The Perfect Girl

TESSA

I park on the street outside Chris and Maria’s house. There are so many beautifully manicured shrubs in their driveway that I always avoid parking on it because I’m afraid my VW bus will cause them fatal damage if I have to perform any sort of reversing manoeuvre when it’s time to leave. There are also two stone pillars to avoid, which grandly frame the entrance to the drive, chipped and old in golden stone, and I don’t want to be the one to topple them.

The gravel crunches as we walk across it, three abreast, and Maria opens the door as we get there. She shares Zoe’s ice-maiden looks only her hair’s much shorter than Zoe’s, cropped into a bob. Considering everything, she looks reasonably composed.

She focuses her attention on Chris, stepping towards him in a light movement.

‘Hello, darling,’ she says and she places the palm of her hand on one of his cheeks and plants a kiss on the other, which he offers with a practised motion, though it looks, tonight, as if it might need a little oiling. Maria and Chris are always dancing around each other like this, their actions reminding me of choreographed mime. They’re somehow able to fit an appropriately socially smooth movement to almost any situation. If I tried to kiss Richard like that one of us would somehow be in the wrong place and there would be an awkwardness of some description. Sam might be a different matter, though I can’t know that because our relationship has never been for public consumption; we’ve never had to present a face to the world because anything to do with us is an entirely secret, private thing.

I wouldn’t have got out of my car at all, except that I thought Maria might need some solidarity tonight. Normally, I would have just dropped the boys off and legged it.

Chris says nothing, once he’s taken receipt of his kiss, but he looks at her carefully.

‘How was the concert?’ she asks, as if nothing untoward had happened at all.

Chris looks at Lucas who clearly has to scrabble around mentally for an answer, because his mind is elsewhere.

‘Fine,’ is all he comes up with.

‘Bit of work needed on the Scarlatti, I think, but otherwise not too bad,’ says Chris, and Maria says, ‘Well, I’m sure you did brilliantly,’ and when she turns to go into the house Chris steps forward quickly and follows her with his hand on her lower back, as if guiding her in.

Lucas gives me a ‘ladies first’ gesture, but I hate that kind of formality. Instead, I link my arm in his and I say, ‘Help an old lady in would you?’ and he doesn’t smile but nor does he protest, and I hope he doesn’t notice the deep breath I’m taking as we cross the threshold and the heavily glossed door clicks shut behind us.

Ahead of us, Chris is saying to Maria, ‘Darling, could we have a quick word?’ but she’s ready for that.

‘Can it wait?’ she says. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got to see to the bruschetta.’