Perfect Day

colour’s given her away again.
    ‘Quiet tonight,’ she observes.
    ‘Always is at this time on Friday. The sane ones have gone home for the weekend, the mad ones are getting rat-arsed. They’ll be in later, stuffing garlic bread down their throats to sober up. You do not want to think about the toilets after a Friday night. Don’t worry. Greta’s coming in later to help. I gave her a couple of hours.’
    Kate pulls a face. She doesn’t believe that Greta puts all her tips in the communal jar.
    ‘She did your shift today,’ Tony says, with a note of warning in his voice. ‘At very short notice.’
    He likes his girls to get on.
    Kate looks at the clock. The hours until midnight stretch agonizingly ahead of her.
    Did she tell him how long the evening shift is? Will he wait? Is he there now, lying naked, thinking about her? Or is he in Marco’s, drinking coffee, reading a paper? Watching football? She doesn’t even know what team he supports. Or has he got fed up and gone home? Where is home? Where’s Kent ?
    ‘What’s Kent like?’ she asks Tony.
    ‘The orchard of England ,’ says Tony. ‘Apple trees, oasthouses with pointed roofs for drying something... Oats, I suppose.’
    ‘Why would anyone live in Kent ?’ Kate asks.
    ‘Why would you live anywhere in England , when you could live in Spain ?’ says Tony.
    It’s one of his themes. He’s heard you can buy a goat shed in the Sierra above Malaga for a few grand. He dreams of opening a pizza restaurant up there.
    Kate doesn’t think it will ever happen.
    ‘You can’t get a decent pizza in Spain ,’ Tony tells her for the hundredth time, as if it’s a charming eccentricity in an otherwise perfect nation.
    She wants to say, bit like here, then, or ask him if he knows whether Spanish people actually like pizza. But this evening she’s in no mood to challenge anyone’s dreams.
    The door to the restaurant opens. Two women, a mother and daughter, struggle in with carrier bags and plonk themselves down with exaggerated, exhausted sighs at table four. You’d think they’d been shovelling coal instead of shopping in Oxford Street . The younger woman has a big box with a cord handle and Pro- nuptia written across it. A wedding dress. She orders a ham and mushroom pizza, then at the last minute changes her mind and asks for a salade Niçoise .
    Slimming for the big day, Kate thinks.
    ‘I’ll hold the anchovies, shall I?’ Kate offers. ‘Very oily.’
    ‘Oh, OK, then.’
    As she hurries off to get their drinks, Kate hears the mother say, ‘What a nerve!’
    The door opens again, and a man wearing a suit comes in with a boy in school uniform. They sit at a window table, staring out of the window, saying nothing. One big man, one little, as awkward as each other in their uncomfortable clothes.
    He’s divorced, Kate thinks, and this is his once a month weekend with his son. She wants to take him on one side and say: Look, save the pizza till Sunday. It’ll give him something to look forward to.
    The boy wants a Coke float.
    ‘My mouth’s really dry,’ he explains to Kate, sticking out his tongue. Five she thinks, or six at the most, the age just before boys realize that it’s not cool to tell the world every little thing they’re thinking.
    ‘ Mmm . Looks it,’ she says, giving the outstretched tongue a quick check. ‘Coke float all right with you, Dad?’
    The man stares at her. It’s not just a normal hostile London stare. His eyes are full of fear.
    ‘A cup of tea,’ he says.
    ‘Anything to eat?’
    ‘James?’ the man asks across the table.
    ‘James!’ Kate repeats.
    The man stares at her again.
    ‘I like the name James,’ she explains, flustered by his look of bleak terror. ‘Are you a Jamie or a Jimmy?’ she asks the boy.
    ‘Just James,’ he says.
    ‘James and the Giant Peach,’ Kate says. ‘Right. What would you like to eat? How about a nice pizza, with some cheese and tomato, and... let me guess... ham?’
    ‘No ham, thank you,’ says the boy. ‘I’m vegetarian. Mummy’s vegetarian, but she still got ill.’
    He says it like a question. He’s been told that vegetables are good for you, so what’s going on?
    The father doesn’t know what to say.
    ‘Oh, I’m sorry about that,’ Kate says busily. ‘How about if I get the chef to put some extra cheese on?’
    She picks up the wine glasses that are on the table, and shakes one of the paper napkins onto the boy’s lap. Anything to move the man on from his