The Perfect Mother Read Online Free Page B

the heart of me, a seriousness; today I will be able to work well.
    I pick up a piece of bark, and see, in the thin golden light, that its soft dull brownness is made of many colours. I take out the pastel crayons and start to draw, using the blues and reds I see there, melding them together. I love this—how you can look intently at the quiet surfaces of things, and see such vividness.
    There’s a part of my mind that is focused, intent, and part that is floating free. Images drift through my mind, faces: Sinead in her new Christmas make-up, pretty and troubled; Richard, thin-lipped, annoyed with me and with Daisy. They’ll be at the pantomime by now. Snow White will be a soap star in a blonde extravagant wig, and the Queen perhaps a man in taffeta and corsets, playing it for laughs. Yet she can be so scary, this Queen, like in the Disney film Snow White I saw when I was a child; I remember her shadow, sharp as though cut with a blade, looming and filling the screen. And I see Nicky at the carol-singing, her eager face and her dancing reindeer earrings; and thinking of Nicky I think, too, of Fergal O’Connor. And as I think of him, immediately I’m touching him, putting out my hands and moving them over his face, his head, feeling the precise texture of his skin. He is quite still, watching me. I feel the warmth ofhim through the palms of my hands. This shocks me, the precision of this picture—when I wasn’t sure I even liked him.
    I draw on, in the suspended stillness. The drawing takes shape, but I don’t know yet if it pleases me. For the moment, I’m not judging it or wondering whether it’s any good or whether people will like it, just moving my hand on the page. There’s a compulsion to it, as though I don’t have a choice. Soon the light will dim; already pools of shadow are collecting in the corners. I draw quickly, with rapid little strokes in many colours, wanting to get it finished before it’s dark.
    When the doorbell rings, I jump, I’m so lost in my own world, and the crayon makes a random jagged mark across the page. My first impulse is not to go, it’s such a long way down. But then it rings again, and I worry that Daisy will wake, requiring drinks and comfort, so I run down the two flights of stairs, through the gathering dark of the house.
    It’s Monica, our neighbour.
    ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ she says.
    She’s wearing a tracksuit and running shoes: she’s off for a jog in the park. Her two red setters are with her, milling around at the foot of the steps. She’s bright-eyed and virtuous, and the cold has already brought a flush to her cheeks.
    ‘That’s OK,’ I tell her. ‘I was up in the attic.’
    While I’ve been drawing the world has changed. There are sounds of water and a wet smell, and our breathsmokes white in the raw air. As we stand at the door there’s a noise from the roof like tearing cloth, and a lump of snow slides off and spatters on the gravel.
    ‘Nice Christmas?’
    ‘Great, thanks,’ I say routinely.
    Her hair is very short and in the dim light she has an androgynous, classical look: Diana hunting with her dogs, perhaps, or some figure from a Greek frieze that I saw once with Richard in Athens, a taut young runner bringing news of slaughters and defeats.
    ‘These came for you while we were away,’ she says.
    She thrusts two envelopes at me. I glance down at them: one is for Daisy, with a local postmark, probably a school friend, a child who was away at the end of term and missed the school postbox; the other comes from abroad and I recognise the writing. I have to control an urge to thrust this letter straight back at her.
    She watches me. Perhaps she sees some trouble in my face, that she misreads as criticism.
    ‘We’ve been away,’ she says again, a bit apologetic. ‘Or I’d have brought them round earlier.’
    ‘No, no. It’s fine. They’re just Christmas cards anyway.’
    ‘It wasn’t our usual postman,’ she says.
    She’s moving from