Perfections Read Free

You’ve always been so fucking resentful.
    Maybe just a little. All those long nights waiting tables, her feet red and aching from hours spent in heels too cheap for the wear she puts them through, because the bills had to be paid somehow. By someone. Paul at home with his laptop, expensive cigarettes and fresh-ground coffee from the boutique café around the corner – necessary evils, Ant, can’t think without them – with the odd payment that came in for reviews or articles slipping straight back out again. A new CD, a couple of books, the leather coat he refused to return.
    So, yes, maybe a little resentful.
    But what of it? She isn’t a saint, and martyrdom was never part of their deal. Isn’t it enough that she put her whole bloody life on hold for him, that it was her dumb idea in the first place? Such naive, besotted notions of self-sacrifice; everyone tried to tell her so. Even Paul gave her a chance to back out.
    You sure about this, Ant? It might take me a year or two.
    But she never doubted his talent. Not from the very first time she heard him read – a spoken word night in the little Belgrave café where she worked at the time – his story a kind of urban fairytale, reworked and jagged, catching right at her core. She put down her pad and clapped along with everyone else at the end, but hers were the eyes he looked into, hers the smile he mirrored. And when her shift was over, he was waiting by the bar, all soft hands and eyeliner, wanting to buy her a drink.
    Falling in love was that easy.
    And it made everything else seem easy as well. In less than two months – dizzying, heart-in-mouth months – she had moved in with Paul, counting the sudden departure of his flatmate as a portent, despite the furious protests of her mother. Because she loved him. And it was because she loved him, because she couldn’t bear to see him slumped over his laptop each night, exhausted and demoralised after selling mobile phones to idiots all day, that she offered.
    Quit your stupid job. Concentrate on your book.
    Because she loved him. Because she believed in him. Never doubting that his novel-in-progress would be magnificent, a masterpiece, if only he was given the time and space to finish it. Not a single doubt. Not once. Not ever.
    Until three months ago, when she snuck her first peek at his manuscript.
    If only she hadn’t. If only–
    Antoinette clenches her jaw. Enough. It’s over, they are over. Four years shredded to ruin overnight, and why can’t she hate him for it? Even the tiniest spark of loathing would do.
    ‘I hate him,’ she whispers. ‘I hate you, Paul.’
    The words even taste empty.
    ‘Oh, for godsake.’ Do something, girlie-girl, do anything. Antoinette tugs her mobile from her jeans pocket and calls her home number, her old home number. The sound of ringing is distant in her ear and she taps the steering wheel, come on, come on, pick up the bloody phone.
    ‘Hey.’
    ‘Paul, it’s–’
    ‘This is Paul, leave a message or whatever and I’ll call you when I can.’
    A pause, then that familiar mechanised beep which throws Antoinette so completely off kilter that she can’t speak, can only gasp mutely into the handset for what seems like minutes until finally, finally , her tongue finds the words.
    ‘Paul, um, hi. It’s me, it’s Ant. Look I . . . I’m going to come over, okay? I need to pick up some more stuff, so if you’re there, um, if you get this before . . . look, I’m coming over. Do what you want.’
    Blood rushes to her cheeks as she flips the phone shut.
    He changed the message. Paul, who will wade waist-high through rubbish rather than empty the garbage bin, who will happily wear the same rancid boxer shorts for a week if the alternative means putting on a washload, who constantly litters the place with half-read books because he can’t be bothered returning them to the shelves. This very same Paul has gone to the trouble of recording a brand new message onto their