The Perfect Mother by Margaret Leroy Page B

he’d been.
    Sometimes I thought I’d ring Kevin, and go and find my mother. I’d start to picture a reconciliation: her welcome, her apology, wrapping me in her arms and her scent of Marlboros and lily of the valley. But then I’d think how she’d neglected me and lied to me, and such rage would flare in me, and I knew I wouldn’t do it. So the days dragged on: a life of offices, all looking much the same, and vaguely unsatisfactory sex that was paid for with meals at Pizza Express and shots of tequila. It was lonely, but it was better than I was used to.
    There are moments when everything changes. I believe that. Moments of destiny, of serendipity. And one hot summer evening much like any other, when I’d just got off the bus in Garratt Lane, I bumped into Miss Jenkins.
    ‘Catriona. What a nice surprise.’
    She still had the hoops and the hippy cardigan, and she seemed so pleased to see me. She asked what I was doing. I shrugged a little, told her about the temping, though not the men.
    She stood there for a while, her steady eyes on me. There was this school, she said. A nursery school, in Chelsea: private, expensive. Not really the sort of thing she approved of: nursery education ought to be free for everyone. But the headmistress was a friend of hers, they’d been at college together, and she happened to know they had a post going. I reminded her that I only had three GCSEs. She said it didn’t matter, it was a nursery assistant post, they needed someone who could help with the art. The reference wasn’t a problem, she said, she’d be more than happy to be my referee. I felt cool air against my face; I remember that, a sudden shift in the weather. We neither of us had anything to write on, so I borrowed her biro and scribbled the number on the back of my hand.

CHAPTER 10
    T he school was in a hushed street off King’s Road. There was a cottage, old and rather crooked, at the turn of the road, and a little arched door in the wall. I rang and the door opened: children’s noise rushed out into the stillness of the street. Miss Parry, the headmistress, introduced herself; she was tall, gangly, flatfooted as a heron, with vivid bird-like eyes. She took me through the cloakroom, where every peg had a different hand-painted picture—a duck, a tulip, a blue umbrella. This amazed me, the generosity of it, such detail lavished on every child, every name. And we went through the airyplayroom, and out into the garden at the back, a storybook garden, a secret between high walls, with a labyrinth of twisty stone paths and trampled scraps of lawn, and, in the middle, steps down to an old well—now filled in, of course, said Miss Parry—where there grew an old catalpa tree with leaves as wide as hands; and over there by the sandpit, she said, the two mossy stones set into the lawn were Carolingian graves. The whole place was exuberant with children, and messy with the tumbled detritus of their play, plastic animals faded by the sunlight, and the tyres and boxes and blankets they used to make castles and dens; anarchic and disorderly, but the disorder held and contained by the walls of yellow London brick, and the narrow bright beds of hollyhocks and lupins that fringed the edges of the garden.
    She showed me round, asked a few obvious questions, then left me in the playroom to see what I’d do. Cast adrift in that sea of children, I did what made me feel safest, and sat in the art corner drawing extravagant pictures, of flamboyant animals with wings and wicked fangs. The children gathered round, adding their own details, colouring in. After a while my self-consciousness fell away. I was surprised to turn and see Miss Parry behind me. She reached out to touch a doleful tiger I’d drawn. ‘I think you’ll do quite nicely here,’ she said.
    It wasn’t perfect. There was a lot of drudgery, toilets to be cleaned, floors to be swept and swabbed, little plastic bits of things to sort and put back into boxes. And it was