The Perfect Girl

ZOE

Outside, the surface of the pool has gone crazy rough with the rain that’s coming down. Under the table there’s a fox gulping down bruschetta that he must have pulled off the table. He runs away when he sees me. First thing I do is pull the big doors to the kitchen closed because the rain has come into the room and run all over the stone floor and it’s slippery as hell. I grab as much as I can from the table and bring it inside, tripping through the rain and getting soaked.

Lucas is standing in the doorway to the kitchen when I turn to make a second run into the house, and now the rain’s falling hard enough that it pings off the plates and back up into my face. I’m not unaware that this could be a romantic moment, that it could be the point where the soaking wet heroine is caught and embraced by the hero. But that doesn’t happen.

‘We mustn’t leave them alone,’ Lucas says.

‘Can you help me?’

‘Come back in.’

‘I said I would clear up.’

I want to do just this one thing right tonight. I’m going to make the kitchen sparkle for my mum, and then, I’ve already thought of it, I’m going to go and lie with Grace again so that Mum isn’t disturbed in the night.

‘Why aren’t you listening to me?’

‘Because you looked deranged,’ I say, though that’s not precisely true.

I put the plates down by the sink, and I’m hoping Lucas might help me but he just stands there.

‘How did you know? About me?’ I ask.

‘I played piano at a competition in Truro once,’ he said. ‘You were there. You beat me. I remembered you.’ A crooked smile.

‘When?’ I try to remember because there’s a competition in Truro that I entered most years throughout my childhood, but I have no memory of Lucas.

‘It was years ago. You beat me so I remembered your name and I thought I recognised you. I got the rest off the internet.’

‘But my name wasn’t allowed to be reported.’

‘You can piece it together if you look hard enough.’

It makes sense that he remembers me from piano. Except for the children we saw year after year at competitions, I only ever remember the kids who beat me, which is probably why he recalls me, but not the other way around.

‘But Chris?’ I ask.

‘I was just with my mum at the time. We were spending a week on holiday, and it was bad weather so we entered the competition on a whim, for extra performance practice.’

‘Oh.’ I let that hang there because I don’t know what to say because Lucas never talks about his mum. Then I think of something.

‘How did you know about panop?’ I ask.

‘I saw you had it on your phone. It wasn’t difficult to find your account.’

He must have had a look on my phone one day. I’m always leaving it on the piano by mistake, where it’s hard to spot against the black shiny wood. He could easily have seen me put in my passcode too.

‘It’s what they used to send me messages on,’ I tell him. ‘The people at my old school. They bullied me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I only wanted to get your attention. I thought if you knew I’d kept your secret you’d believe in me.’

‘Did you read the old messages that people sent me?’

‘No. I couldn’t do that.’

I’m grateful for that.

‘Believe in you about what?’ I ask, because that was a strange thing to say.

‘The script.’

‘You didn’t need to do that. I would have read the script anyway.’

I feel like he’s being really weird and kind of selfish about the script with everything else that’s happening.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, but he sounds a bit impatient when he says it and that annoys me too because the messages he sent really scared me. ‘Come in. Let’s go upstairs.’ He catches my arm, and I try to shake his hand off but his grip is quite tight.

‘You go. I’ll come when I’ve finished.’

‘Zoe!’

‘What? I want to do this for my mum!’

He looks like he wants to reply to that, but what he wants to say is too difficult, so instead he drops my arm, although his fingers have pressed into it by now, and it hurts.

‘Fine,’ he says, and he goes upstairs.

By the time I’ve finished clearing up, all is quiet and the lights are off everywhere in the house. As I pass Chris’s study I can see the steady green light of Grace’s intercom, and I realise that they’ve forgotten to take it up with them, which means there’s all the more reason for me to sleep with Grace.

Upstairs, the lights are also off in all the bedrooms and in the hall and landing, and I hear nothing. If the butterfly is still there, it’s gone quiet. Only the rain is loud, still hissing and spattering on the glass skylight at the top of the stairwell.

Downstairs, I’ve laid out all the breakfast things and made everything perfect. I’ve put my mum’s favourite cup out and a tea bag of Earl Grey tea neatly beside it with a spoon. I’ve put a mug for Chris beside it with a tea bag of English Breakfast, because that’s what he likes.

In my bedroom I change out of my wet dress and put on a T-shirt and pyjama shorts. I dry my hair with a towel. I take my iPod from my bedside table. One rule in this house is that Lucas and I must listen to recordings of the repertoire that we’re playing before we sleep. It helps us to remember the pieces, imprints the detail of them on our minds.

I creep into Grace’s room. She’s lying in her cot, on her back, head to one side. Her little fists are loosely clenched. She’s got one of them in her mouth, and the other is just touching the mad soft hair on the back of her head. It’s how she always sleeps. She’s very quiet and I know I shouldn’t but I pick her up and bring her into the bed with me. I place her between me and wall, so she won’t fall out. She doesn’t stir at all and I inhale the smell of her.

Carefully, I put my headphones in, and start the music playing on my iPod. Chopin. A nocturne.

As the music swells, I think about my baby sister beside me and think that if there’s one way that I can pay back the world for what I’ve done, it’s to take care of her as much as I can, to make sure that she doesn’t make the mistakes that I did, to help her not to hurt people. It’s a vow that I made when I first met her in the hospital, and it’s a vow I repeat to myself all the time.

I settle down and cover myself in just a sheet because it’s still really warm in her room, and right before I fall heavily asleep, with the Chopin relaxing me through my headphones, I notice on the clock beside the bed that it’s a few minutes after midnight, which means it’s Monday now, not Sunday any more, and I hope that Monday might be better.