Free This Perfect World by Suzanne Bugler Page A

wondered when
they’d realize he was dead, and what would happen then.
    Then, when they’d stopped with the ‘Happy birthday’ and
Heddy was just about to blow out the candles, Mrs Partridge
said, ‘Hang on a minute now, don’t want Mr Partridge missing
everything.’ And she moved over to his chair, put her bony
hand on his knee and gave him a little shake. At once he
gurgled and spluttered and coughed into life, and opened his
eyes.
    I cannot tell you how much I wished I was at home. I
couldn’t eat any of that horrible cake. And when my dad
eventually picked me up to take me home, I got down their
pathway and out through their gate and burst into tears.
    ‘Why did you make me go there?’ I cried. ‘Why?’
    But my dad just got angry with me and said, ‘For God’s
sake, Laura, why can you not think about anyone but yourself?’
    And worse, much worse than all of that, was that my
parents went and invited Heddy to my birthday party, in
March. No matter how much I cried and begged them not
to, they said we had to return the invitation, we had to be
polite. And again – why couldn’t I just make an effort and
be nice to poor Heddy Partridge?

    *

    I do not want to see Heddy Partridge again, ever. Heddy
Partridge is gone, gone , like all the other mistakes made in
childhood. What point is there in going back and revisiting
nightmares? What could I ever say to her now? Oh, I’m sorry
I made your life sheer hell, and I’m sorry for any part I may
have had in your current terminal gloom, but hey, let me have
a little chat to your doctors and see if I can’t put things right.
    I do not want to go back. And I don’t want to even think
about trying to put things right.
    I moved on a long, long time ago.

    She turned up at my party wearing that same purple dress,
slightly shorter now, and tighter.
    ‘Oh, it’s you,’ I said, opening the door and taking the
present out of her hand, and then I ignored her.
    We all ignored her. We made quite a game of it.
    I opened my presents and said my thank-yous. Everyone
crowded around to see what I’d got, except for Heddy, who
stood glum-faced on her own. I opened her present last – it
was a book, I think – and let it fall discarded to the floor
with all the torn-up wrapping paper.
    My parents gave me one of those make-up stations that
opened out, all pink plastic and lit up inside, crammed with
glittery make-up pots and hair things, and a dummy’s head
with long nylon hair to practise on. I let everyone have a go,
except Heddy. And at teatime we wouldn’t let her sit down.
Whenever she went for a chair we’d all shuffle along, blocking
her way. All the way round the table she went, red-faced and
flustered, and round the table we went too, bumping along
from chair to chair, until my mum came into the dining room
and snapped, ‘Laura!’ in a shocked, angry voice. ‘What do
you think you are doing?’
    And she made Heddy sit next to me, ruining my party
entirely.
    Later, when everyone had gone, my mum told me how
disappointed she was with me. And when my dad came home
early to see me, she told him how disappointed she was, and
he got angry. Really angry. No Happy birthday, Laura, no Have you had a nice day? – oh no, nothing like that. Just
straight in there, slamming his fist down onto the kitchen
counter and raging at me.
    ‘I do not want to hear this!’ he shouted, his face gone all
tight and grey. ‘I do not want to come home from work to
find that Heddy Partridge has been a guest in my house and
that you – yes, you , Laura – have humiliated her!’
    We had this huge row. Made all the worse because I was
full of cake and sweets and lemonade and was riding too
high on the innate belief that on your birthday you matter, you’re the special girl, for the day.
    He told me I was selfish and spoiled. He told me how
ashamed he was of me.
    I stood among the debris of my party – the wrapping
paper, the crushed