Free A Perfect Life by Raffaella Barker Page A

he will never know her better. The yellow cab pulls awayfrom the building and with one, smooth, easy movement Carrie is gone from his life. It’s so simple it should be patented. Nick sighs and presses the recall button on his phone; five hours and several thousand miles away the telephone rings in his house.

Angel
    A homecoming is always fraught; glancing at her watch, Angel has yet another burst of creative energy. She has been busy since early this morning, rewriting a mental list and adding to it constantly in a fevered and successful mission to have no free time to think. The truth is actually unthinkable anyway; today Nick is on his way back from New York and Angel doesn’t want him to come home. Pulling the heads from three amber-scented roses she sprinkles the petals over the table outside. Nick will be here in half an hour; his plane should have landed at breakfast time and he will be on the train. Coral and Mel have laid the table. The only way Angel can get any teenagers to do anything is to make sure there is one with no relationship to her in their midst. The presence of the outsider always shames the other progeny into most chores.
    Angel straightens one or two place settings, and begins to gather up the glasses, polishing them on her skirt, not even conscious that she is doing it.Conditioned for years now by her own pointlessly high standards, she notices cloudy dishwasher residue on the glasses and automatically begins to clean them. The shade of the pear tree and its low-embracing branches creates a domed chamber filled with dappled green light. The cloth on the table is a cool green backdrop for the mainly murky glasses, the cutlery and the soft peachiness of rose petals. Eighteen place settings stretch away. Angel cleans three glasses and stops as tears begin to drip off her nose. She digs her hands into her apron pocket and her fingers claw the seam, tearing at the fabric, scratching until the tip of her finger burns with friction and her nail goes through. Then she presses into the flesh of her leg, sniffing and blinking, trying to focus on the irritation of physical pain but preoccupied with organising. Why has she decided to ask so many people to lunch on the day of Nick’s return from a week away in New York?
    She knows the answer: it is simple, it is quicker to form than the question. She lives with the answer all the time – it never changes; she cannot bear to be alone with him. It is as if she has run out of petrol. She feels empty and worn out. And frustrated. Actually, she cannot see how she or Nick could have done more, and yet, today, the reality of daily domestic life with her husband is unbearable. It was not always like this. Other parties, other family occasions were different, and Angel is reminded of one, Coral’s birthday when she was twelve or thirteen. She leans on the wall looking over into the water meadowsbeyond. Nick built a huge bonfire, planning to roast a whole sheep on it. But the heat was so extreme that to get near it he had to wear protective clothing, and a passer by, seeing him stamping out sparks with a spade, called the Fire Brigade. This was the best thing that could have happened. The firemen helped Nick get the sheep roasted and a lot of the children thought it was meant to happen. Angel sighs. The gulf between where they were then and now is best filled by castles in the air and peopled with guests. In the ever-moving merry-go-round of family life with friends there is no time to be still, and no time to examine how far removed the reality of their life together is, from the picture they present to the world.
    A saucepan clattering from within the kitchen window reminds her that there is food to be got out of the oven, an opulent pudding to decorate and wine to open. Angel stalks back to the kitchen yelling for the children to come and help her.
    â€˜Come on. Granny will be here soon, and everyone else, and Daddy will be back in a moment and I