Free Perfect by Rachel Joyce

dance or dating a new boyfriend. He wished he knew about those things. But he could learn. Now that he was better, he could do those things. Fishing and dating and going to a dance. It was not too late. He was starting again.
    At the window the light had begun to fade. The thin showing of snow on the moor glowed a fragile pewter. When the nurse reappeared, she almost jumped. ‘Are you still here?’ she said. ‘I thought you’d gone ages ago.’ She asked if he was cold and he was, the room was ice, but he reassured her he was comfortable. ‘Let me at least make you that cup of tea,’ she said. ‘I’m sure they’ll be here for you any minute.’
    While she sang in the kitchen, the truth dawned on him. No one was coming. Of course they weren’t. No one was going to teach him about fishing or inviting a girl to a dance. He didn’t know if it was the room that made him tremble or the new knowledge in his head. He got up and slipped out of the front door. He didn’t want to insult the nurse with his sudden disappearance so he left the coat, neatly folded, in the chair, to show the cup of tea was not for nothing. He kept expecting someone to run out, to take his arm and steer him back inside, but no one did. He walked the length of the drive and since the gates were locked and he didn’t want to trouble the nurse again, he found his way over the wall. After that he walked towards the moor because he had no idea where else to go. He spent days up there, and he didn’t know what he felt, only that he was wrong, a misfit, he was not cured, he was full of blame, he was not like everyone else, until the police found him in his underpants and drove him straight back to Besley Hill.
    ‘You like those hills,’ says his right ear.
    Turning swiftly, Jim finds Eileen behind him. He jumps as if she is contagious. Her orange hat is perched at such a precarious angle to her head it looks on the verge of flying off. She holds a ham sandwich on a plate.
    Eileen gives a big frank smile that lifts her whole face. ‘I didn’t mean to shock you,’ she says. ‘It’s an effect I have. Even when I think I’m being not shocking, I still shock people.’ She laughs.
    After his previous experience with the smiling, Jim would like to try something different. Maybe he should laugh although he doesn’t want to suggest he’s mocking Eileen or that he agrees she’s shocking. He wants to laugh in the way that she does: a throaty, generous roar. He makes a smile shape and then does a noise.
    ‘Do you need a glass of water?’ she says.
    He tries a bigger laugh. It actually twists his tonsils. This one sounds even worse. He stops laughing and looks at his feet.
    ‘The girls tell me you’re a gardener,’ she says.
    A gardener. No one has ever called him that before. They have called him other things. Frog mouth, loony, weirdo, spaz; but never this. He feels a rush of pleasure but it might be a mistake to do the laugh again so he attempts instead to appear casual. He tries digging his hands in his trouser pockets in an easy-going sort of manner only his apron is in the way and his hands get stuck.
    She says, ‘Someone gave me a bonsai tree once. Biggest mistake of my life, accepting that gift. And the thing is, I really wanted to look after it. I read the leaflet. I put it in the right spot by the window. I watered it with this thimble. I even bought a pair of mini clippers. And then, guess what? The fucker withered up and died on me. I came down one morning and it had dropped its piddly leaves all over the floor. It was actually hanging sideways.’ She gives an impression of a tiny dead tree. He wants to laugh.
    ‘Maybe you watered it too much?’
    ‘I cared for it too much. That was the problem.’
    Jim is not quite sure what to do with her story about the bonsai tree. He nods, as if he is caught up with thinking about something else. He yanks his hands free of his pockets.
    ‘You have nice fingers,’ says Eileen. ‘Artist’s