The Perfect Present

by Karen Swan

  ‘What are you doing?’ a voice asked abruptly.

  Laura wheeled round to find the silhouette of a tall, rangy man in overalls and gumboots standing in the doorway.

  ‘I was just giving her some titbits.’

  ‘And who said you could do that? She’s diabetic.’

  ‘Oh! I’m sorry.’

  ‘As you should be.’

  Laura shifted her weight nervously from foot to foot as the man stared at her. She felt strange to be the one standing so familiarly in the man’s kitchen, at his sink, whilst he hovered at the threshold as if he was the visitor.

  ‘I’m Laura. I’ve come to interview Kitty for a necklace I’m making for Cat Blake’s birthday.’

  ‘I heard.’ From the withering tone of his voice, he clearly didn’t approve. A nigh-on twenty-thousand-pound piece of jewellery that required people to be interviewed was clearly a ridiculous frippery in his book. He stepped out of his boots and into the room, and as he came out of the light, she saw that he was younger than he had at first appeared – mid to late thirties, with pale blue eyes in a long, rectangular face with greying stubble. He walked towards her, his eyes staying on her all the while. ‘And I suppose that’s your car that’s just been abandoned in the middle of the lane.’

  ‘Oh – yes. The camel gave me a fright and I ended up in some potholes.’

  ‘Damn near drove over it in the tractor. Useless car for driving around here,’ he muttered rudely as he poured himself a cup of tea.

  ‘Well, to be honest, when I was told I was coming to Surrey, I didn’t expect I’d need an off-roader,’ Laura replied, her hackles rising at the sustained attack.

  ‘I’ll have to pull it out. You’ve managed to well and truly strand yourself,’ he grumbled.

  ‘I’m sure I’ll be able to manage,’ Laura replied stiffly.

  ‘Oh no, let Joe help you. It’ll only take him a second,’ Kitty interjected, and Laura looked up to find her standing by the doorway.

  ‘Where’s Tom?’ Joe asked her brusquely.

  ‘Waiting for you. Probably playing in the barn.’

  Joe shot his wife a look and, stuffing his feet back into his boots, stomped out into the yard without another word, taking his tea with him.

  ‘Don’t mind him,’ Kitty said breezily as she began clearing the table. ‘He’s better with animals, that’s all.’

  Laura nodded politely as Kitty slid the dirty plates into a bowl of soapy water. ‘Was he a farmer when you met him?’

  ‘Yep, his family owned the neighbouring farm. I always say he asked for my land in marriage,’ she chuckled. ‘I’ve known him since I was five. We were at school together.’

  ‘Are your children going to carry on with the farm?’

  ‘Who knows? Tom’s saying he wants to. That’s why he’s home today and not at school. Joe’s usual man’s having an op, so he’s kept him home to help out with the hedges,’ Kitty rambled, cleaning the plates vigorously and handing them to Laura to dry. ‘But he might change his mind as he gets older. There are no guarantees, are there?’

  Within a few minutes, the washing-up was done and Pocket was back on the sofa, sleeping soundly again.

  ‘Well, where would you like me to interview you about Cat Blake?’ Laura asked, folding the tea towel over the Aga rail to dry. Kitty was easy company, but after Joe’s hostility, Laura was keen to get her work done and get out of there.

  ‘I thought we could do it on the way to Samuel’s music group,’ Kitty smiled, drying her hands.

  Laura’s face dropped. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘He’s got his music group in half an hour – a dozen three-year-olds banging the cymbals. Really it’s hell on earth, but it’s a lovely walk and I can show you the village. We can talk then. Come on.’

  Chapter Eight

  The old part of Ottersbrook was much prettier than the new residential part she had driven through. The church, primary school and village hall were clumped together down a narrow stretch of winding lanes, where thatched cottages stood directly on the road, corners and bay windows jutting out like sharp elbows.

  Kitty – in Next jeans and a blue Sherpa fleece – was pushing Samuel on an old Raleigh tricycle that Laura suspected had also been part of Kitty’s childhood. It had taken half a packet of baby wipes to get the orange stain off his face – sweet potato mash apparently – and Laura had been horrified when Kitty had casually asked her if she’d strap the wriggling, protesting toddler into the buggy whilst she dashed upstairs to the loo. Sensing her lack of experience in dealing with the mini-limbed, Samuel had proceeded to make himself as rigid as a scaffolding board and started to scream so hard his lips went blue.

  ‘So, Rob told me you’re Cat’s longest-standing friend?’ Laura began, restless and somewhat irritated by this scenic, long-winded way of extracting information.

  ‘You’d better believe it,’ Kitty replied, an ever-present smile on her lips. I’ve known her as long as I’ve known me. She’s my oldest and dearest friend in the world.’

  Laura looked across at Kitty as she bent down to pick up the engine Samuel had just lobbed into a neatly clipped privet hedge. Living in the home she’d grown up in, married to her childhood neighbour, best friends with her oldest companion . . . She seemed to belong to another era somehow, one where people corresponded by letter, not Twitter, and to whom community didn’t mean the number of friends on your Facebook page.

  ‘Her family came and lived in one of the farm cottages when she was five, and we spent all our time together. She’s only four days older than me, so we shared all our parties. When we started at primary, we were supposed to be in separate classes but we refused to release each other’s hands until they let us sit together. We used to swap a shoe each at break time and skip around the playground arm in arm, me with her left shoe, her with mine . . .’ Kitty shook her head and laughed at the memory.

  ‘It sounds like you were as close as sisters.’

  ‘Closer. Twins. Siamese twins even – sometimes I wasn’t sure where I stopped and she began. I could always finish her sentences. I always knew every thought that was in her head. People talk about twins having ESP, but we had it too, you know. Other people – teachers, the kids at school, even our mums – found it a bit creepy.’ She looked over at Laura. ‘You can guess what they called us, can’t you?’

  Laura shrugged.

  ‘Go on, take a guess.’

  Laura looked at her blankly. How the heck would she know?

  ‘KitCat,’ Kitty smiled. ‘And Kitty Cat. “Here, Kitty Cat,” they’d shout, and we used to pretend we were kittens and we’d run over to them, pretending to lick our paws. Talk about role playing.’ She shook her head at the memory. ‘And Dad used to go mad at us because every time the farm cat had a litter – which was often! – we’d hide the kittens in our rooms and the number of rats in the hay barn would just double. Poor Mum would find them all sleeping together in the sock drawer. The kittens, I mean, not the rats,’ she giggled. ‘Do you like cats?’

  Laura shook her head. ‘I’m a dog person. Arthur’s my baby. I have to respect his enmities.’

  Kitty smiled, appreciating the attempt at humour. ‘Of course.’

  They had reached a low prefab building that looked like it had been put up in the war, and a melee of buggies had congregated by the front door. Kitty added hers as she unbuckled Samuel one-handed. She opened the door and as Laura followed her in, she walked straight into a wall of screams. Instantly she felt the breath snatched from her lungs, leaving them empty and deflated like week-old balloons. She instinctively squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the sound, both hands gripping the half-open door.

  ‘It’s just over h— Laura? Are you okay?’ Kitty asked, coming closer as she saw that Laura was paralysed on the spot. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Slowly Laura opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was Kitty’s concern; the second was a woman dressed as a jester playing a recorder and being followed around the room by skip
ping children; the third was a row of curious mothers sitting on felt conference chairs, staring at her.

  ‘Laura, what just happened?’ Kitty asked in a quiet voice.

  ‘Low blood pressure. I’ve got low blood pressure,’ Laura murmured, beginning to straighten herself up. This wasn’t unusual after a bad episode. It was like aftershocks following an earthquake.

  Kitty nodded, but alarm rippled through her eyes like the blips on a heart monitor. ‘Let’s get a coffee and have a sit-down. Samuel’s fine in here,’ she said, taking Laura by the arm.

  She led Laura through to a smaller room next door, where a few plastic catering tables and stacking chairs had been laid out. Kitty got them each a cup and a saucer full of sugar-sprinkled Nice biscuits as Laura fiddled with the cuff buttons on her jacket.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Kitty asked kindly, sitting down.

  ‘There’s nothing to say,’ Laura said, replacing her cup so sharply on the saucer it was a wonder it didn’t crack. She caught sight of Kitty’s hurt expression and a voice in her head instantly berated her. ‘I’m sorry. What I mean to say is . . . I’m not a good talker. I don’t like talking about myself. I’d honestly much rather hear about you and Cat.’

  Kitty nodded, but her voice was quieter when she spoke, and she kept her eyes down. They had taken a step backwards. ‘Okay. What would you like to know?’

  ‘Um . . . well, what was the tone of your friendship? Was it jokey, mischievous; were you always getting into trouble?’

  ‘Yes. All those things and more. One day, we’d sit in a tree for six hours, looking out for red kites coming back to nest; the next, we’d be explorers, trawling up and down Dad’s fields with the metal detector, absolutely certain we’d find Roman treasure.’

  ‘Did you?’ Laura asked hopefully.

  ‘A few old coins, bones, some pottery. Nothing of any great age or value. But we liked the hunt more than anything. It was the idea of discovering something that excited us.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘We built a den in the woods at the bottom of the long field. My father put up a platform in a birch tree for us, and we hung webbing underneath it, which we filled with ferns for camouflage. Cat got given a beginner’s archery set one Christmas, so we set up the board on a nearby tree and would pretend to be Robin Hood, shooting through the leaves.’ She bit her lip and grinned. ‘We ought not to have, of course. There was a public footpath down there. Can you imagine?’ She held up her hands and widened them. ‘Walker harpooned!’ she announced, laughing, as if it was a newspaper headline.

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘Yes. We were lucky more than anything else. Cat took out a squirrel once, as I recall.’

  ‘Was it just the two of you down there?’

  ‘Oh yes. And no boys allowed, naturally. We’d raid the fridge and just stay out there all day. It had to be pretty cold or wet to drive us back in. Usually we wouldn’t leave until we saw my parents coming down the field with their torches, shouting at us to come in for dinner. We were permanently covered in mud and scratches.’

  ‘You sound like real tomboys.’

  ‘I guess so, although we loved being girly too. We’d have discos in our bedroom, jumping around with the lights off and our headlamps on, and Mum gave us a box of her old clothes – including her wedding dress – that we could dress up in. We used to practise getting married to each other, always in the car for some reason,’ she puzzled, frowning at the memory. ‘Drive-thru weddings in Surrey . . . Huh.’ She shrugged. ‘And we took it in turns learning to walk in her mum’s heels. When we reached thirteen, we were both allowed to have our ears pierced. We’d pull off the wax strips on each other’s legs. We were never apart, basically.’

  Encouraged by this easy stream of consciousness, Laura leant forward. ‘What’s the most vivid memory you have of her?’

  ‘There are so many,’ Kitty said, looking up at the polystyrene-blocked ceiling. ‘But I suppose . . . I suppose it was at Guide camp when we were about eleven. We were in Devon, and it was the first time we’d both been allowed away from home. It was the second day there – I remember because our tent collapsed on the first and we had to go out in our vests and knickers in the middle of the night and try to fix the guy ropes using our hairbrushes as mallets.

  ‘Anyway, we were cooking dinner. I was dumped with peeling the potatoes and Cat had to get some more water from the stream two fields away. I must have chopped up well over fifty potatoes when I saw her staggering back towards us, carrying something.’

  Kitty smiled and shook her head, but her eyes were far away.

  ‘It was a lamb, just a tiny thing. It had got caught in a roll of barbed wire and a fox had separated it from its mother. Cat had seen it and started screaming and waving at it, but the fox must have been starving or something because Cat said nothing she did would make it run off. There she was in the middle of a field, with not so much as a stone to throw at it, so she started beating and kicking at it with her own fists. Can you imagine? This little girl physically fighting a fox? She got a few really nasty bites herself, of course, and ended up having to have stitches and all kinds of shots afterwards, but I’ll never forget the sight of her coming up with that lamb in her arms. Her arms and legs were smeared with blood but all I could see was the whites of her eyes. Her delight! She was so happy she’d rescued this lamb. She said it was the best moment of her life.’ Kitty sighed. ‘I think she loved the fact that for once she was given all this praise for something that wasn’t about how she looked.’

  Laura threw her a puzzled glance. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, that was always the first thing people talked about when they met her. The only thing, really. They never seemed to notice – or even care – that she was kind or funny or clever.’ She gave a pitying shrug. ‘I always kind of felt sorry for her about it really.’

  ‘You don’t think she’s pretty?’

  ‘Of course I do. But I spent so much time with her, hers was the face I spent more time looking at than any other. I knew it better than my own.’

  ‘What happened to the lamb? Did it die?’

  ‘Ordinarily it would have been put down. It was lame and clearly in pain. But the farmer took one look at Cat’s big, pretty, hopeful eyes and everything she’d done to save it, and he called the vet out. They had to amputate, but other than that, it recovered well and was hopping about on three legs within a few days. Cassidy, we called it.’

  ‘You kept it?’

  ‘Well, the farmer couldn’t do anything with it, and there was no way Cat would leave it. You should have seen her mother’s face as she got off the coach at the end of the week with a three-legged lamb in her arms!’

  Laura paused. ‘Why Cassidy?’

  Kitty’s eyes were shining. ‘As in Hopalong?’

  Laura groaned. ‘You have a thing for naming your animals after bad jokes.’

  ‘It’s the glue that binds us,’ Kitty replied, collapsing into giggles as Samuel headed up the stampede of children chasing into the room and making a beeline for the biscuits.

  It was three o’clock before Laura finally got into Dolly, and even then it was only because Kitty had to do the school run and Laura was keen to leave without bumping into Friendly Joe again. He had, as Kitty had assured her he would, lifted Dolly out of the potholes, but any goodwill this might have engendered was undermined by the fact that he’d deposited her right next to Sugar’s hawthorn hedge, and the driver’s-side window was now several inches thick with black camel spit.

  She sat in the slow lane of the M25, surrounded again by all the sleek executive cars ferrying all those tired, not-so-sleek executives home. Laura wondered whether Robert Blake was somewhere among them, battling the hordes to get home to his beloved wife – a wife she now knew was kind to animals, brave, inordinately pretty and prone to bad jokes.

  Her mind wandered back over the stream of anecdotes and stories Kitty had machine-gunned at her over the course of the day. S
amuel’s music class had led on to lunch – a fish pie Kitty had thrown into the Aga on the way out to music – and Kitty hadn’t stopped talking once.

  It was clear the two girls had been each other’s gatekeepers, and she was toying with the idea of a portcullis icon. It was a strong image and a powerful testament to the strength of the friends’ protective support for each other. But how could she ignore the lamb? The self-proclaimed best moment of Cat’s life, and Kitty’s abiding image of her – the lamb in her arms as she carried it home, bloodied and brave and jubilant.

  And what about a cat? Cheesy it might be, but it represented their shared ‘kitty cat’ identity in childhood. Or what about a play on words: Kit-Kat? Wouldn’t that be fun? It would look great in metal, and Laura was sure she could capture the texture of the all-important foil.

  Then there were the reminiscences about high school (‘the English teacher likened her to the heroine in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18’) and how someone (‘never identified’) had graffitied a marriage proposal to Cat on the railway bridge. But no, she thought, dismissing them; they didn’t specifically relate to her relationship with Kitty, merely recounted the acts of passion that pretty girls inspire in men. Wasn’t this very necklace an example of just that, with her husband, in this instance, the smitten fool?

  What else? Achieving the school’s lowest ever grade in a geometry test was a dubious distinction, albeit somewhat satisfying for Laura to hear after all the plaudits. Kitty had kept the side up by coming second last. And being picked as Mary for the school nativity play every year was frankly just predictable. No, their pranks were of considerably more interest to Laura – their week of detentions for growing cress in the staffroom carpets during half-term when they were in the sixth form, or putting a banana in the exhaust pipe of the geography teacher’s Nova and watching his car splutter down the road, black smoke bellowing behind him.