Perfect by Rachel Joyce

Games in the summer; who still had a black and white set? Deirdre Watkins said that every time she bent over the new chest freezer she worried her husband would stuff her inside it. Wasn’t Andrea worried for Anthony’s safety, asked the new mother, after therecent spate of IRA bombings? Andrea said the terrorists should be strung up in her view, they were fanatics. Fortunately her husband’s area was domestic crime.
    ‘Gosh,’ said the women.
    ‘I’m afraid he even gets women in front of him. Sometimes mothers.’
    ‘Mothers?’ said Deirdre.
    Byron’s heart tossed itself upwards like a pancake and fell flat on his bowels.
    ‘They think that just because they have children they can get away with it. Anthony takes the tough line. If there is a crime, someone must pay. Even if she’s a woman. Even if she’s a mother.’
    ‘Quite right,’ said the new mother. ‘An eye for an eye.’
    ‘Sometimes they shout the most appalling abuse as they get taken down. Anthony won’t tell me the words sometimes.’
    ‘Goodness,’ carolled the women.
    Byron couldn’t look at Diana. He heard her gasping and murmuring like the other women, and the pop of her lips as they met her cup, the chink of her pink fingernails against the china and the small wet click of air as she swallowed her drink. Her innocence was clear, so palpable he felt he could touch it and yet, without even knowing, she had been guilty for nine days. The pity of it was cruel beyond words.
    ‘This is the price of feminism,’ said Andrea. ‘The country’s going to the dogs.’
    ‘Yes, yes,’ murmured the women, dipping their mouths like little beaks towards their coffees.
    Byron whispered to Diana that he would like to go but she shook her head. Her face was a sheet of glass.
    Andrea said, ‘This is what happens when women go to work. We can’t be men. We are females. We have to behave like females.’ She gave extrastress to the ‘fe’ so that this part of the word shot out of the sentence, sounding long and important. ‘The first duty of a married woman is to have babies. We shouldn’t ask for more.’
    ‘Yes, yes,’ said the women.
    Plonk plonk went two more sugar cubes into Deirdre’s tea.
    ‘Why not?’ asked a small voice.
    ‘I beg your pardon?’ Andrea’s coffee cup froze to her mouth.
    ‘Why can’t we ask for more?’ said the small voice again.
    Fifteen faces shot in Byron’s direction. He shook his head, signifying he meant no harm when, to his horror, he realized that the small voice was his mother’s. She had tucked her hair behind her ears and sat tall, the way she did in the driving seat to show his father she was concentrating.
    She said, ‘I don’t want to spend my whole life at home. I want to see things. When the children are older, I might take another job.’
    ‘You mean you had one before?’ repeated Andrea.
    His mother bowed her head. ‘It might be interesting. That’s all I meant.’
    What was she doing? Byron mopped the sweat from his upper lip and sank into his chair. More than anything, he wanted her to be like the others. But here she was, talking about being different, when already she was marked apart in ways she couldn’t imagine. He wanted to get up, flap his arms, yell at her, just to cause a distraction.
    Meanwhile Deirdre asked again for the sugar. The new mother held up her hands as it passed. Several women became very busy with loose strands of cotton in their sleeves.
    ‘Oh, interesting ,’ laughed Andrea.
    They drifted along the High Street in silence, Byron and his mother. The sun was a blinding hole and a buzzard hung above the moor, waiting to swoop. The air was so stale and close it was like a fist pressing into the land. Even when a cloud popped up, the sky seemed to drink themoisture before the cloud could spill it. Byron wondered how much longer such heat could last.
    After what his mother had said in the teashop about taking a job, conversation between the women had faltered, as if