Perfect Day

Deliberately. She was awake when he left, listening to him shower, get dressed; pretending to sleep. She could not bear to open her eyes and see him looking at her again as if he no longer knew who she was. Is it worse to have had no last goodbye than to have had an argument?
    Alexander! Nell screams his name silently, searching for him inside, trying to connect with him again.
    Please, Alex, please be alive. Please don’t do this to us!
    Nell goes upstairs and creeps into Lucy’s room. She leans over the bed and sniffs the soft warm sweet smell of her child, the smell of innocence. She sits down on the wooden floor, comforted by the tiny, even sighs of peaceful breathing.
    Nell makes silent promises, like prayers.
    If you’re alive, Alexander, we’ll move.
    If you’re alive, we’ll go back to Italy , or wherever you want.
    If you’re alive, we’ll have so much to be grateful for, we’ll never have a reason to be unhappy.
    If you’re alive, we’ll talk like we used to, and tell each other everything we’re feeling.
    If you’re alive, we’ll make love.
    Downstairs the phone rings.
    Nell runs down the stairs.
    ‘Alexander?’
    ‘Nell, it’s Chris. Are you OK?’
    She was so sure it was going to be Alexander.
    ‘Look, if it’s a bad time...’
    ‘Alexander’s not come home. It was his train...’ Nell starts to cry.
    ‘Oh, God, Nell...’
    The sorrow in his voice alerts her for the first time to the fact that she is not the only person who’s affected by the crash.
    ‘Is Sarah OK?’ she asks.
    ‘Yes, she drove in today. Miraculously.’
    ‘I’ve rung Alexander’s work. He wasn’t in today. He can’t be dead, can he?’
    There’s a long silence in which she can only hear her own racing heartbeat.
    ‘Nell, I don’t know.’
    Chris is too honest to lie to her.
    Nell’s suddenly crying uncontrollably because he’s allowed her to let go of hope. Of course Alexander’s dead. She knew it in her heart as soon as she saw the reporter standing in the station car park on the news. It was like a message, just for her, and for Lucy.
    ‘Is that Daddy’s train?’
    The voice in her ear is saying, ‘Nell? I’m coming over. Nell. Hang up, Nell!’
    She does as it tells her to, then sits down on the sofa. The tears have stopped now and a thick, bleak emptiness has descended. She sits with her arms crossed, as if she’s physically holding herself together. After a while her fingertips tell her brain that she’s still wearing her jacket. She has not taken it off since they arrived back. Her room has become a waiting room.
    There’s a knock at the door and a whispered shout — ‘It’s Chris!’ — giving her no chance of a split second’s joy.
    She walks wearily to the door, wondering why he’s come.
    He is just the same height as the doorframe, she notices, as he stands there. She had thought him a little taller than that.
    ‘Sarah says that she drove past Alexander this morning. She’s sure he must have caught the earlier train.’
    ‘Is that what you came to tell me?’
    ‘No, I came to be with you. She told me as I was going out the door.’
    His eyes crinkle with concern.
    Behind him, the apple trees are briefly lit by the headlights of an approaching car. The blossom glows luminously white for a moment, then slips back into the darkness.
    She realizes that he is waiting for her to invite him over the threshold. ‘You’d better come in,’ she says, taking a step back to allow him.
    Automatically she leads him into the kitchen where they usually sit. She doesn’t want to sink into the sofa beside him. In the kitchen they do not have to whisper for fear of waking Lucy.
    ‘Coffee?’ she asks.
    ‘Whatever you’re having.’
    ‘You decide.’
    There’s something irksome about his solicitousness, and yet it gives her something to focus on. It was too frightening just to sit by herself preparing for the unthinkable.
    ‘Tea, then.’
    ‘Herbal?’
    ‘No.’
    She’s immensely relieved that he’s said no. She thinks she would have hit him if he’d said anything about the soothing properties of camomile or peppermint.
    ‘Where were you today?’ he asks.
    ‘We went to the seaside.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘Did Ben miss Lucy?’ she asks.
    ‘He missed her terribly.’
    It’s horribly coy to use their children to express their own feelings and she hates herself for falling into it, especially tonight, but she cannot help smiling at him. She turns her back on him to fill the