Perfect Day

unconscious in a hospital bed, and now he is here smiling at her. Why does she worry so much? Perhaps if she didn’t worry so much, he would smile more. Perhaps she’s the one creating all the tension.
    ‘I think these antihistamines are working better,’ she says.
    ‘Oh?’
    He’s clearly forgotten everything she told him about Lucy’s last visit to the consultant.
    Somebody has to do the worrying, she thinks, seesawing back to irritation.
    ‘Do you want a drink?’ she asks.
    ‘No, thanks. I’ve had enough. There was a bit of a leaving do for Mel and Joe,’ he explains.
    ‘Was it fun?’
    ‘Not really. I’m sorry I’m so late. I thought you’d be in bed.’
    The rare apology makes her suddenly optimistic. It wasn’t unreasonable of him to assume she’d be in bed. She always is. Maybe she should wait up for him more.
    ‘I thought I’d wait for you.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘I bought a bottle of champagne...’ she says, unable to find a way into telling him what she has to tell him.
    ‘ Champagne ?’
    He glances at the calendar on its hook in the kitchen. She can almost hear his brain reading the date, repeating it, then running through birthdays and anniversaries and failing to find a match.
    ‘I shouldn’t be drinking, really,’ she says, hating her coyness, but dreading his reaction.
    ‘Why the champagne then?’ he asks, and as he says the words, she sees the pieces of information she has just given him joining up in his brain.
    ‘You’re not pregnant?’
    His laugh sounds as if he wants her to join in and assure him that it is a joke.
    Optimism whooshes out of her like the breath from a balloon escaping before she can tie it up. She can only nod.
    As she watches him attempting to keep an acceptable expression on his face, she remembers how it was the first time, and she struggles to hold back tears.
    ‘Say something, Alex.’
    ‘How did that happen?’ he asks.
    ‘The usual way,’ she says.
    ‘I thought the usual way was that two people talked about whether they wanted to, and took the necessary precautions if they didn’t.’
    His voice is cold and controlled.
    ‘I haven’t noticed you taking any precautions,’ she responds.
    ‘That’s because I assumed...’
    ‘You assumed that I put my cap in every night of the week and lie there waiting in case you’ve had a pint more than usual on a Friday night?’
    God, is this what they’ve come to?
    He looks pale and sad.
    She knows he is remembering the Friday in question, and she feels terrible for describing a rare and deliciously abandoned night together as a lapse in contraception. She wishes she could take back what she’s said.
    ‘Just that once?’ he says.
    ‘Didn’t they tell you that at school?’
    ‘Don’t, Nell.’
    Don’t be sarcastic, he’s saying, because it’s not you.
    ‘I take it that’s a no to the champagne, then?’ Nell says. Her emotions seem to be offering her only two choices — hurt defensiveness or tears. She doesn’t want to cry because she thinks it would be manipulative.
    ‘I’m just not sure... can we talk about it in the morning? I’m... knackered.’
    He chooses a word that has a history for them. When Lucy was only two, she corrected Nell. ‘I’m not tired, Mummy, I’m knackered.’ It’s one of those phrases that become part of a family’s language. It’s his way of offering her a crumb of intimacy because he does not appear to be able to move across and hug her.
    Nell watches him walk up the wooden staircase. She hears the creak of the board in the bathroom, the toilet flushing, water running as he cleans his teeth. Then he goes to their bedroom, walking straight past Lucy’s door.
    Nell sits on the bright blue sofa until she is quite sure that he will be asleep. If it were a more comfortable sofa she would spend the night there. She wonders whether something as simple as buying a sofa bed would make a difference to them. If they each had a place to withdraw to, then perhaps he would not feel the need to keep his thoughts from her.
    When they first lived together, in Tokyo , their flat was so small they could hardly move without touching. He said then, in the heady days of being in love, that it made him feel free to have no secrets from her. And she remembers the thrill of receiving such a compliment tempered by a slight foreboding that he was offering her a too-extravagant present which she knew he could not afford.

    Nell stares at nothing. Recently she’s found that her