Perfect Love

Extract 1:

There was no-one at Waterloo to meet Prue, not that she expected it, and the taxi queue was enormous. Nudging her case along with her foot, she took stock of the city, a station being as good a place as any to begin. As a child, Waterloo, to which she had journeyed frequently on school trains, had seemed immutable and unchanging, like the areas in her atlas stained pink which, her teacher insisted, represented decency and order.

Now the station was under wraps. Bits were falling off it and a skin of litter, leaves and dust overlaid the pavements. A couple of homeless men had set up base by the entrance. One of them had a puppy stuffed into the front of his coat, which was tied with string. The other breathed in greedy slugs from a paper bag and turned a drugged, drowning face towards passers-by who did their best to ignore him. Prue supposed he was in his twenties.

According to the taxi driver, Albert Bridge was out of commission, and life was a bloody nightmare. Prue sat in the taxi, swamped by a sea of cars. She sniffed at the benzine and exhaust, overcome by the miasma of houses and humans competing for existence in a confined area.

Colours in the city are cast in a different foundry. Leaves are heavy with yellows and ochres dripping acid tints into the greens. Dun-coloured cement pointing in brickworks is slicked by a powdering of carbon. Curved grey roof-tiles gleam in the rain; a flat counterpoint of greys sit alongside the harsh, unbeautiful read of London brick.

Prue pressed her gloved hand against the taxi window and rebellion at being there streamed through her fingertips and on to the glass. Was her protest at Violet? Or was she protesting about the fin breaking through the surface of the now calm, unstormy waters of her marriage?

A cyclist peddled alongside the taxi and flipped the wing mirror.

'Idiot,' said the driver, mildly, out of the window.

The Becketts' house was situated in a road wider than the others, in the area between Wandsworth and Clapham Common. Prue was deposited outside a late-Victorian house with good proportions and a brown front door.

Violet had been hovering and opened the door before Prue had rung. 'Hideous colour, isn't it?' she said, referring to the front door.

Prue followed her into an open, light-filled hall, littered with painting equipment. Almost at once, she sneezed. From upstairs came a clatter of boots on bare floorboards and a volley of interesting language. Violet apologized.

'I thought you said nothing needed to be done to the house.'

'Well, you know how it is,' said Violet. 'In the end, Jamie needed a dressing room and the nanny must have her own bathroom. Some of the rooms needed decorating, and the kitchen wasn't quite as I wanted it, so it's being redesigned. don't worry, they're working on the nanny bit at the moment and won't bother you.'

It is possible to know how you feel about a house when you step over the threshold, and Prue was interested in this one's incompleteness. By the time you enter them for the first time, most houses have settled.

'There's a good feel to the house,' said Prue.

'That's lucky.' Violet led the way into the kitchen. 'I'm not moving again for a long, long time.'

The kitchen was large, sunny and the floor had just been relaid with planks of sanded wood and varnished to mirror brightness. Prue negotiated a pile of builder's overalls and huge tins of varnish and sat down.

Violet loomed over her, a creature, Prue fancied, out of a Fuseli engraving, brooding darkly, wings straining for flight.

'Edward's in the next room, asleep. I've made up his bottles for the day and they're in the fridge. He should sleep for an hour or so. Give him a drink when he wakes. After his lunch he likes a walk, then pray for six o'clock when you can put him to bed.'

'Bath?'

'If you like.' Violet seemed indifferent. 'Have some coffee.'

She disappeared and returned ten minutes later, groomed and made-up, wearing an olive wool suit, her eyes sparkling with a different light.

'Do you think you can cope, Prue?' Violet was straining to be gone.

Prue transferred her gaze from the garden (20 ft x 50 ft) which currently resembled a municipal tip. 'Good luck.'

Suddenly, momentarily unsure, Violet hugged her briefcase. 'I'll need it. I've got to make a good impression. Show them that the baby makes no difference at all.'

'I think that's impossible,' said Prue gently. 'You can't have a baby and pretend that nothing's happened.'

'I can.' said Violet, and the old, assured expression was back in place. 'By the way,' she added from the doorway, 'you'll have to buy something for supper. Northcote Road. The A-Z is in the hall. Alfalfa sprouts are in the fridge.'

End of Extract 1

Extract 2:

On Thursday morning, Edward woke late and refused his milk, screwing up his mouth and pushing aside the bottle. Tramliners dribbled down his cheeks and on to Prue's sleeve. She put the bottle down to examine him more closely - and a fist squeezed in her chest. There was a blue shade to the baby's mouth, and a red flush on cheeks normally like pale shells. He did not look well and when Prue took the minute hand in her own and gently felt the matchstick fingers, her flesh made contact with burning heat. Without thinking twice, she phoned the doctor.

After an interminable wait in a hot, noisy, overflowing surgery, a young and indifferent-seemed doctor took a look at Edward. Just a passing temperature, she informed Prue. Babies do that. It always seems worse than it is. Give him plenty of fluid and don't bundle him up in too much clothing.

her coolness only intensified Prue's anxiety, otherwise she might have laughed at the cheek of the dewy-behind-the-ears patronage. Instead, she drove back to Austen Road and spent an uneasy morning hovering over the cot. From time to time, Edward wailed and his body twitched in between fractured dozing. Each time Prue forced Dioralyte down him, he vomited.

At half past three, Prue was once again on the phone to the doctor. The receptionist, who could detect genuine panic from 'panic', promised to talk to the doctor when she had a moment.

An hour passed. Prue sponged the little body with warm water and, in her fright, she imagined that flesh had already slipped from the bird-like bones, and the frog stomach was hollowing - like the poppyhead which ejects its seeds and dies.

Not to worry, that wretched doctor had said. Babies do this. Yes, they do. Babies do this and have died. Think, think of the millions of babies' bodies which have piled up during the centuries.

Edward seemed to appreciate his blanket bath, for he sighed after she had finished, tucked his hand up by his neck and fell asleep.

Prue got herself some tea.

Edward's piercing wails interrupted her and she rushed into the nursery. The baby was bright red and had been violently sick. Prue phoned Jamie.

'I think he needs to get to hospital.'

Jamie did not hesitate. 'Get a taxi to St Thomas's. I'll meet you there.'

He was waiting by the time Prue arrived, white and anxious-looking. 'I've cleared it with the receptionist,' he said, taking the baby from her. 'We go straight in.'

Prue discovered she was trembling.

Jamie held Edward while the doctor examined him. he looked up once to thank Prue, otherwise he concentrated on his son. Prue held her shaking hands tight, and went outside to wait.

Casualty was awash with people, sitting on benches in the corridor in various states of dejection. Each time a nurse or a doctor went by, they looked up. Along with their bodies, perhaps they were hoping that their spirits would be patched up as well.

Prue closed her eyes and opened them when Jamie emerged, walked over to her and took her hand in his. 'Don't fret. They think it's only a twenty-four-hour bug.'

He was followed by the doctor, and a nurse hovering at his heels carrying Edward.

'Mr Beckett, you can take him home now. We've given him a thorough examination and paracetamol to bring down his temperature. He is a little dehydrated so you must try to get some liquid into him. If you're worried bring him back.'

They made the journey home in the taxi in virtual silence. Prue leant back against the seat and closed her eyes, luxuriating in relief. Her eyes opened a crack and she found herself observing Jamie, narrowed to a squarish shape which smelt of expensive aftershave and a whiff of cigar. Emptied of everything, she absorbed the contrast of his brown hair against his navy coat, the skin tones and the way in which his big, elegant hands emerged from his cuffs.

'Why are you looking at me, Prue?'

Prue's treacherous hands trembled in her lap. 'Am I?'

Light-headed and consequently reckless in the aftermatch of adrenalin, Jamie leant over, pulled Prue towards him and kissed her.

'Oh, Prue, oh, Prue,' he muttered into the white skin of her neck, relief for his son translating itself into physical need.

She felt her own body burn with desire and knew that if she gave it only the slightest leeway, pandered to it in the minutest form, it would make her forget that she was someone else's wife, and that Jamie was her stepdaughter's husband.

Back at the house, Prue fed Edward boiled water and Dioralyte, and Jamie hunted for a bottle of sherry.

'It's only five o'clock but...' Prue drained her glass.

Jamie said he would ring Violet because she would want to come home. A conversation took place on the drawing-room phone with a great many pauses. Prue concentrated on Edward who was taking his time, the sherry warming her gullet, sweet and wonderfully welcome.

Jamie returned and poured himself a glass. 'Violet isn't coming back till tomorrow. It would be difficult to leave as there's a big dinner tonight, especially if Edward is over the worst.'

Prue found it impossible to gauge his expression. Instead she held out her glass for a refill.

'I can't,' Prue said gently when Jamie appeared in her bedroom in the small hours as she lay thinking about him.

He looked down at the coils of hair and rounded shoulder illuminated by the light from the corridor, and his gaze travelled down the shape under the bedclothes.

'No,' he agreed, but in his imagination he was imprisoning the full, tempting breasts under the white cotton and the unknown territory of her body with his own. He bent over, and brushed her cheek with a finger.

'Goodnight, Jamie.'

'Good night.'

Chrysalis-like, the sheets enclosed her body. She felt their weave against her skin, smelt the detergent and wool in the blanket. In the dark, the sheet across the window became a mask, hiding the slippery feelings and heated imaginations that raged behind it.

Prue had imagined that her desire centred solely on Max. It was a shock to discover that this was not true.

End of Extract 2