The Perfect Girl

ZOE

Grace’s bath doesn’t take long to fill up, because she doesn’t need it very deep. While it’s running, I try to persuade her to lie down so I can take off her clothes but she won’t, so I have to improvise and undress her first while she sits, and then while she stands and bangs the soap dish against my back. She’s so chubby without her clothes on, and her thighs are almost thicker than my arms.

I put her in the water and then hang on to her tightly because there’s no grippy mat in Tessa and Richard’s bath to stop her sliding around, and she’s like a slippery otter. We have a few dodgy moments when she slides under water and I have to pull her back up, though she doesn’t even notice the danger she’s having so much fun.

I work out that I have a problem when the water goes cold, and she’s splashed every bit of me and the bathroom. It’s finally time to get her out, and I need a towel to lift her, because her skin is so smooth that her body is totally slimy from the bubbly water and I’m afraid I’ll drop her without one, but I can’t see one anywhere. The towel rail is bare. I can’t let go of her and leave her unattended in the bath even for a second while I find one, because she keeps trying to stand up, and I know she would fall and hit the taps.

So I shout for help. I shout for Tessa, but it’s Lucas who comes, and I can just about reach over to the door to unlock it for him while I’m hanging on to Grace.

I hope I don’t look at him funny, though I probably do. It’s because I need to tell him I finished the script, but I’m not sure how to bring it up, and at the same time I realise I’m changing in my head some of the things I thought about him before I knew what Chris was really like.

I tell him what my problem with the towel is and he leaves the room and comes back with a bedspread.

‘I couldn’t find a towel,’ he says, and I’m thinking that my mum would never have had no towels in the bathroom, in fact I can hear the ‘tsk’ noise that she would make if she could see us now, but here we are, and I think the bedspread will do fine.

Lucas drapes it over his arms and reaches down into the bath and gets Grace.

She thinks the bedspread is amazing because it’s so big. When Lucas gently lies her down on the floor on it she plays with it, shaking the edges around and nuzzling it on to her head as if it’s catnip and she’s a kitten. We sit on either side of her and watch her; it’s almost as if we were her parents.

I get up, and I lock the door again, because I know that I have a chance to talk to Lucas right now, and my heart begins to pound when I tell him: ‘I read the script. All of it.’

He doesn’t look up at me, but I can see that his face goes sort of still. He carries on pushing the bedspread over Grace’s face and then pulling it back in a sudden movement. It makes her give a throaty giggle. He says nothing.

‘On my dad’s phone,’ I say, in case he’s wondering, and so he doesn’t think I’m making things up.

When he looks at me it’s as if a layer of secrets has been peeled away from his face, and showing in his eyes is the deepest, saddest expression I’ve ever seen.

‘I wanted to warn you,’ he says, ‘and your mum. I wanted you to know what he’s like.’

I find that I can’t reply, because I feel like my worst fears are true, but it’s OK because he keeps talking.

‘Because if my mum or me had told somebody about him, it might have stopped him, and then she might have stayed alive for longer; she wouldn’t have done what she did.’

‘Did he kill your mum?’ I hardly dare ask it but it sounds like that’s what he’s saying.

‘No. My mum killed herself, and she was dying anyway, but if her life was better, if he hadn’t ruined her life, and hurt her, she would have stayed alive for longer, she would have fought the disease better. I know she would have.’

I feel a cold shudder run over me, from the crown of my head to the very tips of my toes. It’s a ripple of revulsion and sorrow, fear and, I think, certainty.

I say, ‘Do you think your dad killed my mum?’