Perfect by Rachel Joyce Page A

it were unwell or overtired. Byron held her hand and concentrated on stepping between the cracks in the paving stones. There were so many things he wanted to ask. She moved in her lemon dress past the windows of the Conservative Party shop and her puff of hair glowed in the sunlight.
    ‘They have no idea,’ she said. She seemed to be staring ahead.
    ‘Who has no idea?’
    ‘Those women. They haven’t a clue.’
    He wasn’t sure what to do with that piece of information so he said, ‘I think I will look at my letter from the Queen when we get home.’
    His mother smiled at him as if he were clever. It felt like her hand on his. ‘That’s a fine idea, sweetheart. You’re so good at letters.’
    ‘Then I might design a new Blue Peter badge.’
    ‘I thought they already had one?’
    ‘They do. They have silver and gold too. But you have to do something like rescuing a person in distress to get the gold. Do you think that’s realistic?’
    She nodded, but as if she were no longer listening, or at least not to him. They were stopped outside the off-licence. His mother glanced over her shoulder. Tap, tap, tap went her pointed toe on the pavement.
    ‘Wait here a moment, like a good boy,’ she said. ‘I need tonic water for the weekend.’
    The weather broke that night. Byron woke when a gust of wind slammed open his window, causing his bedroom curtains to fill like sails. A fork of lightning sliced the sky and the moor flashed like a blue photograph, framed by his window. He lay very still and counted, waiting for the crackof thunder. Needles of rain began to fall. They shot through his open curtains. If he didn’t get up and close them there would be a wet patch on the carpet. He lay on top of his covers, unable to sleep and unable to move. All he could hear was the rain, the splashing of it on the roof and the trees and the terrace. He couldn’t imagine how it would ever stop.
    Byron thought of what Andrea had said about women not getting away with a crime. He didn’t know how he was going to keep his mother safe. The job seemed too big for one boy alone. Take the way she had spoken out about taking a job, and the way she had objected at the weekend when his father called the car female. It wasn’t simply what she had done in Digby Road that marked Diana apart. There was something about her, something pure and fluid that would not be contained. If she discovered what she had done, the truth would spill out. She wouldn’t be able to stop it. He pictured again those tiny jewelled drawers inside her mind and maybe it was to do with the rain, but all he could see was them brimming with water. He shouted out.
    Suddenly the silver outline of her was at his doorway, shining in the light from the hall. ‘What is it, love?’ He told her he was frightened and she rushed to close his window. She rearranged his curtains into neat blue folds.
    ‘You’re such a worrier,’ she smiled. ‘Things are never so bad as we think.’ Sitting on the edge of his bed, she stroked her fingers over his forehead. She sang a quiet song he didn’t know and he closed his eyes.
    Whatever happened, he must never tell his mother what she had done. Of all the people to know, she was surely the most dangerous. He told himself this over and over while her fingers crept through his hair and the rain pattered on the leaves and the thunder grew tame. Byron faltered towards sleep as if pulled on strings.

12
Another Accident

    F IVE DAYS AFTER Eileen’s exit from the café, Jim encounters her again. The snow has begun to thaw. During the day it slides from the trees and everywhere there is the pattering of water, the tap, tap of melting ice. As the land reappears, its muted colours – the greens, the browns, the purples – look too startling, too full of themselves. It is only up on the moor that there remains a white shawl of snow.
    Jim is leaving the car park after work. The street is dark. Commuters are going home. Lamps spill orange light