The Perfect Mother Read Online Free

were really looking forward to it.’
    ‘So was she. I mean, she’s not doing this deliberately.’
    He sits up, sprawls back on the pillow and yawns, disordered by sleep, his face lined by the creases in the pillowslip. He looks older first thing in the morning, and away from the neat symmetries of his work clothes.
    ‘Give her some Calpol,’ he says. ‘She’ll probably be fine.’
    ‘She feels too sick,’ I tell him.
    ‘You’re so soft with those children.’ There’s an edge of irritation to his voice.
    I feel I should at least try. I get the Calpol from the bathroom cabinet, take it to her room and pour it into the spoon, making a little comedy act of it. Normally she likes to see this, the sticky recalcitrant liquid that won’t go where you want it to, that glops and lurches away from you. Now she watches me with a slightly desperate look.
    ‘I can’t, Mum. I feel too sick.’
    I take the spoon to the bathroom and tip it down the sink.
    Richard has heard it all.
    ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, let me do it,’ he says.
    He gets up, pulls on his dressing gown, goes to get the Calpol. But when he sees her pallor, he softens a little.
    ‘Dad, I’m not going to,’ she says. ‘Please don’t make me.’
    He ruffles her hair. ‘Just try for me, OK, munchkin?’
    I watch from the door as she parts her lips a little. She’s more willing to try for him; she’s always so hungry to please him. He eases the spoon into her mouth. She half swallows the liquid, then noisily retches it up.
    He steps smartly back.
    ‘Sorry, sweetheart. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.’
    He wipes her mouth and kisses the top of her head, penitent. He follows me back to the bathroom.
    ‘OK,’ he says. ‘You stay. It’s a damn shame, though,when they’ve paid for the tickets and everything. Especially when Mother hasn’t been well.’
    I think of them: Adrian, his affable father; and Gina, his mother, who favours a country casual look, although they live in chic urbanity in Putney, who reads horticultural magazines and cultivates an esoteric window box, who reminisces at some length about her job as an orthodontist’s receptionist. There’s something about Gina I find difficult: I feel colourless, passive, beside her. It’s not anything she says; she’s always nice to me, says, ‘You and Richard are so good together.’ Sometimes I feel there’s a subtext that I’m so much more satisfactory than Sara, Richard’s highly assertive first wife. But it’s almost as though it’s hard to breathe around her, as if she uses up all the air.
    ‘Daisy can write them a letter when she’s well,’ I say.
    ‘It’s not the same,’ he says, frowning.
    Richard’s intense involvement with his parents fascinates me. I know that’s how it must be for most people, to have your parents there and on your side, to worry about them and care what they think about you; yet to me this is another country.
    Sinead comes down when I’m making breakfast, still in her dressing gown but fully made-up, with her iPod. She takes one earpiece out to talk to me.
    ‘Cat, I really need your opinion. D’you think I look like a transvestite?’
    ‘You look gorgeous.’ I put an arm around her.
    It’s part of my role with her, to be a big sister, a confidante, to be soft when Richard is stern.
    ‘Are you sure my mascara looks all right?’ she says. ‘I’m worried my left eyelashes look curlier than my right ones.’
    ‘You’re a total babe. Look, I’ve made you some toast.’
    ‘How is she?’ she says then.
    ‘I don’t think she can come.’
    She sits heavily down at the table, a frown like Richard’s stitched into her forehead.
    ‘Do I have to go, then?’ she says.
    She’s cross. She’s too old to go to the pantomime without her little sister. Daisy was the heart of today’s outing, its reason and justification: without her it doesn’t make sense.
    I put my arm round her. ‘Just do it, my love. To please Granny and