Perfect Day

the journey and accused Nell of wasting her precious time by going to Mothercare to buy one.
    It was the first occasion that Nell caught a glimpse of why Alexander had spent his adult life living as far away as possible from his mother. She felt sorry for her, and guilty for using up one of the few hours left to her, but she was appalled by the sheer selfishness and immediate emotional blackmail Joan was prepared to employ. It was a battle Nell knew she had to win, not just for Lucy’s safety, but for her own integrity. She also saw that, left to his own devices, Alexander would have backed down and taken the risk with Lucy’s life to pacify his mother. And that realization had shocked her.
    On the way to Mersea , the atmosphere in the car was thick with Joan’s bad temper, and Lucy, normally such a happy baby, cried almost non-stop. Whenever Nell thinks about Joan, which she tries not to do often, she sees her expression as she craned her neck round from the front seat, her eyes sliding from Lucy’s wailing face to Nell’s, making her feel like a totally incompetent human being.
    Once they had managed to open the great rusty padlock on the hut, the inside was like a time warp, with nets and lines left for twenty years, and the stale smell of shells and old creosote. The striped fabric of two deckchairs had rotted through, so they stood just inside the hut watching the tide come in. The faint mist of drizzle became rain so heavy and fast that the sky merged into the sea. Alexander draped a perished yellow waterproof cape over his head and ran to buy oysters. His mother wanted to fry them with bacon in a blackened pan, but they couldn’t get the one-ring Calor gas stove to work, and so ate them raw.
    A few days later, when Joan died, the taste of oysters was still in Nell’s mouth.

    Perhaps Lucy thinks that the shell shop smells horrible because of some forgotten memory of that ghastly day.
    Nell wonders what has happened to the hut at Mersea . Has Alexander sold it? Alexander’s immensely disorganized about his mother’s estate. Letters about her books pile up on his desk; he can’t seem to bring himself to open them. It was only when Nell took a desperate phone call from a publisher on the point of printing new editions of Joan’s Sasha books without signed contracts that Nell realized that Alexander’s inability to sort out her affairs was actually losing them money. She made him promise to deal with everything, or at least put it in the hands of a lawyer. She offered to do it herself, but he wouldn’t let her. She knows that he hasn’t done anything since then.

    The shop assistant wraps the horrible ornament Lucy has insisted on buying her father in tissue paper and puts it in a plastic bag.
    Serves him right, Nell thinks, wondering whether she was being completely truthful when she told Frances that she was not angry with Alexander.
    ‘Let’s get some air,’ she says, needing to blow the stench of shells from her hair and clothes.

Fifteen

    There’s a camera attached high up to one of the lampposts of Portman Square and it’s pointing in their direction. They say that if you’ve got nothing to hide you shouldn’t mind being filmed, but Kate looks down at the pavement guiltily the moment she spots her hidden observer.
    If they were to play the film back later on television, she wonders if the viewers would be able to tell anything from the blurry sequence of still frames. She and Alexander are obviously together, because they’re walking along the broad pavement at the same pace, but they’re not touching or talking. They could be colleagues, or cousins. There’s no visible sign that half an hour ago they were having sex.
    Were there security cameras in Selfridges watching the changing rooms?
    Kate feels her face going bright pink.
    A sharp breeze is blowing down Baker Street , cutting through her clothing, making her skin feel bare, cooling the dampness at the top of her legs. She feels as if she looks different, like when she first lost her virginity, guilty and at the same time glowing with the aftermath of pleasure.
    She glances at Alexander at the same moment as he turns his eyes to her. They smile as if they’re sharing a private joke, then, equally quickly, look away.
    Did the camera’s shutter open for that exhilarating second of intimacy or will the record simply show fuzzy figures taking giant jerky steps up the street, their heads bent against the wind?
    Out in the open air,