Perfect Day

Nell diverts the question back to Frances .
    ‘What, in the here and now?’ Frances thinks about it. ‘Sitting in my garden with my best friend on a sunny spring day? Yes, I think so.’
    ‘In the now, but not the here, then,’ Nell says.
    ‘Living in a rented basement flat in Brighton and teaching rows of Japanese students every day? What do you think?’ Frances says, taking another long drag from her cigarette.
    ‘So, why?’ Nell asks.
    ‘What? Here? When I could be teaching rows of Japanese students and living in a much smaller rented flat in Tokyo ?’
    ‘You could be doing something completely different,’ Nell argues.
    ‘Like?’ Frances draws seriously on the cigarette.
    ‘Travel?’ Nell suggests.
    ‘Oh, I’ve done travelling. I’ve met a thousand people and I’ve slept in a thousand different beds and I’m no different from when I started, except that my tummy’s never been the same since India. Travel doesn’t broaden your mind. When you’re travelling your mind gets completely constipated with total mundanities like how the hell you’re going to get your jeans dry in a monsoon, and how you know you’re not smoking cow dung. You don’t meet new people, not in any real sense, what you do is pretend to be interested in somebody’s previous life as an accountant in Chislehurst while they demonstrate how their rucksack is in fact a bedroll, one-person tent, penknife and camel saddle, and portaloo all in one...’
    Nell’s laughing. ‘Why don’t you write?’ she asks.
    ‘What, for one of those glossy supplements? Don’t think they’d get any advertising alongside my column,’ Frances says. ‘Oh, I know I should do lots of things, but I’m too lazy. Or perhaps I’m just not miserable enough about my life to do anything about it. What about you?’
    ‘What?’ Nell asks, pretending she doesn’t know what Frances is asking.
    ‘Are you miserable enough?’
    All at once there are tears in Nell’s eyes that she doesn’t want, hasn’t invited. She’s looking straight ahead, trying to blink them away, but she knows that Frances has seen.
    ‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’ Frances asks quietly.
    ‘Why do you say that?’
    ‘You’re not drinking coffee, and you were very weepy the last time...’
    ‘Was I?’
    Curiously, the knowledge that what she is feeling may be due to hormones, rather than existential despair, makes Nell feel considerably better.
    ‘What’s pregnant?’ Lucy suddenly asks. She appears to be playing a complicated game involving an invisible Bill and Ben with Lizzy Angel as Little Weed, but she’s been listening to every word.
    Nell had not planned to tell Lucy yet. Not for a long time yet.
    ‘It’s when a woman has a baby in her tummy,’ says Frances .
    ‘When she’s fat?’ Lucy says.
    Her friend Emma’s mother is vastly pregnant, Nell remembers. She hopes that Frances is not about to explain the facts of life.
    ‘Mummy’s not fat,’ Lucy says.
    ‘Yes, well, there we are then,’ says Frances , picking up on Nell’s reluctance to pursue the subject.
    She mouths ‘sorry’ at Nell.
    Nell can’t quite work out how her secret has suddenly become public knowledge.
    ‘Shall I get you a gherkin?’ Frances asks.
    ‘Oh shut up,’ says Nell, laughing.
    ‘Never say shut up, Mummy,’ Lucy warns.
    ‘You’re right,’ Nell says, then, seeing Frances ’s look of exasperation, ‘Well, she’s right. It’s not fair to expect manners from them if you’re rude yourself.’
    ‘You are becoming your mother!’ Frances says.
    ‘Fuck off!’ says Nell, under her breath.

    Frances knows Nell’s mother better than most people do because she has had the experience of living with her for two weeks.
    Lavinia announced that she was coming to see Japan just after Alexander had moved into Nell’s flat. Even though her mother had the money for a hotel, she seemed quite determined to slum it, insisting that she’d just bed down on the floor, and resolutely ignoring Nell’s protestations that there actually wasn’t a space big enough to bed down in. She was supposed to arrive in the morning, and Nell had planned to demonstrate the impossibility of her staying, then pack her off to a decent hotel, but the plane was delayed, and they had ended up at ten o’clock that evening with everyone’s nerves frayed. Nell and Alexander were at that delicate stage of their relationship where they were totally in love, but didn’t really know each other. She