Perfect Day

inside and returns with a packet of coloured chalks.
    ‘The school I’m at now is so behind the times, it’s almost fashionably retro,’ she explains. ‘They still have blackboards.’
    She bends down to the child’s level.
    ‘You can draw me a picture in my garden,’ she says.
    ‘Like Bert!’ Lucy squeals.
    ‘Who’s Bert?’
    ‘Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins ,’ Nell explains.
    ‘ Cor blimey, guv !’ Frances says, doing a terrible impression of Dick van Dyke’s terrible impersonation of a cockney accent.
    ‘Afterwards, we’ll jump through the picture and have a jolly holiday,’ says Lucy, rather formally.
    ‘You can only do that if it’s a really good picture,’ Frances says.
    ‘What shall I draw?’
    ‘Somewhere you feel like spending a jolly holiday,’ Frances says, clearly beginning to find Lucy wearying.
    Nell and Frances watch as Lucy begins her task, dragging a yellow chalk across the paving stone with such determination that it breaks in her hand.
    ‘I think I’ll use a different colour,’ Lucy says.
    She draws a blue line across the top of the picture. Her tongue comes up over her top lip as she tries to keep the colour within the frame of the paving stone.
    ‘She’s terribly serious, isn’t she?’ Frances whispers.
    ‘They all are at that age,’ Nell says, immediately jumping to her child’s defence, ‘especially little girls.’
    ‘So, do you want another girl, or a boy?’
    It’s typical of Frances to ask a question straight out of left field, which flusters Nell because she realizes she hasn’t even thought about what sex the baby might be.
    ‘It’s very early days,’ Nell says.
    Frances says nothing. She is someone who uses silence well. It’s a natural teacher’s gift. One that Nell never really mastered because silence makes her uncomfortable and she can’t help rushing in to end it.
    ‘It’s a bit of a shock, actually,’ Nell says, in a low voice.
    ‘An accident?’
    ‘No, not an accident...’ Nell’s floundering.
    ‘What does Alexander think?’
    ‘I really don’t know,’ Nell admits.
    She’s trying to balance the process of having a meaningful conversation with Frances with saying as little as possible that Lucy can understand. Frances doesn’t recognize the sort of code that adults with children use to communicate in their presence.
    ‘You haven’t told him?’
    There’s an eagerness about Frances ’s voice that makes Nell think that she would love it if she hadn’t told Alexander.
    ‘Of course I’ve told him,’ she says, snatching control back. ‘We just haven’t had a chance to discuss it properly.’
    ‘How is Alexander?’ Frances says in the slightly clipped tone she always employs to discuss him. It’s as if her dislike is very near the surface and needs to be constantly kept in check.
    ‘Fine,’ Nell says. ‘Working hard.’
    It’s the stock answer she gives her friends in the village when they enquire after Alexander. It’s a commuter village. Most of the men, and some of the women, travel up to London on the train each day. Most of them have jobs in the City and some of the men arrive home late, smelling of wine bars. She thinks that Alexander drinks beer with the other teachers in the pub round the corner from the school: enough to make him too tired to speak to her, not enough to make him stagger as he walks up the lane to their house. People see him as they’re locking their bolts and calling their cats in.
    Alexander’s late home these days, they sometimes remark, outside the school gates.
    Working hard, Nell replies.
    It satisfies them.

    ‘Working hard?’ Frances says. ‘That doesn’t sound like Alexander.’
    ‘Can we jump through my drawing now?’ Lucy asks.
    ‘Let’s have a look.’ Nell gets up quickly, glad of the distraction.
    It is a yellow beach with a pink person and an orange bucket almost the same size as the person.
    ‘Is that you, sweetie?’ Nell asks.
    ‘Yes,’ Lucy says proudly.
    The figure is a circle on top of a triangle with four prongs sticking out, each with five more prongs attached. Nell’s happy to see that the face in the circle is smiling.
    ‘I love the way they always put blue along the top, and nothing in between,’ says Frances .
    ‘That’s the sky,’ says Lucy.
    ‘But the sky comes right down to the sea,’ Frances argues.
    Lucy looks at her as if she’s stupid. Then looks up at the sky, blue above.
    ‘Air doesn’t have a colour,’ she pronounces, waving