Perfect Day

it.
    ‘Tell you what,’ she says, trying to look nonchalant even though her heart seems to have slipped down to her crotch and started beating against the black plastic seat of the stool. ‘If I dare to eat an oyster, you’ll have to dare do something you’ve never done.’
    ‘It’s a deal.’
    He asks for half a dozen oysters and two glasses of champagne.
    ‘ Champagne !’ says Kate. ‘Why champagne?’
    ‘Do we need a reason?’
    ‘I don’t normally drink.’
    ‘Nor do I . Not at lunchtime, anyway,’ he says.
    The assistant puts the plate in front of him.
    He squeezes lemon over the shimmery liquid surface of the oysters. She’s sure one of them shivers. They’re not alive, are they? Now she’s thought it, she thinks someone did once tell her that they’re alive.
    ‘After you!’ Alexander says.
    ‘What do you do with them?’ she stalls.
    He shows how to lever the flesh from the pearly shell.
    ‘You can tip it all into your mouth, or you can eat it with a fork.’
    He tips his head back and swallows the oyster in one.
    She picks up hers with a fork. ‘Looks horrible,’ she says.
    She puts it in her mouth. Smiles at him. Then the flavour hits her like a wave of dirty seawater. She picks up the glass of champagne and knocks it back like a can of Coke.
    ‘Like it?’ Alexander asks.
    All she can taste now is the champagne. She drains her glass. The bubbles prickle pleasantly in her mouth and almost immediately the alcohol makes her feel as if she’s floating.
    ‘I like the champagne.’
    She’s not about to tell him she’s never had that before either.
    He orders her another glass.
    The young male waiter, who’s wearing a navy blue skullcap that looks a bit French, is trying to figure out what the relationship is between them. She doesn’t like his supercilious look.
    You can keep your dirty thoughts to yourself, she wants to tell him.
    She drinks more champagne.
    Alexander continues to eat the oysters. She doesn’t know how anyone can stand so much cold fishy stuff in their stomach.
    ‘I might be able to stand the flavour if they weren’t so chewy and kind of animal,’ Kate thinks, and then realizes that she’s said it out loud.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ says Alexander, as the waiter clears the plate of empty shells. ‘I’m being very selfish, aren’t I? It’s just that I love oysters.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘We used to go to Mersea for weekends, in Essex ...’
    ‘Who’s we?’
    She can’t believe she’s said that.
    ‘... and the whole place smelt of oysters.’
    ‘Yuk!’
    Perhaps she didn’t say it. Just thought it.
    ‘My mother had a hut, where she painted, and I used to mooch around collecting beach debris. In the evening we would eat oysters, sometimes raw, sometimes wrapped in bacon and fried. We had one of those one-ring stoves, you know, with a gas canister?’
    Kate doesn’t trust herself to speak. She just nods.
    ‘Angels on horseback,’ Alexander says, ‘or is it devils?’
    ‘Horses,’ Kate replies.
    He looks at her oddly, and she hears what she’s just said; she tries to laugh as if she was making a joke. She’s drunk!
    She has an image of him as a little boy beachcombing. In her mind, the sea is gentle and the beach is pebbly. The sun’s just gone down and very soon the only light will be his mother’s little blue Calor gas stove. She doesn’t know why but it makes her feel weepy.
    ‘What about your dad?’ she says.
    Alexander sits up straight.
    ‘My father left when I was five,’ he says.
    His body has gone all stiff and she wants to put her arms round him and feel him relax against her shoulder, but she thinks that he’d probably shove her away and put a barrier up around his sadness, and not let her back in. So she just sits there.
    The champagne seems to have made the shop much more noisy .
    The waiter clatters a round metal plate with the bill on it. Alexander looks for cash in his wallet, then puts down first a Switch card, changes his mind and replaces it with a Connect card.
    Kate watches the swap. She knows what two bank accounts means. It means that he is married. She sees the look the waiter gives the plastic card, and knows that he’s thinking the same. The till seems to take an inordinately long time to process and authorize the payment. Finally it chunters out a receipt and the noise is so loud it fills the Food Hall.
    I am drunk, Kate tells herself. I am drunk and I cannot trust what I am thinking. There’s loads of reasons for