Perfect Day

indulgence.
    ‘Not worried about drinking, then?’ Frances says.
    ‘Worried?’ For a moment Nell doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and then she remembers the baby inside her.
    ‘It’s only one glass,’ she says, trying to reassure herself and appear calm.
    When she was pregnant with Lucy, she didn’t know about the precautions you’re meant to take when carrying a baby. Later, when she learned about all the foods she should have avoided, she wondered whether she could have prevented Lucy’s troubles if only she’d been more vigilant at the beginning.
    They had moved to Italy because they wanted to do this new thing together in a place that was new to both of them. They’d chosen a hilltop town in Umbria so as to be in the countryside after the busy sweat of years in Tokyo . The nearby university provided enough English lessons to keep them in work. They lived cheaply, ate simple fresh food and usually drank a glass of the local wine with their meals. They were incredibly happy.
    Lucy was a robust baby, who smiled all the time and laughed in her sleep. When Nell tried to wean her, she developed an angry rash, and the connection seemed so obvious that Nell went back to breast-feeding. The rash, which Nell later found out was eczema, would flare up occasionally for no apparent reason, but it was only after they returned to England that her allergies became a serious problem.
    When Nell thinks about their life before all the worry began, the images that come to her mind are the weekend they spent in Rome on Lucy’s first birthday. It was the first time they had gone away with her and it was perfect. The hotel, near St Peter’s, was better than they’d thought it would be. They had a huge elegant room on the second floor with two balconies. Lucy slept well. They made love often, the change of tempo, buzz of mopeds, and decadent smells of the city exciting them after their lazy summer slumber in the country.
    In the mornings, they would stroll through streets that were half gold, half shadow, pushing Lucy in her buggy, the autumn air just crisp enough to make city walking pleasurable. There was so much to see, they ate lunch on the hoof, breaking off little bits of pizza and handing them to the baby, without even a thought about the ingredients. On the Sunday afternoon they walked in the Villa Borghese where birdsong competed with the rumble of the city. They bought paper cones of green olives from a vendor. Nell remembers chewing the olives, thinking of all the generations of Italians back to Roman times who had tasted that curiously ancient flavour. She remembers closing her eyes, taking a picture in her mind of the three of them together wandering along the gravel paths in the sun-dappled shade of big trees, and trying to commit to memory that blissed -out feeling of total happiness. She remembers buying ice-cream cones at Gioliti , the taste of peach sorbet, the cool sweet essence of peaches like heavenly balm on a warm afternoon. She remembers crouching down beside the buggy to let Lucy have a delicious lick.
    It was only chance that made them choose olives, not peanuts, peach not pistachio. It’s strange to think that one different split-second decision could have turned the idyll into a nightmare.
    ‘Something happened to you about five years ago,’ the colour therapist had said to Nell, ‘that changed your life completely.’
    ‘Yes,’ Nell told her, ‘I had a baby.’
    It didn’t feel right when she said it, because it wasn’t having Lucy that changed things. Having Lucy made everything better. They were so happy, so complete. But were they just playing at being a happy family in some arcadian fantasy? Was their relationship so tenuous that it could not survive reality?
    What changed their life was when they came back to England , and Lucy nearly died.

    ‘Do you know what my favourite food is, Frances ?’ Lucy’s asking.
    ‘Sausages?’ Frances guesses.
    ‘No, silly, Chinese.’
    ‘Really?’ Frances glances at Nell.
    ‘We went up to Soho for Chinese New Year. It was one of the most nerve-racking experiences of my life,’ Nell says, ‘trying to establish ingredients from a busy Chinese waiter with very little English.’
    ‘We saw a Chinese dragon,’ Lucy says, ‘and do you know what it was wearing on its feet?’
    She’s so keen to tell this bit, she doesn’t wait for a guess.
    ‘Trainers!’
    They were staying in Alexander’s mother’s house in Kentish Town when