The Perfect Life

by Nuala Ellwood

  ‘Still don’t remember?’

  I shake my head, fear pinching at my skin. The man is in his late thirties with a shaved head, piercing blue eyes and an angry red scar running across the left side of his face. There’s something familiar about him, like I’ve seen him somewhere before, though I don’t know where or how.

  He gazes into the space beyond my shoulder, his brow furrowed.

  ‘All those letters,’ he says, his eyes hardening. ‘You above everybody else seemed to understand me.’

  ‘I don’t know who you are,’ I cry, my throat tightening. ‘I’m so sorry but I don’t.’

  ‘He always took away the people I loved most,’ he says, his lip curling. ‘He always had to be in control.’

  ‘Who did?’ I say. ‘Who are you talking about?’

  ‘Him,’ he says, almost spitting out the word. ‘Our beloved Geoffrey Rivers. My dear old dad.’

  36. Now

  ‘But Geoffrey didn’t have a son,’ I say, trying my best to keep calm. ‘He told me himself. He seemed sad about it, regretful.’

  ‘Sad that his little cash cow had dried up,’ says the man, sitting down on the bed.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I say, glancing at the door. I should make a run for it now, get out of here as fast as I can, yet something is stopping me. It’s a memory of candy-floss stalls and men on stilts breathing fire.

  ‘He told you he didn’t have a son because I was no longer any use to him,’ he says, staring at the floor. ‘But the truth is I ceased to exist a long time ago. I stopped being his son the day he decided to replace me with Angus.’

  ‘The boy in the book?’ I say, trying not to think of his hands gripping my arms. Every sane part of me is yelling ‘get out’, but my feet are fixed to the floor.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, looking up at me. ‘Angus, the hero of Holly Maze House. You see, my father based that boy on me. And he got the idea of the ghosts and the gravestones and the bird from my life. I had lost someone I loved dearly. Mrs Perkins was her name. She was our next-door neighbour. Her husband gave me that glass bird when she died and when we went to visit her grave I told her that I would never forget her, that I would think of her always and that if she ever needed to contact me she could do so through the bird. It would be our messenger. It was kids’ talk. I was only six years old and trying to make sense of things. But he was there the whole time, good old Dad, he was there listening, watching, jotting it down. Never actually talking to me, never helping me with it all. He didn’t even like Mrs Perkins, thought she was common. No, all he wanted was to write something that would make him rich and famous – he took my life and sold it for cash.’

  He puts his head in his hands and as I stand looking at him I’m overcome with a mixture of pity and guilt. I had been one of the kids who fell for Geoffrey’s stories, who believed in them, and in doing so had helped make him rich and famous. And all the while he had been taking advantage of his own child.

  ‘Why did you bring me here?’ I beg, collapsing on to the floor as the adrenaline seeps out of me. ‘What do you want from me?’

  He looks up and smiles.

  ‘You haven’t changed,’ he says, his voice softening. ‘You’re still the same nervous little girl I met at the party.’

  ‘The party?’

  ‘Surely you remember it? Go on, look out there.’ He gestures at the window.

  ‘But –’

  ‘Go on,’ he hisses.

  Shakily, I stand up and go to the window where I can see the garden fully. I see the maze in the distance, the topiary animals, and then all of a sudden I’m back there, weaving in and out of groups of children dressed in seventeenth-century costume. There’s a tap on my shoulder. I look up and see a young boy with dark hair and cornflower-blue eyes.

  ‘Those parties,’ he says with a sigh. ‘My father liked to remind himself of his own importance by throwing the doors open to his child readers. Every year, the Geoffrey Rivers fan club would hold a competition where children had to answer an easy question from the book. The correct answers would be put into a hat and then the names of twenty lucky kids would be drawn and they’d be invited for an evening of “wonder beyond their wildest dreams”. It was bullshit, really. All of it. Just a ruse to make him look like a magnanimous philanthropist, to keep his face in the papers and the books selling.’

  ‘I … I hadn’t thought it was real. I thought I was remembering the book,’ I say, stepping away from the window.

  But I’m starting to remember now. My mum had died and I was in a really bad state. Had I entered a competition?

  He looks at me, his face expressionless.

  ‘On the morning of the party I got hold of the guest list,’ he says. ‘I wanted to see what kind of people would be stupid enough to fall for this crap. But then I saw your name and beside it there was a note: Vanessa has recently lost her mother and may be feeling sensitive. If she is at all uneasy during the party, call her dad on the following number. And when I saw that I knew I had to meet you. I had lost my mother too, but I didn’t have anyone to look after me with Dad gallivanting around with any other kid but me. I wanted to see if you would understand.’

  As I listen to him, my eyes fill with tears as I imagine that little girl going along to the party, trying to be brave when inside she was falling apart.

  ‘I found you by the candy-floss stall,’ he says, smiling. ‘I heard one of the helpers call you Vanessa, so I knew it was you. You were dressed in a little blue smock dress and lace-up hobnail boots. You looked so thin and fragile, like you might break apart at the slightest touch. I tapped you on the shoulder and you flinched like you’d been hit.’

  I nod my head, remembering how nervous I had been in those days.

  ‘I asked you which character you had come as,’ he says, his eyes softening, ‘and you said “Iris”. I remember your voice trembling when you spoke.’

  It’s incredible how much of those months following Mum’s death have been lost. So raw was my grief, I had blocked out entire days and weeks.

  ‘We chatted for a little while,’ he continues. ‘You were nervous but kind. I could tell that about you. After a while you opened up a bit and told me what you enjoyed most about the book. You said it was the glass bird, that you wished you could have a bird like that. When I heard this I felt like you truly were a kindred spirit so I told you about Mrs Perkins and Mallison Street, how I’d been left the glass bird by her when she died. You listened to me so attentively it made my heart hurt. I offered to get you some candy floss but you said you didn’t want any. Then the firework display began and I noticed it was making you jump. I asked if you were okay and you said you wanted to go home.’

  I sit in silence, trying to recall the events he is describing, an old sadness tugging at my heart.

  ‘I went to find the party planner and asked her to call your dad,’ he says. ‘As she led you away, you turned back and waved at me. You were the saddest person I had ever met. But in a strange way, I liked your sadness because it made mine seem less terrible.’

  He looks at me. The scar on his cheek is illuminated by the light coming through the window and I see now that it’s an old burn.

  ‘When you left, I felt empty,’ he says, ‘like all the lights had been dimmed. I knew I had to see you again, to speak to you properly away from everyone. So imagine my surprise when you wrote to me. Well, I say me, you actually addressed the letters to Angus, though I didn’t mind.’

  ‘My God,’ I say, a chill rippling through me as I recall the box of letters that had arrived at Georgie’s house the other day. ‘You … you were …’

  I try to speak but my throat is dry. I can’t quite believe what I’m hearing.

  ‘It was amazing,’ he says, his eyes shining. ‘You had such sweet handwriting. You told me about school, how you weren’t really enjoying it as the kids kept asking about your mum. You told me a lot about her, how she liked gardening and dancing and how, when she smiled, it made you feel warm and lov
ed.’

  My heart feels like it’s being ripped from my chest as I listen to him. How isolated I must have been to have felt that the only person I could confide in was a fictional character.

  ‘After that first letter you wrote to me almost every week,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t write back to you as you didn’t include your address but I didn’t mind. I thought that if I wrote back you’d be disappointed. I didn’t inherit my father’s way with words so any letter you got from me would have been deathly dull. Best to let you do the writing and believe that the person you were talking to was Angus. But I used to look forward to seeing those little yellow envelopes landing on the doormat. It seemed I’d finally found someone who understood me.’

  I see myself sitting at the little wooden desk in my bedroom, writing carefully on the pale-lemon notepaper Mum had bought me for my last birthday.

  ‘I treasured those letters,’ he says, his voice piercing my memory. ‘But then my father found them and told me I had to get rid of them. Said it was inappropriate because I was fourteen and you were just a kid. But it wasn’t inappropriate, was it, Iris? It was beautiful. Anyway, I ignored the old goat and kept the letters. Once I found out where you were living I decided to send them to you, see if you would remember.’

  I look up and suddenly the fog of twenty years begins to lift.

  ‘It wasn’t a story,’ I say, my voice trembling. ‘You were real.’

  ‘I guess so,’ says the man with a shrug. ‘Though I’ve always felt like a half-person, like if I ever showed anyone the real me, I would be a huge disappointment.’

  He stands up and goes to the window.

  ‘My father robbed me of my childhood,’ he says, scratching his finger along the pane of glass. ‘He stole my identity and sold my life to the world as a dream when in reality it was hell.’

  I glance at the open door. I should make a run for it but something holds me back. Is it that I feel sorry for this lost and lonely man?

  ‘After you left the night of the party, I came back up here and tried to get on with my work,’ he says, his eyes fixed on the window. ‘I was making a model aeroplane. That was one of the things that helped to calm me – focusing on the details helped keep the bad stuff out of my head. But there was so much noise coming from the garden, the fireworks display, the shouting and shrieking from the kids. Finally, after messing up the paint on the body of the plane, I decided enough was enough. I hammered on the window and yelled at them to shut up, but I didn’t realize how fragile the glass was and my fist went straight through. My hand never really healed.’

  He turns and shows me his right hand. There’s a crescent-shaped scar running from the knuckle of his thumb to the wrist.

  ‘My father heard the noise and told the kids the party was over,’ he spits out bitterly, returning to the window. ‘When they had left I went to look for him. The house was deathly quiet but the garden door was open. Outside, the torches were still lit, the stalls still up and the cushions still strewn about the lawn. And then I saw him, sitting with his back to me, huddled in the light of one of the torches. He looked up and, when he saw me, his face grew dark. He ordered me to explain my behaviour, why I had thought it necessary to smash the window and cause a scene. I pleaded with him, explained that I’d just got fed up with the noise, that the broken window had been an accident. But that wasn’t good enough for my father, nothing ever was.’

  I sit here trying to reconcile the jovial Geoffrey, chat-show favourite and children’s hero, with the person his son is describing.

  ‘He told me that I shouldn’t have been in my bedroom,’ he continues. ‘That my job was to stay at the party and play the role of Angus. But I was sick of having to pretend. I wasn’t bloody Angus. He got angry then and told me to mind my language. And then I really lost it. I told him how ludicrous it was to hear that from the man who valued all my thoughts, all my experiences, enough to trap them inside a story, but in real life couldn’t stand me. Who wouldn’t come near me no matter if I yelled or cried. And yet he felt the real crime was a bit of bad language. He screamed back that I ought to be honoured to be his muse, that most boys would be thrilled to be the subject of a bestselling book series.’

  He shakes his head and pauses. When he resumes the story his voice cracks with emotion.

  ‘I … I told him I didn’t want to be his muse, I wanted to be his son. And you know what he said? He said that whether I liked it or not, I was his son, and a spoilt son at that. That he had given me everything I could have ever wanted: a beautiful home, money, holidays, more than most boys would have in a lifetime. But that wasn’t what I wanted, that wasn’t what she wanted, my mum. All she wanted was to stay in our tiny house in Mallison Street where he had written the first book, which sold so well he could afford to buy this place. Mum hated it here. Neither of us wanted what he gave us. And you know what he said then?’

  He turns to me and raises his eyebrows. I shake my head, bile rising in my throat. I sense that his story is nearly over and fear for what will come then.

  ‘He said that what happened to Mum was my fault. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My mum had killed herself because of depression, not because of me. If anyone pushed her to it, it was him – he was the one who took her from everything she loved. And my father, the man beloved by kids across the world, leaned across and hissed that he didn’t blame her for feeling low with me as her son. That I clearly wasn’t right in the head either. Then …’

  He pauses and wipes his eyes.

  ‘He said that he wished I could be the son I was supposed to be, but that I was incapable. That I was such a disappointment he’d had to invent another boy to replace me.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, my mind whirring with images of Geoffrey, of his poor dead wife and lonely son.

  ‘That was the final straw,’ he says, pressing his fist to the glass. ‘I ran at him then, but I lost my footing and fell on the open flame of the torch. As you can see, the scars have never healed.’

  He steps away from the window and suddenly the atmosphere shifts. His face darkens and he walks towards me.

  ‘I’m what our society would refer to as a loser, Vanessa. I’ve never had a proper job or a proper relationship, never bought a house or started a family. And it all stems from what happened that night; he baited me and I was marked for ever as the failure I am. I lost the use of my hand for a while and needed extensive skin grafts on my face. I was traumatized and needed help but my father’s solution was to hide me away, pretend I didn’t exist. He never mentioned me to the world again. So I set up home in the rooms along this corridor and we left each other alone. But then this year he announced he was selling up and using the proceeds to travel the world. The old bastard had landed on his feet yet again, no matter what the cost to anyone else, even those he was supposed to love. And he has never been punished for what he did to my mother or for what he did to me. For ruining both our lives, first with those books and then by doing this.’

  He grabs my hand and runs it along the mottled scar.

  ‘Who would ever love me looking like this, who would employ me?’ he says, his eyes blazing. ‘He’d trapped me in the house, inside the bloody fairy story, and now he was going to throw me out on to the street. I don’t think so. That’s why I don’t feel a shred of guilt for killing him,’ he says. ‘Yes, that’s right, Iris. It was me who finished him off.’

  My heart leaps to my throat. I realize with sickening dread just how much danger I’m in. His face is so close to mine I can feel the warmth of his breath. I daren’t move, daren’t speak.

  ‘In the end it was you who drove me to action,’ he says, stroking my face. ‘I’d found you again and I was enjoying watching you going about your business. I followed you from the estate agent that afternoon and then, while the old bastard was showing you round, I hid in the hallway and listened. When I heard him say he didn’t have a son, I knew the time had come to kill him. So I came upstairs and pushed the table over, know
ing it would make a noise and he’d come running. Always keen to preserve his little secret.’

  My body freezes as I recall Geoffrey’s startled expression as he made his excuses and went upstairs.

  ‘In the end it was easier than I thought,’ he says in a cold, flat voice. ‘I waited at the top of the stairs and when he drew level I reached forward and pushed him down.’

  Nausea wells up inside me as I remember Geoffrey lying there, blood pooling underneath his head. I’d put my hand on his neck to check for a pulse and I’d been so traumatized that was the only memory I’d retained, it was all I could see. No wonder I was sure that I’d killed him.

  ‘It was perfect,’ he says, still stroking my face. ‘That old bastard was dead and you, my lovely Iris, had finally come home.’

  Then his face hardens and he moves his hand to my throat, gripping it tightly.

  ‘But then you ruined it all by running away,’ he whispers.

  ‘What?’ I gurgle, my throat closing under his grip.

  ‘I came down the stairs and saw you,’ he says, his mouth just inches from mine. ‘You looked like an angel crouched there in your beautiful pink dress. He was lying at your feet. God, Iris, it was perfect, like a scene from a painting. I tapped your shoulder and you turned and screamed. I tried to talk to you, tried to tell you that everything was okay, that we could be together, but you wouldn’t listen.’

  He presses tighter and as I struggle to breathe I’m transported back to that day. I remember now. I heard footsteps on the stairs then a hand on my shoulder. I’d tried to block it out, to erase the image from my mind: the man with the piercing blue eyes who had appeared from nowhere, like a monster in a dream.

  ‘You ran away,’ he hisses. ‘When all I wanted to do was talk to you. I thought you were different, Iris, I thought you cared.’

  37. Now

  His face crumples and his grip on my throat loosens. Seizing the opportunity, I push him in the chest, fumble with the door and run out of the room.