Perfect Day

their overalls stiffened with cement dust, follow her in, bringing with them the smell of old bricks and recently extinguished cigarettes. One orders bacon and sausages, the other a fried egg sandwich. They sit down at the table nearest to Alexander. The woman takes her styrofoam cup of coffee and leaves. One of the men makes a joke about her bottom in a voice that’s loud enough to include Alexander. He can feel them exchanging looks when he doesn’t join in.
    A crowd of Italian students arrives. Not from his school. They scrape the tables together and take every available seat, including the one opposite Alexander without asking his permission. He wonders why it is that students always seem to swear more and talk louder in their native tongue when they’re in a foreign country. Is it the sheer freedom of being away from home, or the collective bravura of a minority? Alexander can see that Marco, flustering up and down the counter trying to fill their orders, is irritated by their vulgarity.
    The workmen wipe their plates with slices of white bread. A great fug of Marlboro Lights rises from the Italians.
    Alexander doesn’t know whether he’s been in the café for five minutes or half an hour.
    He has not experienced the agony of waiting for a girl to turn up since the humiliation of his non-date with Mandy Kominski .
    Mandy was in his year and generally acknowledged as the prettiest girl in the school. It was almost an anticlimax when she immediately accepted his offer to meet for coffee after he’d spent four weeks getting up the courage to ask her. The arrangement was the Cosmo on Finchley Road at eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning. It was an unfortunate choice of venue because in those days the Cosmo had two parts: a coffee bar with its own door, and a much more expensive restaurant beside it.
    Alexander arrived on time, arranged himself at a table in the coffee bar and pretended to read Stendhal. He waited, ordered a coffee, waited, drank a coffee, waited, ordered a coffee. When she hadn’t turned up after three coffees, he paid and left, but as he was walking past the window of the restaurant bit, he saw her sitting inside studying the menu, determinedly not looking up. He daren’t go in and explain what had happened because he’d already spent most of his money. He couldn’t afford to buy lunch, certainly not in there, and he didn’t think he could endure the knowing looks of the middle-aged waiters who served in both sides of the establishment. So he walked away.
    On Monday morning Mandy turned her back on him by the lockers.
    ‘I waited half an hour,’ he said, ‘but you didn’t turn up.’
    ‘No, I decided it was a stupid idea,’ she told him, tossing her recently hennaed hair.
    The sharpness with which she turned his clumsy excuse to her own advantage shocked him, and made him wary of girls who knew that they were gorgeous.

    He feels a similar embarrassment now, a similar hollowness that Kate has failed to show, even though they have no arrangement.
    One of the Italian girls screeches that it’s time for class. They all scrape back their chairs again and pay and leave. The café’s empty again.
    Alexander considers his options. It’s still early. If he goes home now, he can use the day he has given himself to tidy up the garden for summer. He can have lunch with Nell. He’ll pick up a carton of soup and some fresh rolls from the organic shop on his way back. They will talk about the new baby. Nell will soothe away his worries.
    He can see them sitting together at the kitchen table, smiling at each other. Nell takes his hand, says they’ve got hours till Lucy comes home. There’s a hint of suggestion. He rattles through some lame protest about how he was just enjoying talking, but she asks in her quiet little hurt voice, why? What’s the problem? Why did you come home early anyway? Why did you take the day off? What’s going on?
    He says nothing and they’re back at where they were yesterday evening, in thick and oppressive silence.
    Easier just to go into work late.
    Marco is clearing tables. When Alexander goes up to pay he calls to a younger man who has been making toast at the back. Alexander’s missed the opportunity to ask whether Kate’s been in. The younger man wipes his hands on a teacloth that’s tied around his middle and says in a surly voice, ‘Eighty pence.’
    Alexander’s about to hand over a pound coin when he hears himself saying, ‘Can I have a