The Perfect Gift

Stacey had one more crappy night of being seventeen, and Maureen, her mum, had somehow managed to make it even worse.

“Let’s go to the fair,” she’d said. “It’ll be fun,” she’d said.

To be fair, the fun fair looked better from the road. But up close it was mud, diesel fumes and feral kids screaming through bright blue slushie tongues, high as only kids could get on foot high, super-slushies.

Coloured bulbs flickered around the beer tent, turning the wet grass a sickly pink.

Stacey sat on the wooden barrier outside the beer tent with her arms folded, cheeks still hot from being turned away. A few hours before her eighteenth birthday.

The bouncer had barely looked at her. “No ID, no service.” He’d said it in the flat bored voice of a man who had ruined plenty of nights and had zero interest in making hers special.

Maureen stood beside her in her good coat. She’d put on lippie and blush, which she did twice a year. The other time was Christmas. “He was only doing his job,” Maureen said, trying her best to make the whole thing not feel completely tragic.

Stacey stared across the fairground. A boy in a puffer jacket was being sick behind the waltzers while his mate filmed it. They whooped like a bunch of college lads on their first night away from home. “Brilliant,” Stacey said. “It just keeps getting better.” Maureen followed her gaze, then looked away.

The music from the nearest ride thumped through the ground. Somewhere nearby, someone dropped a tray of chips and swore as a fat seagull flew off with half of them stuffed in its beak. Maureen pulled her coat tighter. “I’ll get us something hot, love. My treat.” Stacey didn’t answer.

She watched Maureen walk towards the food vans, handbag tucked under one arm, her coat already spotting with rain. She looked too dressed up for the fair, which somehow made the whole thing worse.

Tomorrow would be different. She’d be at her dad’s.

Her dad, Brydon, was nothing like Maureen. Neither was his place. He had a glass lift, a doorman and towels with his initials on them, like the ones Stacey had seen in a fancy hotel once when he took her to London on one of his business trips.

She didn’t really know what he did. Something to do with imports. Whatever it was, it paid well. When Stacey was younger, she used to think his apartment looked like somewhere people in adverts lived. Either that or one of the baddies in the old James Bond films he loved. Brydon had said for years that she could move in with him one day.

When things settled.

When she was old enough.

Stacey dug the toe of her boot into the mud and smiled. Tomorrow she’d be old enough. Eighteen, officially a grown-up.

“Lucky heather, miss?”

The voice was croaky and close. Stacey looked up. A strange old man stood in front of her wearing a flat cap and a tweed suit gone soft with age. He was bent so far over that she couldn’t see much of his face. He looked like he’d walked straight out of an old comic strip, if the comic strip had been left out in the rain.

His arm stretched towards her with a bunch of purple heather tied in string. His coat hung loose at the neck, too thin for the cold. Stacey glanced towards the food vans, but Maureen was still in the queue. “No thanks.”. “Five pounds. For luck.” The old man gave the heather a little shake. 

“I’m pretty hungry, miss. You’d be helping an old fella out.”

“I said no.”

“Kindness comes back to you.”

“Yeah, so does booze, probably.”

The old man’s hand stayed where it was.

“My dad says people need to stand on their own two feet and stop looking for handouts,” Stacey said. The old man looked at her for too long. His eyes were pale in the fairground light.

“Your dad sounds like a very wise man,” he said. “He doing anything nice for your birthday?”

Stacey stiffened. “What?”

“You’ve got that look.”

The heat came back into Stacey’s face. The bouncer, the beer tent, her mum’s cheap lipstick, the whole stupid night seemed to crowd around her.

“Piss off!.”

The old man didn’t move.

“Might be a good gift for your dad,” he said, holding the heather out a little further. “Bring him luck too.”

Stacey stood up and knocked it from his hand. It landed in the mud between them.

“Get lost, you old drunk.”

The old man looked at the heather on the ground. The fair seemed to dip around them. Not stop exactly. Just soften at the edges, as if the world had taken a breath. Then the man laughed. A small, dry sound.

“You’ll wish you hadn’t done that, girly,” he said.

Stacey folded her arms, though she suddenly felt cold.

“The first thing you wish for will come true.”

The old man bent down and picked up the muddy heather.

“And be careful if you do give it away.”

By the time Maureen came back with chips, the man was gone.

Stacey took one without asking and burned her fingers on the vinegar-soggy paper.

“What’s wrong?” Maureen asked.

“Nothing. Just some crazy old guy handing out wishes, apparently”

Maureen looked around, but she couldn't see the man. 

“Don't mess around with that shit, Stace, you hear me?” 

Stacey shrugged.

The rain had started again, thin and needling under the coloured lights.

That night, after Stacey went to bed, Maureen stayed up with the quilt.

It lay across her knees in the quiet bedroom, almost finished. The house ticked and settled around her. Rain touched the window. Every now and then, Stacey’s floorboards creaked from across the hall. The quilt had taken months.

Maureen had hidden the fabric in the bottom of the wardrobe, under winter jumpers Stacey would never think to move. Some of the squares were new, chosen because she thought Stacey might like them. Others were pieces Maureen had kept for years without knowing why.

A scrap of purple curtain from Stacey’s black-wallpaper phase. A piece of denim from the jacket she wore until one sleeve frayed through. A small corner of cotton covered in cartoon ghosts from a pair of old pyjamas. Little bits of Stacey, stitched into something that might last. The last square was plain cream.

Maureen sewed it into the centre slowly, the needle flashing under the bedside lamp. Happy 18th Birthday to my beautiful daughter Stacey.

When the stitching was done, she smoothed the quilt with both hands.

“The perfect gift,” she whispered.

Across the hall, Stacey lay awake with her phone bright against her face. The outfit was still on the website. Black jacket. Silver trim. Skin-tight trousers. £500.

She knew exactly how much it cost because Brydon had given her his credit card and let her buy it herself. Of course, it would have been better if he’d actually been there on their shopping day. His phone hadn’t stopped ringing. Time and tide wait for no man, he’d said, sweeping back into another call. Or no daughter.

But it didn’t matter. They’d have the whole day together tomorrow. Now all she needed was the matching shoes.

She’d left the magazine on Maureen’s bedside table, circled the shoes, added a sticky note, and talked about them constantly. Sure, they probably cost nearly a month of Maureen’s part-time cleaner’s wage, but Stacey deserved them. Besides, what else had Maureen paid for? Rent. Food. School stuff. Seventeen years of boring things nobody noticed.

Stacey had already packed her essentials. She’d come back for the rest once her room at Brydon’s was finished. He’d been saying it for years, but perfection took time. That was what he always said. And she only deserved the best.

She imagined walking into his apartment wearing the whole outfit. Brydon looking up from his laptop. Properly looking. Seeing that she wasn’t a kid anymore. Seeing that she could finally live with him full-time, like he had always promised. Maybe he’d laugh and say, “There she is. All grown up. Still my little girl, though.”

Stacey’s eyes filled a little. Tomorrow would be perfect. Not like the stupid waste of a day with Maureen. At least the shoes would make up for it. Stacey looked again at the receipt for the outfit.

“The perfect gift,” she said.

The next morning, Maureen had decorated the kitchen.

Balloons bobbed against the cupboards. A supermarket cake sat in the middle of the table with candles still in the packet because Maureen said they had to wait until after tea. Birthday law.

Stacey came downstairs in her dressing gown, hair damp from the shower, trying not to notice how much effort had gone into it. Then she saw the parcel. It sat on the table beside the cake, wrapped properly with a big silver bow. Her heart jumped before she could stop it.

No way.

“Mum,” she said. “You didn’t.”

Maureen’s face lit up. “Open it.”

Stacey tore at the paper. For one second, she saw the shoes. Saw herself at Brydon’s. Saw the kind of birthday she was supposed to be having. Then the paper fell away.

A blanket.

Stacey stared. “It’s a blanket.”

“A quilt.” Maureen said, correcting her stunned daughter.

Maureen clasped her hands together.

“You got me a blanket for my eighteenth?”

Maureen’s smile held for a moment, then slipped.

“I made it. It’s a memory quilt. Each square means something different. A bit of your life so far.”

That was worse.

Stacey lifted the quilt and saw the middle square. The neat stitching. The message. The love in it, obvious and soft and mortifying.

“I’m not five.”

“I know you’re not.”

“Then why would you make me this?”

“It’s tradition. My mum made one for me when I turned eighteen.”

Stacey dropped it onto the floor.

“Tradition? If I ever have a daughter, the new tradition will be to buy her a pair of beautiful shoes she’ll actually adore and cherish. Not a friggin blanket.”

The light dimmed in Maureen’s eyes.

“At least Dad gives me money,” Stacey said.

The second she said it, she knew it was cruel. Maureen bent down and picked up the quilt.

“I just wanted you to have something that would last.”

Stacey went upstairs. The door slammed behind her. Maureen folded the quilt over once, pressing the fabric flat with her palm.

“It’s not a blanket,” she said quietly. “It’s a quilt.”

Later, Maureen drove Stacey across town to Brydon’s apartment.

The car sounded worse on his side of the city. It rattled at every traffic light while black cabs slid past without effort. New flats rose above the road in clean glassy rows. The quilt sat on Stacey’s lap in a neat folded square.

Maureen had wrapped it again after Stacey threw it on the kitchen floor. Not with paper this time. Just folded. Smoothed. Placed into Stacey’s hands before they left, as if it still mattered. Stacey kept her fingers tucked under the edge of it and looked out at the city.

“He said we’d talk tonight,” she said.

Maureen did not ask who. The traffic light changed. The car coughed forward.

“About me moving in.”

Maureen kept both hands on the wheel. Her knuckles tightened slightly.

“Right,” she said.

“He promised.”

Maureen nodded once. It was the kind of nod adults gave when they knew something and didn’t want to say it.

The car pulled up outside Brydon’s building. A doorman stood behind the glass. Inside, there were huge plants in metal pots and a floor shiny enough to see your own disappointment in. Stacey reached for the door handle. Maureen touched the quilt. Not Stacey’s hand. Just the quilt.

“Happy birthday, sweetheart. I hope you get the birthday you deserve. I really do.”

Stacey got out.

“I love you,” Maureen said. “Don’t ever forget that.”

Stacey did not look back until she reached the entrance.

Maureen was still there in the old car, hazard lights blinking, face pale behind the wet windscreen. Stacey lifted one hand. Then she went inside.

Brydon opened the apartment door with his phone tucked between his shoulder and ear. He smiled when he saw her, but the smile arrived late, like something he had remembered to do.

“There she is.”

Stacey hugged him. He smelled of aftershave and coffee and the cold outside.

The apartment behind him was warm, all lamps and glass and hard edges. Nothing out of place, but also nothing waiting for her.

She put the quilt on the sofa.

Brydon looked at it.

“What’s with the granny blanket?”

Stacey’s face went hot. “Mum made it for me. For my birthday.”

Brydon laughed. A proper belly laugh, which made it worse.

“Oh God. Please tell me you’re joking.” He looked down at her boots. “What about the shoes? To go with this killer outfit.”

Stacey glanced at the quilt.

“Oh, you poor baby,” he said. “I’ll sort them for tomorrow.”

Stacey brightened. “We could get them tonight. The shop’s open until eight. Late-night shopping.”

Brydon’s smile faltered.

“I bought popcorn too,” she said. “And the new Bond’s on pay-per-view.”

His phone rang before he could answer. He looked at the screen, then motioned towards the hall and took the call in the next room with the door half-closed.

Stacey looked around the apartment. There were two wine glasses beside the sink.

One had lipstick on the rim.

Brydon came back a few minutes later.

“Sorry. Mad day.”

“As always,” Stacey said.

He saw her looking at the glasses. A flicker crossed his face.

“Oh, that’s not what it looks like. A friend’s coming over tomorrow. She’ll be staying for a while.”

Stacey stayed where she was.

“But I thought…”

“Don’t start on that again, Stace. Let’s just have a nice night, yeah? We’ll talk properly later in the year.”

“Later in the year. Only tonight, then ?”

Stacey sat on the edge of the sofa beside the quilt. She kept her coat on. Brydon opened his wallet and put two hundred pounds on the coffee table.

“Didn’t get chance to get supplies in. Order whatever you fancy. Chinese, pizza. Up to you.”

The notes lay there between them, flat and clean. The quilt looked suddenly huge beside her, soft and ridiculous and homemade.

Brydon’s laptop chimed from the desk. He looked at it. Just a glance, but long enough.

“I’ve got to nip back to the office for a bit. I won’t be long.”

“Is everything okay at work?” Stacey asked.

“Yeah. Fine. Usual bills, bills, bills.”

He grabbed his keys from the counter.

“Can you just say no for one night?” Stacey said. “It’s my birthday.”

“I know, sweetheart. But this is what keeps the lights on.”

He gave a small smile.

“And buys all the things you love so much.”

The apartment lights caught the money on the table and made it look brighter than anything else in the room.

After he left, Stacey sat for a long time without moving. The money remained on the coffee table. She wanted to leave it there. She wanted him to come back and see that she hadn’t touched it, that she wasn’t the sort of daughter you could park on a sofa with cash and leftover takeaway. Eventually, she picked it up. Two hundred pounds. It felt good in her hand.

She ordered Chinese.

It seemed like she had only just put the phone down when the intercom rang. The doorman left the food outside the apartment with a polite little tap, but by the time Stacey opened the door, he was gone. The food sat there on the carpet, as if by magic.

By midnight, the apartment had gone cold at the edges and Stacey couldn’t figure out how to switch on the heating. Everything was automated and hidden behind sleek little panels that did nothing when she touched them.

She ate noodles from a carton and drank half a beer she didn’t like because it was the only thing in Brydon’s fridge. His sofa was expensive and uncomfortable. The kind of sofa that looked better without people on it. The quilt sat at the other end, folded tight.

Stacey flicked through channels until she found Ghostbusters.

For a moment, her face changed. She used to watch it with Maureen on the old DVD that skipped near the library ghost. Stacey always shouted the line before it came. Maureen always laughed, even though it had stopped being funny years before Stacey stopped doing it.

Her phone buzzed.

Maureen.

Hope you’re having a lovely time with Dad. Happy birthday, babe. I miss you. Love you xxx

Stacey read it.

Then read it again.

She put the phone face down on the sofa.

At 3:07am, Brydon came back.

He looked different. Tie loose. Eyes heavy. Smelling of whisky and cold air. The bright, easy man from earlier had been replaced by someone worn thin around the edges.

“You’re still up?” he said.

Stacey sat upright. “I waited.”

“For me?”

He seemed surprised. She hated that most of all.

Brydon dropped into the chair opposite her and rubbed his hands over his face.

“I’m sorry, Stace.”

The words landed strangely in the quiet room.

“I know you wanted to talk about moving in,” he said. “Things aren’t great for me right now.”

Stacey watched him.

“But I wish they could be different,” he said. “I really do.”

Stacey looked at the quilt. Then at the money left on the table. Then at him. The old man’s voice came back as clearly as if he were standing in the room.

The first thing you wish for will come true.

Be careful if you give it away.

Maybe this was why it had happened. Maybe the wish had found her because it was supposed to be used here.

Not for clothes or shoes, but for something bigger.

Something that would prove everything. 

If Brydon really wanted her, the wish would show it.

“I’ve got your present,” Stacey said.

Brydon frowned. “My present?”

“The perfect gift.”

“It’s your birthday, Stace.”

“What if you could wish for the thing you really wanted and it would come true?”

He gave a tired smile. “You’re old enough now to know wishes don’t always come true.”

“There was this old man at the fair yesterday,” Stacey said. “He said the first thing I wished for would come true. He said I could give it away.”

Brydon’s smile changed.

“Sounds like a nutter.”

“Maybe.”

Stacey leaned forward and took his hands.

They were cold.

“I’m giving it to you.”

“Stace.”

“Wish for what you want most.”

Brydon watched her for a moment.

“You’re serious?”

She nodded.

He closed his eyes, still smiling slightly.

Nothing happened. Brydon opened one eye.

“Hope you didn’t give that old coot any money. You’re going to need it more than ever after the night I’ve had.”

Then the lights flickered. Only once. The television went to static, then came back with no sound. Brydon stopped smiling.

A twenty-pound note appeared across Stacey’s wrist.

Not on her skin but IN IT!

Flat and papery, the ink running through her veins.

Stacey stared. Another note bloomed over her hand. Then one across her arm. The sound was dry and soft, a rustle, a whisper.

“Dad?”

Brydon stood so quickly the chair hit the wall. The notes had spread over Stacey’s chest, up her throat, across her face. They moved fast now, covering her in money. Replacing her with it.

“What did you wish for?” Stacey said.

Brydon did not answer.

His eyes had gone to the money blooming across her skin. She understood then.

“You were supposed to wish for me,” she said.

Her voice came out thin, almost torn. Brydon stepped back. Not towards her. Back.

“Dad?” Stacey said.

“I wished for money,” Brydon whispered. “More money than I knew what to do with.”

Then Stacey came apart. There was no blood. No scream. Just a soft rush as her body broke into banknotes and spilled across the floor. For a long moment, Brydon did nothing.

Then he bent down. He picked up a handful of money. Real money. Warm from where she had been.

He didn't cry. He just started laughing, crazy maniacal laughter.

The kitchen tap turned itself on. Banknotes poured into the sink. The fridge door burst open and money slid out in thick stacks. Notes blew from the air vents. Fifties fluttered from the lampshade. The coffee machine choked and spat out a roll of twenties. Brydon laughed harder. He lay back in the money and swept his arms through it, making an angel on the carpet.

“The perfect gift, indeed!” he said.

A month later, Maureen knocked on the apartment door.

No answer. She had called. Texted. Left voicemails that started calm and ended with her voice breaking. She had told herself Stacey was being cruel because teenagers could be cruel, especially when they knew they were loved enough to get away with it. But this silence was different.

The building manager opened the door with a spare key.

The smell came first.

Maureen stepped inside. 

Money was everywhere. Piled on the sofa. Stuck to the walls. Rotting in the sink. Damp notes clung to the windows like dead leaves.

Brydon sat in the middle of it all. Or what was left of him. His mouth was open, stuffed with money. His hands were full.

Maureen saw the quilt at the end of the sofa, half-buried under the notes. She pulled it free. For a moment, all she could do was hold it. Then she saw the middle square.

Happy 18th Birthday to my beautiful daughter Stacey. Maureen pressed the quilt to her chest and closed her eyes.

In the corridor behind her, someone said they had called the police.

A tiny sound came from inside the fabric. Not a voice, more like a rustle. Maureen held on tighter.

And deep inside the quilt, in a place with no light and no room to move, something that had once been Stacey wished she had never met the old man at the fairground.