Perfect Day

bowl of spaghetti alia carbonara in front of Kate. A plume of steam rises between them.
    ‘I’m starving,’ Kate says, half apologetically.
    Gas in the green San Pellegrino bottle escapes with a prolonged sigh as Alexander twists the metal top off.
    Kate picks up her fork and spoon and begins to tackle the bowl of pasta. ‘You haven’t guessed, have you?’ she says, as if the mechanical distraction of eating food has finally allowed her to speak.
    ‘About what?’ he asks. He’s no longer very interested.
    ‘About my boy.’
    ‘Boy?’
    ‘Son. My son.’
    He laughs.
    There’s a little bit of eggy sauce clinging to each side of her mouth. She looks about twelve. He can imagine many guilty secrets she might have omitted to reveal to him, but not a child.
    ‘Jimmy,’ Kate says.
    Now she’s smiling. She looks down, digs enthusiastically into the spaghetti. ‘He’s seven,’ she says, through the pasta.
    A child who is older than Lucy. He can’t believe it, but why would she lie?
    ‘It’s better if you use the side of the plate,’ Alexander tells her. ‘Look!’ He takes the fork from her hand, pulls a couple of strands out of the pile and winds.
    ‘That’s how they do it in Italy ,’ he says. ‘It’s so much easier.’
    She looks sceptical, but tries it.
    ‘You’re right!’ she says, surprised.
    ‘The secret is not to take too many strands at once,’ Alexander says.
    ‘And then you don’t have to open your mouth so wide,’ she says, happily depositing another forkload in.
    ‘Where’s he now?’ he asks, because he feels he ought to.
    ‘Home,’ she says. ‘With my mum and my brothers.’
    Another forkload of spaghetti goes in.
    Alexander tries to enjoy the fact that she’s such an incompetent pasta eater, but can’t. It turns him off.
    Kate takes a gulp of his mineral water to wash the food down. Her lips leave a cloudy imprint on the rim of his glass.
    ‘Did it not cross your mind?’ she asks, swallowing.
    ‘Why should it?’
    ‘Not even when I gave you the book? How did you think I knew about Sasha’s Magic Carpet if I hadn’t been reading it to a child?’
    He’d pictured her poring over a worn-out copy in her local library. He hadn’t calculated that by the time she was old enough to go to the library, she would have long outgrown Sasha. Sasha’s Magic Carpet wasn’t even in print when she was a child. The Sasha books’ politically correct quality went out of fashion during the Thatcher years when children’s minds were fed on a diet of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
    He’s certain that it has not for one second crossed his mind that she might have a child. Is that because he’s insensitive, stupid, or just selfish?
    He imagined her free and thought he loved her.
    Now, he feels nothing at all.
    ‘Why did you tell me you were going round the world?’ he asks.
    She thinks for a moment.
    ‘I was testing out how it sounded. You can be a different person with someone you’ve never met, can’t you?’
    He nods.
    ‘Anyway, I still want to,’ she says.
    More pasta.
    ‘You’ve got a child, haven’t you?’ Kate asks.
    He nods again. No point in dissembling now.
    ‘ D’you know how I knew?’ she asks, brightly, almost triumphant in her powers of detection.
    ‘No.’
    But he’s sure that she’s going to tell him.
    ‘When I cut my knee yesterday. You crouched down to look at it, and your voice was different. Just a bit kinder than it usually is. I knew that you’d dealt with some grazed knees before.’
    ‘You knew yesterday?’
    ‘I didn’t know consciously,’ she says, backtracking. ‘Well, if I did, I pretended to myself that I didn’t.’
    Women are better at the subconscious. They absorb theories about it from articles in glossy magazines, just as they effortlessly absorb biological facts about the elasticity of the skin and the structure of hair. They blame men for failing to recognize their hidden motives and desires. But isn’t that the whole point of the subconscious? Is it technically even possible to be conscious of your subconscious?
    Kate is scooping up the creamy leftovers in the bottom of her bowl. She puts the spoon in her mouth and holds it there thoughtfully for a long time.
    ‘And you’re married,’ she says so definitely that he thinks she might be trying to tempt a negative.
    It’s something that he can confidently answer no to, but if he. does , he won’t be telling her the truth. He’s got no reason to lie to her any more,