Free Perfect Daughter by Amanda Prowse Page B

to do to look better is remove my glasses and I’m back to fuzzy perfection!’
    ‘You’re mad, you are.’ He leant over and kissed her head before straightening quickly. ‘Ooh, my bloody back! I’ll tell you what, I’m getting a bit old for this landscaping lark. I try to keep up with the young lads on the site, but I get slower every year.’
    ‘Blimey, you’re only thirty-six, you’re in your prime!’ She laughed.
    ‘Yep, that’s what they tell me. Just wish someone would tell my back.’ He paused. ‘I am going to have a think about things though, Jacks, going to look at our options.’
    ‘What’s the plan, Pete? What can we do?’ She swallowed.
    He shook his head. ‘Don’t know yet. Something’ll come up. You’ll see. Things have a funny way of working out.’
    She nodded sadly. He’d been saying that since they were in their teens.
    Jacks placed her head on the pillow and closed her eyes. She thought about how she lay next to her man night after night largely without feeling the slightest flicker of desire. She liked him, loved him of course, but it was as if they had turned a corner, waved goodbye to that aspect of life, become so comfortable in their routine that anything spontaneous, sex included, didn’t even figure. She occasionally considered how she might initiate it, assuming she could summon the energy, and couldn’t. If anything, she was embarrassed to touch him sexually, it had been so long. It saddened her. An image of Sven filled her head. She wondered whether, if it were him she lay next to every night, she would have been happy to wave goodbye to her libido without putting up a fight. She squashed the thought instantly.
    ‘I love you, Pete.’ She did that regularly – uttered this cure-all to dampen disloyal thoughts.
    ‘I know.’ He patted her hip under the covers.
    Jacks sighed and felt her shoulders sink into the mattress. She was tired. Her eyelids fell in slow blinks that lasted longer and longer until finally they closed. One, two, three seconds later, her breath was even, her mouth slightly open. And then the bell rang from across the hall, rousing her from sleep and pulling her from the warm dip in the mattress where she yearned to stay.
    Jacks fumbled with her dressing gown. ‘Coming, Mum,’ she said, trying to get the volume right, loud enough to reassure her mum but not so loud as to wake the kids. Her fist hit a wall of fabric as her arm struggled to find the armhole on the dark landing.
    She creaked open her mum’s bedroom door. The nightlight picked out her silhouette against the headboard.
    ‘You’d better put the shower on!’ Ida spoke firmly, lucidly issuing her instruction.
    Jacks approached the bed and her nose wrinkled. Pulling the bedspread down, she blinked away the tears. ‘Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.’ She eased her mum into a sitting position.
    ‘Mu-um? Can you get me a drink of water?’ Jonty’s voice growled in the darkness.
    ‘Yes, love. One second!’ she called over her shoulder.
    Without warning, the sob built in her chest and her tears came in a torrent. Come on, Jacks, you’re just tired. Just tired. It’ll be okay. Pete’s right, things have a funny way of working out.

8
    Nineteen Years Earlier
    Sven marched ahead as they tramped across the playing field, tripping in the dips and stumbling over the uneven tufts. Their clumsiness, along with their nerves, made them laugh. Jacks tried to ignore the tremble in her limbs as Sven quickened his pace heading into the encroaching darkness. She didn’t dare look at the large trees that edged the field. At that time of night they conjured a myriad of shapes, all sinister. The wet grass soaked through the gaps in her school shoes and drenched her white over-the-knee socks.
    ‘This is it,’ he announced matter-of-factly, as though there were something scientific to his decision. He stopped in the middle of the field and placed his hands on his hips, then promptly lay down on the