The Perfect Girl

TESSA

It’s Tom Barlow at the door. I hang back in the hallway, by the door of the coat cupboard, and watch Chris greet him cautiously.

Tom Barlow is highly agitated, just as he was in the church; face and neck red, emotions burning him up with the intensity of a forest fire. Chris stands in the doorway, blocking it mostly, and gently tells Tom Barlow to calm down and that he’s certainly made a mistake, and come to the wrong house. Chris’s voice is calm and measured; he’s very much in control.

I stay in the shadows, watching, and I sense Maria upstairs, trying to listen as she soothes the baby. I’m pressed up against Chris’s fishing rods and his winter work coats: great swathes of cashmere, smelling faintly in the heat despite being wrapped in dry cleaner’s plastic.

Chris remains patient even when Tom Barlow refuses to listen to what he’s being told. Chris doesn’t invite him inside, but asks him if he’d like to take a seat on a bench that is just beside the ornate front porch, overlooking the driveway.

‘Perhaps,’ Chris says to Tom Barlow in a tone that’s calm but which I think could be dangerously patronising, ‘I could fetch you a glass of iced water?’

Tom Barlow is having none of it.

‘She needs to answer for what she did,’ he shouts at Chris, and then, just like in the church, his phrases seem to circulate on a loop as if the energy that’s driving him to these desperate acts is taking so much out of him that he can do nothing more. He repeats it. ‘She needs to answer,’ he says, ‘she needs to answer for what she took from me.’

‘Who?’ says Chris. ‘To whom are you referring?’

And Mr Barlow rocks backward and forward on his feet, disbelief etched more deeply on his face every time I can catch a glimpse of him. He practically spits out his reply. He says, ‘Zoe Guerin, I’m referring to Zoe Guerin. Who the hell else would I be referring to?’

These two sentences seem to paralyse the air around Chris and Mr Barlow, and the two men remain standing face to face, speaking not at all. I imagine that Mr Barlow is watching a variety of emotions, and, most importantly, realisations work across Chris’s face, because right at this moment Chris must be coming to the conclusion that Mr Barlow has indeed come to the right house and that Maria has lied to him.

From upstairs there’s absolute silence. Maria has stopped shushing the baby, and I wonder if she’s heard what I’ve heard because if she has, then she’ll know that the game is up.

When Chris moves again his actions are swift. With both of his hands, he shoves Tom Barlow backwards violently and, as Tom Barlow staggers across the gravel, stones crunching, Chris says, ‘How dare you?’

I emerge from my nook then. I run down the hall towards them, and I step out on the front drive.

‘Hey,’ I say, as gently as possible. Tom Barlow has recovered physically and is standing and staring at Chris with intense hatred and not a little disbelief. I put a hand on Chris’s arm.

‘Hey,’ I say, ‘Chris, stop, it’s OK.’

Chris’s jaw is clenched and rigid and his arm is solid with poised muscle. Tom Barlow is breathing through his nose, nostrils flaring and jaw set, squaring up to this threat of violence, this added outrage, and he looks as if he might charge Chris. It’s scary, primitive stuff, dogs with hackles up; a hair’s breadth away from turning into a nasty fight. I step right between them, my back to Chris, and I say to Tom Barlow, ‘Would you like to talk?’

His eyes flick across my face and I think he recognises me.

Behind me, I feel Chris move forward and I put my arm out behind my back until my fingers make contact with him, telling him that I want him to stay there. ‘Talk to me?’ I say again to Tom Barlow, and I keep my voice soft.

For a moment longer he glares over my shoulder, chest heaving, unable to take his outraged eyes off Chris, but then a sort of collapse takes place within his eyes. Tears well, huge droplets that flatten on his cheeks, smearing them. ‘Come with me,’ I say, ‘we’ll talk about it.’

I take his arm, slowly, because dogs can still bite even after their hackles have gone down. I look at Chris. ‘Go inside,’ I say and I’m shocked at the anger that’s on his face, but my priority is to move Tom Barlow away, to prevent him from confronting Maria or Zoe, and from making things any worse than they are already.

Chris doesn’t move.

‘Go. Inside,’ I repeat.

He takes one small step backwards, his gaze still locked on Tom Barlow, and he says, ‘I will phone the police if I see you on my property again.’ Even then Chris doesn’t go in. He stands, long arms by his sides, in the middle of the elegant circle of gravel that shapes his driveway and he’s framed by flowerbeds full of manicured topiary and shrubbery, beneath which the shady undergrowth hisses with a discreet watering system to ensure that nothing dries out.

Above him, in an upstairs window I see Maria, with Grace in her arms. She’s holding the blackout blind aside, and gazing down at us, but then, as her husband finally turns and enters the house, she drops the blind and is invisible to me again.