Perfect Day

to try to get home,’ he says. ‘That train crash was on my line — but by now, they may have laid on a bus.’
    He says it without really thinking.
    Now she is staring at him. Her mouth is open, eyebrows slightly raised, as if she’s about to ask a question. Then her mouth closes. And he knows that her intelligence has processed all the little pieces of information and created a hypothesis too dreadful to speak.
    Attraction, sex, love, disillusion, an attempt at friendship that was bound to fail... hatred.
    The noise of her chair scraping back is like a blast of drill as she stands up hurriedly.
    He stands too.
    ‘Goodbye,’ she says, holding out her hand.
    He looks at it.
    Her pale serious face breaks into an embarrassed smile remembering all the nice things they did. Her fringe flops over her eyes and she pushes it back quickly, before he has a chance to lean forward and touch her.
    There is to be no embrace, no final kiss.
    ‘I think you’ll be a great writer,’ he says, wanting to make her look at him just once more. Inwardly he winces at how arrogant he sounds.
    Her face lights up like the beam of a lighthouse.
    ‘Why?’ she can’t resist asking.
    Women always want more.
    ‘Because you see magic in everyday things.’
    It was a kind of love, he thinks. They have even started their own little language of phrases special just to them.
    She smiles again, nods, turns. Her steps become springier as she walks away.
    And then she’s gone, vanished into the thousands of people celebrating the end of another week.

    Staring at the open door of the café, he feels suddenly, self-consciously tall. At the till, he hands over the saucer and a £10 note, not bothering to wait for change.
    A taxi just misses him as he distractedly steps off the pavement. The scream of brakes and the proximity of the cab, so close it’s as physical as a punch, makes him shiver with an acute awareness of his existence.
    He is not dead.
    Today he has survived.
    He approaches Cambridge Circus, about to cross the road at the same place where yesterday evening Kate led the way.
    He stops in his tracks and turns right instead.
    It’s a tiny choice but it feels bigger with each step.
    He begins to feel the ground beneath his feet, the grey clog of exhaust in his lungs, and, as he approaches Leicester Square , sweet aromatic wafts of Chinese spices. The smell conjures dragons dancing among the crowds in Gerrard Street; the crushing squeeze of Lucy’s tiny hand in his, her little face stranded between delight and terror, the vast steamy interior of a Chinese eating hall where Nell’s tenaciously quizzing the mystified waiter about ingredients; Lucy’s bewilderment as she tastes her first char sui pork; the happy jingle of Nell’s laughter as she pronounces the food ‘ Yummaroney !’
    Alexander quickens his pace towards Charing Cross station. His thoughts become resolutions, one for every five steps. They must come to London more often. They must do more things together as a family. Lucy loved the Science Museum when he took her the other day. He recalls her amazement as the hot air balloon went up at the push of a gas flame button, and the demonstration of giant rainbow bubbles.
    Carnival, museums, ballet, galleries, perhaps even a Prom.
    He imagines how her face will look watching the spectacle of the Nutcracker or listening to Rachmaninov thumped out on a grand piano, or the soft evocative notes of a saxophone at twilight on the South Bank.
    On summer evenings, when opera is broadcast live outside the House on a screen in the Covent Garden piazza, perhaps he will take Lucy along, and whisper to her stories of mistaken identity, treachery and love. And when she grows bored, they will buy ice-creams and sneak away down to the sparkling river.

Twenty-eight

    Why does kissing stop when you grow up?
    Nell cannot remember the last time she really kissed standing up, only that it feels odd to have her feet flat on the floor because she associates kissing with standing on tiptoe.
    His mouth is exquisitely gentle. His palms are flat against her cheeks, holding her face as if it is very precious to him. He keeps pausing to look at her.
    ‘You’re so beautiful
    ‘No, I’m not...’
    He silences her protests with a kiss.
    Their mouths, but not their bodies, are touching. Her arms are held straight against her sides. She daren’t touch him because that would be crossing some invisible moral boundary, but the more rigid she makes