How to Be Perfect Read online

  HOLLY WAINWRIGHT is a writer, editor and broadcaster. Originally from Manchester in the north of England, she’s been living in Australia for more than twenty years. Since then, Holly has built a career in print and digital publishing, most recently as Head of Content at Mamamia. Holly also hosts two podcasts called This Glorious Mess and Mamamia Out Loud, has two small children, a partner called Brent and wishes there were four more hours in every day. How to be Perfect is the sequel to Holly’s first novel, The Mummy Bloggers, published in 2017.

  Facebook: Holly Wainwright

  Instagram: wainwrightholly

  Twitter: @hollycwain

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First published in 2018

  Copyright © Holly Wainwright 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76063 348 6

  eBook ISBN 978 1 76063 706 4

  Cover design: Karen Wallis, Taloula Press

  Cover image: Shutterstock

  For Judith and Jeff, Mum and Dad Distance is nothing

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1-FRANCES

  CHAPTER 2-ELLE

  CHAPTER 3-ABI

  CHAPTER 4-ELLE

  CHAPTER 5-ABI

  CHAPTER 6-FRANCES

  CHAPTER 7-ELLE

  CHAPTER 8-ABI

  CHAPTER 9-FRANCES

  CHAPTER 10-BEN BONT

  CHAPTER 11-ELLE

  CHAPTER 12-ABI

  CHAPTER 13-FRANCES

  CHAPTER 14-MATT

  CHAPTER 15-ELLE

  CHAPTER 16-ABI

  CHAPTER 17-FRANCES

  CHAPTER 18-ADRIAN

  CHAPTER 19-ELLE

  CHAPTER 20-ABI

  CHAPTER 21-FRANCES

  CHAPTER 22-ELLE

  CHAPTER 23-ABI

  CHAPTER 24-FRANCES

  CHAPTER 25-ZOE

  CHAPTER 26-ELLE

  CHAPTER 27-ABI

  CHAPTER 28-FRANCES

  CHAPTER 29-GRACE

  CHAPTER 30-ELLE

  CHAPTER 31-ABI

  CHAPTER 32-FRANCES

  CHAPTER 33-BEN BONT

  CHAPTER 34-ABI

  CHAPTER 35-ELLE

  CHAPTER 36-FRANCES

  CHAPTER 37-THE WEDDINGS

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER 1

  FRANCES

  Frances had been aiming for an Elle Campbell kind of morning but, frankly, things had turned to shit. So far, her day bore very little resemblance to Elle’s latest blog.

  Good morning, Goddesses.

  Let’s begin where everything does—with the purest possible start to your day.

  Here’s what works for me.

  I wake with the sun. Strangely enough, so does Alma. This tiny old soul seems to know when the world is ready for her. She starts the day with stretches. It’s as if every morning she remembers she has arms and she throws them over her head in delight. And now, so do I.

  The light on Gurva farm is at its most dazzling at dawn, so after I mimic baby’s stretches she and I head out onto the deck to watch the sun roll towards us up the hill. Then I lay her down on her pure wool rug while I do 15 minutes of my mindful Elle-ness Moves™. Alma is always so peaceful watching me—she just lies there, cooing and giggling.

  Then, me and my little shadow head to the kitchen. I throw back a shot-glass of bee pollen dissolved in warm, filtered water. Then I whizz up a Pure Start smoothie™—activated tree nuts blended in (filtered) organic coconut water with kale, organic blueberries, lady-finger bananas from the farm’s plantation, psyllium, a teaspoon of raw cacao nibs, a sprinkle of gold-leaf powder (for that inner glow), a dash of milk thistle and a twist of bush-lime leaf.

  I blend it thoroughly in my new Nutrimullet, which we had modified to run silently so it doesn’t break into the peaceful early-morning energy of the farm, or disturb BB’s meditation practice (gosh, he can be a grumpy bear without his morning med!). I whizz it for 90 seconds until it’s ready to pop into my bamboo tumbler and be sipped through my copper straw, while I nurse Alma and quietly set my intention for the day.

  Today’s intention: Forgive those who have caused me pain.

  Wishing you a beautiful, pure start, too. It really is the secret to moving through your day in a state of productive grace.

  E xxxxx

  PS: If that sounds like a lot for breakfast, you’ll be relieved to know that I sip it slowly throughout the morning, loosening it with a gentle shake and a splash more coconut water. xx

  If Frances was being honest, that didn’t sound like a lot for breakfast.

  As she re-read Elle’s smoothie recipe, Frances was standing in front of the blender with baby Denny squalling on one hip, her phone in her other hand. She only had half the ingredients, and she’d still spent eighty-nine dollars at the health-food shop.

  ‘Good job I’ll be back at work soon, right, Den?’ she said. ‘Although I don’t think this is quite what your dad has in mind.’

  Frances put the phone down to scrape out the last of the psyllium—whatever the hell that was—from the tub with a plastic baby spoon, the only clean, dry implement she could find, one-handed, at this very moment. And it had to be this very moment, because she was so hungry she wasn’t sure she could stay upright for as long as it was going to take for her very non-silent blender to chop through all this stuff.

  ‘Shhhhh, Denny, shhhhh …’ Frances gave him the plastic spoon to gum on as she tried to slice a supermarket banana with a butter knife. ‘What’s the matter with you, anyway? You just had a feed …’

  Frances’s morning wasn’t as pure as she’d hoped. Denny had woken at five, which wasn’t unusual, and he seemed even more ‘unsettled’ than yesterday. He hadn’t let her put him down for three hours now.

  Tipping the remains of the tub into her cracked old blender and muttering under her breath, Frances wondered whether it qualified as a ‘pure start’ if you’d been cursing solidly since you woke up.

  She’d tried. Frances had taken Denny out to the sunroom after his first boob-feed and laid him on her Jmart ‘sheepskin’ rug in the hope of getting some yoga stretches in, her old work laptop open to one of Elle’s videos.

  But Frances couldn’t touch her toes anymore, her insides hurt, and Denny just kept on whining. She’d thrown him the teething giraffe her sister-in-law had given her, then started chanting her mantra, the one she’d promised herself she’d use every day as she stretched.

  ‘I am in love with my life. I am in love with my life. I am in love with my …’

  But the morning trucks outside her window were drowning out her inner monologue, and she couldn’t help being conscious of the sensation of her stomach rolls bulging every time she bent towards her toes.

  Frances switched mantras, to one of Elle’s. ‘I am
a work in progress, I am an unfinished masterpiece, I am a work in progress …’

  The smell that hit her nostrils as she tried to get her nose to her knees cut things short. Denny needed changing.

  Now Frances was standing at the fridge door, scouring for that six-dollar coconut water she’d bought yesterday. And still she forgot the psyllium. Perhaps if she could have sprung for the gold leaf, she’d be feeling better by now. Or if she just had the discipline to make it through those bloody stretches.

  No wonder she and Denny weren’t moving through this day with positive grace.

  ‘Did you drink that coconut water I bought yesterday?’ she found herself yelling from the fridge towards the bedroom. ‘Troy?’

  Frances pictured him coming home from work last night, tired and hot and possibly a little bit drunk, grabbing the cold bottle from the fridge door and sculling, before pulling away and looking at the label like, ‘bleurgh’. She closed the fridge, Denny still whining in her right arm, and went to peer into the bin. Sure enough, there was the half-finished bottle of Orgococo Gold.

  ‘You didn’t even put it in the recycling!’ Frances yelled again towards the closed bedroom door, then went back to the blender. ‘Well, Denny,’ she kissed her baby on his head as he rhythmically whacked her shoulder with the teething giraffe, ‘no coconut water, no gold, no blueberries. What would Elle do?’ She grabbed the blender and stuck it under the running tap for a moment. ‘Sydney water’s finest will have to do, Den.’

  After ramming on the cracked lid, she flipped the switch to high. Whirring and crunching filled the kitchen, the blades stalling and screeching against the raw nuts. What Frances wouldn’t do for a Nutrimullet.

  Denny started screaming in time with the blender. Frances held the lid on with one hand and jiggled him with the other.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Frank!’ Troy’s voice broke through the racket. He was standing in the kitchen doorway, distractingly naked, bleary, rubbing his head. ‘Can’t you just have toast like a normal person?’

  Frances flicked off the blender and poured some of the sludgy green-brown mixture into a wineglass—the only clean vessel within easy reach. ‘Cheers, Troy,’ she said, taking a swig and trying not to flinch: it tasted like bin. Denny’s pudgy little arms reached towards the smoothie. She put it down and handed the baby to her partner as she pushed past him. ‘I’m going to the gym.’

  ‘Seriously?’ he asked. ‘But I only got in at two.’

  ‘I am a work in progress,’ she called back to him from the corridor. ‘And I am going to the gym.’

  I’ve got to get to Gurva, Frances thought, as she smashed down the stairs, flicking bits of smoothie from her shirt. One of Elle Campbell’s retreats will sort this rubbish out.

  CHAPTER 2

  ELLE

  It was truly great sex that brought Elle back from the dead. As she wrote:

  This is the kind of intimacy, Goddesses, that can only come from true honesty. From a partnership without secrets. From a love that can make a broken woman whole again.

  Sex, and money. Somebody else’s money. The ‘About’ page of her new blog read:

  If you have found me here, after everything we have been through together. I am going to take you by the hand and help you understand how you can build a better self, one deserving of this level of love, just as I have done. All we’re going to need from you is your trust. Your trust, and a small donation.

  Funds secured, Elle’s ‘trust barrier’ came down, and the door was opened to her new blog, and her new world: The Goddess Project.

  Once there, you’ll find that the biggest seller in Elle Campbell’s new online shop is one long piece of fake black hair twisted into a thick, glossy braid. Elle’s disciples like to clip it into their own skinny ponytails when they are exercising—copying the guru’s ’do gives them something to swing around while they squat.

  Other popular purchases are Elle’s trademarked ‘gold dust’ energy/vitality/libido powders for sprinkling into smoothies. There’s a teeth-whitening powder made of a particular non-toxic chalk, patented push-up active-wear sports crop tops, and her all-natural fake tan, Glimmer, which produces the darkest shade of chestnut with a generous dusting of quartz-based glitter.

  But it’s the braid that’s become the trademark of Elle’s second act. Her hair-whipping work-outs and yoga sessions are followed by hundreds of thousands online. After being snared by her hypnotic butt-dips on YouTube, the hardcore have ponied up the cash to make it behind a paywall designed to keep out the haters and trolls, to a place where all of Elle’s body wisdom is on offer to her tribe of plait-wearing true believers.

  These people spin their arms in tiny circles in front of open laptops in spare bedrooms and sunrooms and lounges, furniture pushed aside, yoga mats unfurled. They sit cross-legged, iPads before them, to follow her meditation workshops, and they anoint themselves with her powders and potions and chant her trademarked mantras. And they spend up big to follow the complex ‘pure’ diet that, Elle says, cleansed her of negativity.

  These people—the Elle-ness Army—believe that their guru is in exile. And some of them, a lucky few with the necessary disposable income, get to make the pilgrimage to Gurva, the northern New South Wales hinterland farm where the reborn guru conducts her Elle-ness workshops.

  Five days at Gurva will set you back thousands—but, if your commitment is true and your wallet is deep, you can leave the place a different person. With a resilience workshop from Elle, yes, but also intense twice-daily work-outs. Injectables. Microdermabrasion. Implants, if you take that package. A new diet plan, designed especially for you, a commitment to a month of packaged, organic, ‘negative-calorie’ pre-prepped meals, if you choose. A mantra of positive affirmations, voiced by Elle, sent directly to your phone daily, for an extra charge.

  Yes, at Gurva you can choose your own adventure, set in the most photogenic pocket of the most Instagrammable valley on the coast.

  Just don’t photograph the guru—or ‘gurvi’ as Elle’s followers like to tag her. Before they’re allowed to get off the airport shuttle bus and onto the farm, every guest has to sign a strict ‘no-selfies’ policy.

  These days Elle’s appearances on social media are rare and heavily curated. Her feed is all emerald-green paddocks and sapphire-blue ocean, muted wood brown, pleasing plates of pickled vegetables and sprouting grains, warming bowls of clear, petal-peppered tea, rustic sheds and rolling hills, glimpses of golden sand. It says: paradise.

  And every now and then, there’s a hint at the identity of the man who, the origin story goes, resurrected Elle with one remarkable night—and his patronage.

  A distinctive, tattooed arm draped over a tiny, tanned shoulder. A man’s toned stomach; a capable hand gripping a tractor wheel.

  And then the torso of a naked man lying in a field of yellow daisies. A tiny baby curled in the crook of an arm. The edge of a dark head resting on a shoulder. A long black plait snaking down alongside the baby’s smooth body.

  And a one-word caption:

  Home.

  CHAPTER 3

  ABI

  The last time Abi Black was a bride, she was twenty-seven and doing it for her dad. She was in the early days of pregnancy with her eldest daughter, Arden, and desperately trying to hide her growing belly in an empire-line gown, tipping a succession of champagne flutes into pot plants.

  Now she couldn’t imagine who she’d been trying to kid—she might as well have worn the positive pee-stick around her neck on a velvet ribbon.

  Adrian, her groom, had been in his element, presiding over a riverside crowd of his old rowing team, uni mates, his finance friends, his family, her family. He’d been talking loudly, slapping backs, beaming at Abi over frothing bottles.

  She knew that hindsight was all-seeing, but when she remembered that day now, what she recalled was an overwhelming feeling that she was in the wrong place, in the wrong dress. These were not her people. There had been some kind of mistake. She and Adria
n were never meant to be so deeply predictable, and had promised each other over and over that they would never get married. But here they were, saying the vows, posing for the photographs.

  Very few of those pictures had survived Abi’s sharp scissors when Adrian had announced he was leaving her, five years ago. It had been an enormous shock and completely predictable all at the same time. She was ‘destroyed and reborn at once’, as she had written on her blog, The Green Diva.

  The old, conservative part of her hoped the children hadn’t read that.

  Soon, she would be getting married again, at forty-three. And it was going to be different, immeasurably perfect. In three months’ time, on New Year’s Eve, she was going to marry the love of her life under the angel’s trumpet tree in their farmhouse garden—and this time, this time, the stars would be aligned.

  ‘You,’ Grace whispered in her ear as Abi was banging out another stern email to the ethical diamond specialist who was making their rings, ‘are turning into a bridezilla. I don’t know why, but I never saw this coming …’

  Abi threw her phone to the floor and rolled over, taking Grace’s face in her hands. ‘This is going to be the fucking Wedding of the Century, Gracey. And everything is going to be perfect, perfect, completely fucking perfect.’ With every ‘perfect’, Abi kissed Grace on the eye. The other eye. Her cheek, her mouth. ‘Like us.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ Grace laughed. ‘There isn’t much perfection happening around here right now.’

  ‘What you’re talking about, my bride, is what’s going on behind that—’ Abi pulled back from their kiss long enough to nod towards the bare wood of the closed bedroom door. ‘In here, in this big brass bed,’ she gave a little wiggle to make the old springs creak, ‘everything is exactly as it should be …’

  Abi looked to Grace for a smile of agreement, but it wasn’t there. Her fiancée just gave a little shrug and hopped off the bed.

  What was going on behind that door was the chaos of a falling-down farmhouse stuffed with six children, ranging in age from three to sixteen. Adrian—the man Abi had married the first time around—was living across the yard above the shed, mostly brooding on what he called his ‘third act’. As far as Abi could tell, it involved him dashing out posts for his new-age financial blog, Manifesting Money, and endlessly emailing publishing houses with his book proposal of the same name; so far, none had bitten.