Perfect Day

patient, I won’t bring you with me again.’
    And then her cross face broke into a smile, and she knelt on the carpeted floor in front of him, undoing the buttons of his stifling winter coat, and saying kindly, ‘I don’t suppose that’s much of a threat, is it, my darling?’
    That was the day he had his first taste of Coca-Cola with his lunch at the Golden Egg.
    Memories of his mother always start with still-raw anger then slide towards guilty nostalgia.

    Kate pulls open the heavy door of her changing room and emerges onto the shop floor, a vision in pink. The dress gapes a little at the top but the colour suits her surprisingly well, the boyishness of her haircut lending the candyfloss sparkle unexpected sophistication.
    ‘Gorgeous,’ he says.
    She stands up straighter, confidence filling out her bony shoulders. She does a twirl.
    ‘I feel like a fondant fancy,’ she says. ‘All I need now is a little sugar violet on my head.’
    He senses that the shop assistant who’s hovering behind him is not amused.
    ‘Try the other one,’ he says.
    Kate goes back inside.
    He waits again, flicking through the hangers slowly, pausing to consider each garment like a picture in an art gallery, as if meaning will emerge from long and serious enough scrutiny.
    After what seems like ages, the door opens a crack.
    ‘I think I might need a bit of help with the buttons,’ Kate says.
    He hesitates, looks around. The shop assistant has disappeared.
    ‘There’s loads of room in here,’ Kate says opening the door a bit further.
    He’s surprised by the vastness of the cubicle. You could hold a small dinner party in it.
    She has the grey dress on, and the fragile silk beaded chiffon swathes her body like a dewy cobweb.
    ‘How do I look?’
    He thinks of the appropriate word. She’s too human to be a woodland nymph.
    ‘A changeling.’
    ‘Is that good or bad?’
    ‘It’s magical,’ he says.
    ‘A changeling in a changing room,’ she says, ‘I like that.’
    He loves her resoundingly human accent that brings reality thumping back whenever he’s in danger of dreaming.
    ‘Turn round.’
    She obeys.
    ‘There are no buttons,’ he points out.
    ‘No,’ she says, with a tiny throaty giggle which gives him an instant erection.
    He steps towards her, looking at her face in the mirror in front of them. Then he pushes the straps of the dress off her shoulders and kisses her beautiful smooth nape. Her eyes close. Her head lolls back against him. He wants to have her like that, looking at her in the mirror. He hoists her dress up over her hips. She’s not wearing knickers. He unzips and pushes himself against the peachy soft hemispheres of her bottom. Her eyes are still closed. He pushes her forward. One hand splays out on the mirror, the other is a tight fist by her side. She opens her eyes, stares into his reflected in the mirror for several long seconds. He thinks she’s trying to tell him that she would let him do anything to her, which he finds simultaneously incredibly exciting and alarming.
    Her closed hand opens at the same moment as his goes to his pocket.
    Suddenly they’re both holding up to the mirror brightly coloured condoms surreptitiously filched from Marie’s sweet jar.
    They exchange a wonderfully complicit smile.
    He’s not terrified any more.
    Outside the cubicle, the assistant says, ‘How are you getting on in there?’
    ‘We’re getting on really well,’ Kate calls.
    Her voice is muffled with arousal, like tears.
    ‘Do you need any help?’
    ‘I think we’re fine,’ Kate says, then laughter bursts out of her like a sneeze.
    The spell is broken.
    He can feel the sharp edges of the glass beads pressing against the most sensitive bits of his flesh. He drops another kiss on her shoulder, puts his hands on her waist, gently turns her round. Her palm print remains like a ghostly flower on the mirror, and then vanishes. She turns into his chest, embarrassed now to show her face, having made herself so wanton.
    He leaves her in the cubicle to get dressed.
    They hand the shimmery dresses back to the assistant.
    Neither of them says a word.

    He tries to enter into the spirit of shopping with her, stopping to suggest a short silver dress made of fabric that looks like tinfoil but feels soft to the touch.
    ‘It’s the sort of thing you’d wear at Christmas,’ Kate says, as he holds it up for her to look at: ‘... if you were a turkey.’
    She marches on through the shop, barely glancing at