Perfect Day

the responsibility of being in charge of another person’s life until they’re old enough to take responsibility themselves almost overwhelmingly frightening.’
    ‘You just have to do your best, don’t you?’ says Frances .
    ‘But you could always do better...’
    ‘But you’re incredibly selfless and devoted!’
    Frances makes it sound almost like a character flaw.
    ‘No,’ Nell argues, ‘sometimes it’s boring. I don’t think our generation of women learned to be bored. We’re not good at it. There are days when I feel I’m just going through the motions, pretending to be interested in everything she tells me. Sometimes I find myself reading her a story and if she interrupts me I’ll have forgotten where I was on the page when we go back to it. It’s as if I’m on autopilot. I’m not sure I am a very good mother.’
    ‘You are kidding! You gave up your job to look after her...’
    ‘But I didn’t like teaching much.’
    ‘Nobody looks after their own kid these days,’ Frances says, taking her second shot.
    ‘They do. Most of Lucy’s friends are looked after by one or other of their parents.’
    ‘That’s the country,’ says Frances , dismissively.
    ‘You can sell off bits of the boredom, to a childminder, if you like,’ says Nell, ‘but there’s a trade...’
    ‘Yeah, you get a life,’ says Frances .
    ‘Not everyone has a child who requires such a lot of attention,’ Nell says, defensively. She doesn’t know whether Frances is implying criticism or whether it’s just her own insecurity about not having gone back to work after having the baby that’s making her feel under siege.
    ‘It’s quite a job, actually, making sure she has the right medication at the right time, cooking food that she can eat, keeping the house as free from house dust mites as possible. It’s not something you can just franchise out,’ she says.
    ‘You can have too much attention,’ Frances says.
    ‘I’m talking about trying to give a child who didn’t ask to be born as safe a life as possible. That’s not too much attention, it’s fundamental human rights,’ says Nell.
    She hits her putt. The ball goes in.
    Frances takes two more goes.
    ‘I hadn’t thought about it like that,’ she admits, picking the ball out of the hole. She gives Nell an appreciative smile which makes Nell slightly guilty for being so assertive.
    ‘Anyway. It made me start writing,’ she says. ‘I never would have done that if I hadn’t stopped working.’
    ‘You’re lucky you can write,’ Frances says reflectively. ‘Do you miss work at all?’
    ‘I miss the conversation,’ Nell says.
    Frances looks at her as if she’s mad.
    ‘My name is Miguel. I hhhhave two brothers and one sister,’ she says in a thick Spanish accent.
    Nell laughs.
    ‘Do you remember Mr Sato?’ she asks.
    ‘Mr Sato?’
    ‘You know. We were doing superstitions. You must remember!’ Nell puts on a very hesitant Japanese voice and says, ‘Ah... Ah... in Japan , no superstitions. But... ah... not good to eat eels with plums.’
    Frances looks blank.
    ‘We nearly wet outselves laughing. It’s like, oh, thanks for telling me that. Next time I’m in a restaurant I’ll know not to order the eels with the plums then. As if...’
    Frances is still looking at her as if she’s crazy, and Nell suddenly remembers that it was not Frances she shared the earnest Japanese man’s food-combining tips with, but Alexander.
    It was one of those private jokes couples adopt at the beginning of a relationship and quote at each other the whole time, bursting into laughter at the drop of a key word, and excluding everyone around them from their new-found intimacy. She remembers perusing menus, spotting the kanji for eels, pointing it out to Alexander, who would put on a serious expression and say in an ominous voice, ‘Please, no plums. I know it’s tempting, but it’s for your own good.’
    And them both hooting with laughter.
    It’s so long since they’ve really laughed like that together, she’s forgotten that it’s something that they do.

    ‘I miss the them and us- ness of the staffroom,’ Nell says.
    Frances pulls a face.
    ‘The feeling that you’re all thrown together in a foreign land. You’re there because you want to experience another culture, obviously, but it’s just so comforting to talk to someone who eats Weetabix for breakfast and used to watch Blue Peter. The irony is that now the only adult conversation I can get is