’

  ‘Is that OK?’

  ‘Of course!’ He takes my hand and starts leading me towards the car park. ‘She’ll probably be here already. Have you heard from Bonnie today?’

  I give him a shove. ‘Shh! God, Connor!’ I look around frantically, as if a journalist – or worse, Mrs Berwick – might be standing right behind me. Luckily, there’s no one. ‘Remember how that’s a secret?’

  Connor rolls his eyes. ‘Worst secret ever.’

  We’ve reached his gran’s car, so I stick my tongue out at him rather than reply before opening the back door and sliding in.

  ‘Hello, Eden,’ his gran says, turning to look at me as Connor gets into the passenger seat. ‘How did you find the exam?’ She says this in a voice that suggests she knows exactly how I found the exam. Connor’s gran is like that. I think the word is ‘shrewd’.

  ‘It was OK,’ I say.

  ‘And how about you?’ she asks Connor. ‘All plain sailing?’

  Connor wiggles his hand in a so-so gesture. ‘Could have been worse.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she says. ‘Could have been better, though?’

  He shrugs. ‘Couldn’t it always?’

  It only takes a few minutes to drive to Connor’s house. When we get there, one of their cats, Snufkin, is sprawled out in the middle of the driveway, and he refuses to move even as Connor’s gran slams her hand down on the horn. Eventually Connor has to get out, laughing, and physically lift him out of the way.

  ‘Cats,’ Connor’s gran says, shaking her head as she switches the engine off, ‘have got life figured out.’

  ‘They have?’ I ask.

  ‘They make their own decisions and won’t budge for anybody,’ she says. ‘It might be annoying, but you have to respect it.’

  Connor is still holding Snufkin under one arm when he opens the front door for us and leads the way into the house. He deposits the cat on to the carpet and heads into the kitchen. ‘Connor!’ I hear his mother, Helen, say. ‘My study bug. How was the exam? And Eden!’ she adds as I appear behind him, before he can even reply. ‘How lovely to see you.’ Her smile is wide and genuine. ‘Come and sit next to me and tell me how you are.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say quickly. ‘How are you?’ Her arm is in a sling and I can see the yellowing dark of a bruise on her face. So little time has passed since her fall on Friday. I slide into the chair beside her as Connor opens the fridge and starts collecting ingredients.

  ‘Oh, I’m just fine,’ Helen says dismissively. ‘Broken bones heal, and I’ve got lots of pain medication to be getting on with. And my lovely son to make me cups of tea.’ As she says this she leans back, beaming, and touches Connor’s arm. He rolls his eyes at me but he’s smiling, the tips of his ears pinkening. ‘But you . . .’ She gives me a significant look. ‘You’ve been having quite a week.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I shrug a little. I don’t really know what to say. It’s not like any of it is happening to me, not really. I’m just on the sidelines. It’s Bonnie’s drama; Bonnie’s mess.

  ‘There was a girl in my school who had an affair with our teacher, you know,’ she says. ‘Big scandal.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Mm-hm. We were in the sixth form, so it isn’t quite the same situation, and they didn’t exactly run away. She left school to go and be with him.’

  ‘Did they stay together?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh, no. They were engaged for a while, I think, but they never married. They split up after a couple of years.’

  I don’t know whether to be disappointed or not. On the one hand, I want Bonnie to be happy, don’t I? But on the other, it doesn’t seem right if she gets to be rewarded with a great love story for messing up everyone’s lives.

  ‘This kind of thing,’ Helen says. ‘It’s not as rare as you might think.’

  ‘It’s not?’

  ‘No. Where there are men –’ she gives me a rueful smile – ‘and there are girls, there’s the risk.’

  ‘Unscrupulous men,’ Connor’s gran amends. ‘Seeking out lovelorn girls to dazzle and manipulate.’

  I frown. ‘That doesn’t sound like Mr Cohn.’

  ‘I’m sure he’d be pleased to hear that,’ Helen says, and they both laugh.

  ‘But maybe they really did just fall in love,’ I say. ‘And they just happen to have a big age gap. And it’s, like . . . taboo. And that’s why they had to leave.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Connor’s gran says, her voice dry, eyes sharp. ‘Maybe this is all about two people in love. Or maybe it’s about a man taking a girl away from her home and her family.’

  ‘A man who should know better,’ Helen adds. ‘Needless to say.’

  ‘So . . .’ I try to gather the conversation together in my head. ‘So you’re saying this won’t last? And Bonnie will come home?’

  ‘We’re saying don’t worry,’ Helen says, patting my hand. ‘We’re saying this will blow over soon.’

  ‘This too shall pass,’ Connor’s gran says, in the kind of grand voice that suggests this is a quote that I should probably recognize, but don’t.

  I look at Connor and he grins at me from where he’s scrambling eggs at the hob. I smile uncertainly back, because I’m not sure whether this conversation is helping sort the confusion in my mind or actually making it worse. Helen and Connor’s gran are talking in the way adults often do about teenage problems, like they’ve already seen the future, just because they’re older, and are talking with hindsight they haven’t actually earned. Yes,
they’ve lived their lives. But they haven’t lived mine.

  ‘I just want Bonnie to come home,’ I say.

  ‘She will,’ Helen says, so confidently, like there’s no other option. ‘One way or another, she will.’

  We stay in the kitchen for a while, talking about non-Bonnie things while we eat, but she’s still all I can think about. All of the adults – Connor’s mum and gran, my parents, the people on the radio – they’re all so sure that Bonnie will be found and returned home, whether she wants it or not. Like it’s just as simple and inevitable as that. But if that was true, wouldn’t it have happened by now? She’s already made it from here to Wales to Yorkshire to Scotland. What’s next? What if they really do make it to Ireland? What if they really do disappear?

  When we’re finished eating, I follow Connor up to his room, my head still fizzing.

  ‘What do you think about what your mum and gran said?’ I ask.

  ‘About Bonnie?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, I think they would have said some different stuff if they’d known you knew where she was.’

  I know this is true. ‘Yeah, yeah. I meant about her coming back, and this all blowing over. Do you think that’s true?’

  ‘I don’t know. I guess so? You know Bonnie better than I do. What do you think?’

  I’ve been thinking about little else all week, and I still don’t have an answer. ‘I think Bonnie’s stubborn. That’s what I keep going back to. And . . . what’s the word for when you don’t want to admit that you’re wrong? Enough so you’ll do anything to avoid it?’

  ‘Er . . . proud?’

  ‘I guess. Anyway, that’s the thing . . . I just can’t see her deciding it on her own, not when she’s with Mr Cohn in that weird love-bubble they’ve got going on. She has to talk to someone about it.’

  ‘Someone?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘Uh . . .’

  ‘I’m going to go and get her,’ I say.