Nobody's Perfect Read online

  For Auntie Susan

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Stephanie Butland

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Early September

  T

  ODAY IS AN IMPORTANT day for Kate and Daisy. If Kate doesn’t get this right, the consequences are huge. If Kate doesn’t make sure that her daughter’s teacher understands precisely what Daisy needs, then her life will be at risk.

  The man who is to be Daisy’s teacher walks down the school corridor towards Kate. Her stomach tightens; her heartbeat flits up by the tiniest of wingbeats. This meeting is critical for Daisy, Kate reminds herself, no wonder she’s uncomfortable. That, and the tiredness, and the late summer heat.

  Kate breathes deep, but that only makes her agitation worse, because every time she takes a deliberate breath like this, pushing air into every last bronchiole, it’s a physical reminder of all the capacity that she has, and Daisy lacks. And that makes Kate think of the responsibility she has – so much more than a parent of a well child. (Though heaven help anyone who says, in Kate’s presence, that Daisy is unwell.) So much more weight on her shoulders, too, because she has no one to parent with.

  ‘Hello. You must be Ms Micklethwaite, and Daisy?’ When Kate untwines her fingers from Daisy’s in order to shake the proffered hand, she feels how her own hand is clammy; when Daisy’s teacher smiles, she knows her own smile to be too wide, too long, in response. Only then does she recognise that, however stressful this might be, there’s something else going on. It’s a long time since she felt this particular hum of nerves and adrenaline. She had forgotten what attraction is. She wills her body to forget again.

  ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.’ His smile is straight, but his eye-teeth are crooked. His eyes are a steady, dark brown, set deep, his matching brown hair short and neat. He is shaved so smooth that Kate imagines his skin cool to her fingertips, like the pear she took out of the fridge this morning.

  ‘We were early,’ Kate says, taking back her hand, pulling herself together. ‘Please, call me Kate. As you know, Daisy is going to be in your class and there are a few things I want to discuss.’

  Mr Swanson squats to make eye contact with Daisy. His shoes, Kate notices, are polished to the bright black of a robin’s eye. Her boots are scuffed. Well, she doesn’t have time for everything.

  ‘Daisy, I’m Mr Swanson, and I’m going to be your new teacher.’

  He puts out his hand and shakes Daisy’s. Daisy nods, solemn, then examines her hand, front and back, as though this touch might have left a mark. ‘Spencer Swanson,’ he says, glancing at Kate. She savours his name, and the fact that he offered it as an equal to her own. But he misreads the look on her face, imagining a suppressed laugh, perhaps, and smiles. ‘I know, I know, I should be starring in a musical.’

  Kate laughs, too loud, and Daisy giggles at the sound. Kate tells her body not to do this. When she speaks, her voice is the steady, serious one she recognises as her own, these days, when she has no choice but to be a steady, serious adult. Though she’d rather not have to be. Or at least, not always. She imagines, briefly, how it would be if she met this man somewhere else. In a bar, late. Though Kate is lucky if she gets to a bar twice a year. ‘It’s not that,’ she says, smiling nonetheless, ‘it’s just that we parents don’t usually get to use first names.’ She remembers being introduced to the Head – ‘I’m Miss Hillier’ – and trying to remember the last time she was given no option but to use a title. She is on first-name terms with her Open University tutors; even the hospital consultants introduce themselves as Sam or Humzah or Janice, despite having worked so hard for so many years to move to Dr and back to Mr, Mrs or Ms again.

  ‘Well, I’m all modern.’ Spencer is still smiling. ‘You need to watch out for me. Shall we go along to the classroom to talk?’

  Kate assumes he’s already been briefed. This both pleases and aggravates her. She is glad, of course, that the school is taking Daisy’s needs seriously. But she wishes that she could have been the one to tell him everything. That way she’d know that he had it straight. She knows how easily the d-word – disabled – can be used when she isn’t around, because once, when she had picked Daisy up from playgroup, Daisy had asked her what it meant.

  The classroom is empty, and it feels to Kate as though it’s waiting. The walls are bare and the display boards clear, the tables too neatly organised, the books arranged by size. The parquet floor is bright and unscuffed, and the not-quite-pine smell of cleaning fluids is everywhere. At a sink in the corner stands a shortish, stoutish, fiftyish woman, washing out plastic containers and stacking them on a draining board. She looks round when the classroom door opens. She smiles politely when she sees Spencer and Kate, and her eyes brighten at the sight of Daisy.

  ‘This is Wendy Orr, who I’m pleased to say is going to be our teaching assistant in reception class this year,’ Spencer says. ‘Wendy, this is Daisy Micklethwaite, who’s joining us tomorrow, and her mother, Kate.’

  ‘We know each other.’ Kate smiles. ‘Wendy used to be my parents’ neighbour. When they first moved here, before I was born. When did we last see each other? It must have been at my mum’s wedding, I think?’

  ‘Is it that long?’ Wendy asks, shaking her head in a way that signals, ‘time flies’. ‘I suppose it must be. Tell her I’ll be in touch soon, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Spencer shakes his head. ‘Small towns,’ he says, almost to himself. Wendy dries her hands and turns to Daisy, who’s been standing at Kate’s side, quiet, throughout.

  ‘Hello, Daisy. Shall I remind you where we’re going to hang your coat when you start school tomorrow? I know you’ve been to see us already, but there’s a lot to remember.’

  Daisy nods and holds out a hand. Sometimes Kate’s heart breaks at her daughter’s easy trust in others. Just as she’s never yet known she is on the heavy end of the seesaw, she’s never had reason to distrust an adult, apart from maybe the ones who try to tell her that needles won’t hurt, or wake her to listen to her chest in the middle of the night when she is in hospital. But it is easy to see that Wendy is someone as happy in the company of children as adults, and Daisy has a fine instinct for the people who will do the same jigsaw puzzle with her over and over again, and recognises Miss Orr as one of them.

  ‘Actually,’ Kate says, ‘I wonder if you could join us? I’d really like to talk to you both.’ Wendy will share the school-day responsibility for Daisy, so she should be involved in these discussions, too. The fact that Kate can’t bear the thought of being alone with this man who is making her body both crave and panic is irrelevant. Totally irrelevant.

  ‘Shall we sit down?’ Spencer offers a too-small orange chair to her and then folds himself down onto another one with more grace than Kate can manage. Wendy joins them, sitting with ease and a smile. ‘We’re all ears,’ Spencer says.

  ‘Yes. Right.’ What Kate is here to do is just a more formal versi
on of what she does, in some small way, most days. She’s shifting the world to accommodate Daisy. She is prepared, with her own notes and leaflets from the hospital. What she wasn’t prepared for was Spencer. Well, she’s just going to have to get on with it.

  But then Kate looks at his hands, resting on the table next to a pen and notebook, and despite herself, she notices that he isn’t wearing a wedding ring. That his hands are handsome hands, his nails clean, his knuckles round. He has been watching her face, waiting; she can feel the places where his gaze rested as surely as if he’d touched her. She wiggles her toes to stop herself blushing. She’s twenty-four years old, not thirteen. She’s a mother.

  Kate launches herself into the familiar. ‘Please don’t think of cystic fibrosis as a disability. It’s a condition that means that Daisy’s pancreas doesn’t function properly, and her lungs produce mucus that is especially thick.’ On cue, Daisy coughs, a throaty, full sound that Kate’s mother calls her pit-pony cough. The three adults turn to look at Daisy. The cough hasn’t even interrupted her drawing. ‘The coughing,’ Kate says, ‘is a fact of life.’ Spencer and Wendy smile at her. Please, she thinks, don’t anyone say that I’m brave or Daisy’s brave. Please don’t either of you put your heads on one side.

  But Spencer keeps smiling and says, ‘That’s a cough that belongs in a working men’s club, not a reception class.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Kate feels that too-wide smile again. Tells her body to stop. Again.

  Daisy starts to cough again, and this time, she gets up and comes towards Kate. ‘Do you need to spit, Daisy?’ Kate asks, and when her little girl nods, she takes her to the sink, where Daisy hacks up mucus that Kate washes away with hot water. They both wash their hands, then Daisy returns to her colouring, and Kate to her chair.

  ‘Daisy’s been taught to cough up mucus when it’s loose,’ she explains, ‘in sinks or bins or drains. That won’t be a problem?’ Kate makes it sound like a question for the sake of politeness. What’s best for Daisy has to happen.

  ‘Not at all,’ Spencer says.

  Wendy offers, ‘I’ve worked with a little boy with CF before, in another school,’ then adds, quickly, as though she might have somehow caused offence, ‘although I know that Daisy will be different. And it was a long time ago. I just meant that I’ve had some experience. Of the coughing, and the supplements, and . . .’ Her voice falters away, and she looks at Daisy and then, less sure, back to Kate, who smiles.

  ‘I’m glad to know that. Thank you for telling me.’

  ‘This is all new to me,’ Spencer says. ‘In practice, if not in theory.’ He drops his voice, raises his eyebrows, a theatrical confidence. ‘It’s six years since I qualified, which a lot of people will tell you is no time at all.’

  Kate smiles, thinking of her role as The Youngest: youngest mother at the clinic and the toddler groups, youngest student at her Open University exams. There she had sat amongst rows of people who, she imagined, were doing just what she was doing: making sure they had the learning, although life had stopped them from going to university the way that Kate’s sixth-form friends had. She had got together with the old school crowd the first Christmas after Daisy was born, encouraged by her mother to ‘go and enjoy herself’. She’d dressed up; she’d been delighted to see her old friends. But after an hour and a half of stories about the drunken stealing of traffic cones and midnight drives to Brighton beach, she’d felt lonelier than she had at any point since Daisy’s birth, less than four months before. None of her friends were interested in Daisy, not really; they said things like ‘Oh, my God, I still can’t believe you have an actual baby, Kate,’ and then asked what else she had been doing. There had been no understanding of how all-encompassing a newborn was, or acknowledgement that she was grieving for Daisy’s father still. Kate had gone home early, and has turned down invitations from everyone, except her kind, funny friend Melissa, ever since. But even Melissa drives Kate crazy, sometimes, with the way she assumes Kate is waiting for her own life to start. It’s as if she thinks keeping a tiny, vulnerable human alive and well is the time-and-energy equivalent of having a vegetable patch.

  Kate, cramped on her orange chair in the reception classroom, resolves to tell Melissa about this afternoon properly, instead of mentioning it as though it’s a haircut. She smiles at Spencer, almost meets his gaze. ‘We all have to start somewhere,’ she says.

  He nods. ‘Exactly. So please, if you wouldn’t mind, assume I know nothing, and tell me everything, from the beginning.’ Spencer moves his arm and in doing so touches the sleeve of Kate’s jacket, just above her wrist. It’s as though her arm can feel his fingertips despite the two layers of fabric between their skin. ‘I want to do a good job here. I’d appreciate your help.’

  And so Kate begins. She explains the need for Daisy to have a high-calorie diet, and that she needs to take enzymes and supplements to help her to get enough nutrition and to grow, although living next door to a bakery usually makes it easy enough to get calories into her.

  ‘What does Granny call you, Daisy?’ she asks, and Daisy, without looking up from the complex curlicues she is adding to the wings of the butterfly she is drawing, says, ‘The croissant queen!’ The three adults laugh, and Kate feels the beginnings of how she feels with the few people who already make up Daisy’s family. It isn’t just that she trusts them to take care of her, it’s that they understand that Daisy is more than the sum of a malfunctioning pancreas and gummed-up lungs and a life expectancy of forty-one. Kate has her mother, her stepfather, and her father, though he’s working away for a year. Daisy’s paternal grandmother, Patricia, died a year ago and it’s only since then that Kate realised how much she did for them – the babysitting, the old-fashioned Sunday lunches, the trips to the library with Daisy that allowed Kate to get her Open University assignments done during the day, instead of after Daisy’s bedtime. Then there’s Melissa, and she’s great, she really is, but she’s busy with her own life. The life that Kate, in her darkest moments, knows that she herself should have had. How wonderful it would be if the – well, the sheer pressure of Daisy, the weight of her, could be spread a little further, distributed in part to these two serious-looking people who are concentrating on Kate’s every word.

  As Kate talks, Wendy makes small agreeing nods and noises, and Spencer writes notes in a black A4 notebook with a silver pen, his eyes moving from the page to Kate’s face to Daisy. Daisy draws and colours and coughs, apparently oblivious as her mother talks about the absences for clinic visits and the almost-constant need for antibiotics and which tablets have to be given when.

  The conversation is exactly the one that Kate wants to have; apart from the way her mouth dries every time she is about to speak to Spencer directly, and her gaze keeps moving from her own hands to his, to the plump knot of the tie at his throat and his Adam’s apple moving up and down above it. But she does what she needs to do, because she is a mother, and a role model for her daughter, or at least that is what she intends to be, every morning, even if it doesn’t always go as well as it should. She certainly has no time for this – whatever this is that is in the air between her and Spencer. Plus, it didn’t exactly go well last time.

  As they are about to leave, Daisy solemnly presents her butterfly picture to Wendy, with the words, ‘It’s a Red Admirable.’

  ‘I can see that.’ Wendy smiles. ‘I get Red Admirals in my garden sometimes. Thank you. I’m going to take this home and put it on my wall.’ Kate has no doubt that this is exactly what will happen. And then Wendy says, ‘I didn’t show you where we’re going to hang your coat, Daisy.’ Then, looking to Kate, ‘Have we got time?’

  ‘Of course.’ And Kate is left alone with Spencer. They are both standing, in readiness for saying goodbye. Although Kate is tall, her line of sight is equal to the top of Spencer’s shoulder. The top of her head would probably sit just under his chin. She blushes at the thought, and looks at the tips of her boots, conker-brown leather and two winters old. She’s to
ssing up whether to ask Spencer about his last school, or whether he likes Throckton, when Spencer speaks. His voice has a faint Scottish accent, but there’s something else, too, a barely perceptible softness: the sound of a place where people are kind.

  ‘May I ask you one more thing?’

  ‘Of course.’ Kate’s mind flips through what she might have forgotten to mention.

  ‘Is it just you and Daisy? Or will we be seeing Daisy’s father as well?’

  ‘Daisy’s father died before she was born,’ Kate says, hearing defensiveness in her own voice. ‘As you probably know.’ His question has made her flinch. He was entitled to ask it, she will suppose, later.

  Spencer flinches, too; a visible, if tiny, twitch of the muscles round his eyes, the air sharp between them. ‘I didn’t know,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  There is a spiked pause, while Kate tries to find the ground again, and Spencer stands, unmoving, while she feels herself sway. ‘Well, if you haven’t heard the story, someone will tell you soon enough. It’s all Throckton had to talk about for a while.’ How Kate would love to lose herself, somewhere bigger than this small-minded town, somewhere where she was all new, and no one could talk about her past as though it was their own property. When she goes to stay with Melissa in London, the anonymity of it is a slightly frightening high.

  ‘I don’t listen to gossip,’ Spencer says, a little formally.

  And then Kate hears how she must have sounded: sharp, shrill, a woman defined by her past. A woman that she doesn’t want to be. She makes the effort; after all, she is going to have to talk to this man most days for the next school year. Her stomach capsizes a little as she looks up into Spencer’s face.

  ‘I don’t get asked the question very much. It threw me, a bit. Everybody round here knows that it’s just me and Daisy.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Spencer says, and his eyes are bright as he looks at her, although his smile is muted. ‘But like I said, I really don’t listen to gossip. It’s – it’s a point of honour, if you like. So if there’s anything else you want me to know, you’ll have to tell me yourself.’