Perfect Day

says Number 1.
    She’s got long dark hair that she keeps throwing back over her shoulder and she’s smoking.
    ‘Depends. I mean it’s an easy way to get a fuck, isn’t it?’
    Number 2 has a bleached blond crop and a diamond in the side of her nose. She’s eating sandwiches out of a triangular plastic Pret à Manger box.
    ‘He would have got that anyway!’
    Dirty cackles from both.
    ‘How was it?’ asks Number 2, through a mouthful of food.
    ‘Fantastic!’
    ‘Well then...’
    Kate thinks that Number 2 is jealous. She wants to say to Number 1, I really wouldn’t tell her anything that you wouldn’t want spread around. But then Number 1 isn’t a very nice person either because Number 2’s got a blob of mayonnaise on her nose and she’s not telling her.
    ‘Trouble is there’s you know who...’ says Number 1, putting one cigarette out and lighting another, drawing in the smoke as if it’s her first of the day.
    ‘Is she still around, then?’
    Is this an ex-girlfriend who’s trying to make a comeback, a wife, or a confidante who doesn’t approve of his liaison with Number 1? Kate wants to know.
    ‘He says that they haven’t been getting on...’
    ‘They always say that. So, are you going to see him again?’
    ‘Well, he said—’
    Alexander plonks himself down beside Kate and hands her a white chocolate Magnum. Kate’s a little disappointed not to hear the rest of the story.
    ‘How did you know it was my favourite?’ she asks him, peeling off the wrapper.
    ‘It was all they had,’ he says.
    He’s got an orange Calippo himself.
    ‘You seem more like a white chocolate kind of person,’ he says, retracting his original reason as he catches her glance at his lolly.
    He’s used to buying white chocolate Magnums, Kate thinks. That doesn’t mean anything, except that he’s used to being with a woman. Men aren’t as crazy for white chocolate as women are. What did she expect? He’s hardly likely to have no past. Everyone’s got some baggage. You can’t assume a wife from a white chocolate Magnum. Can you?
    ‘How much do I owe you?’ she asks, getting her purse out of her jacket pocket.
    ‘Don’t be silly.’
    ‘I haven’t paid for anything today.’
    ‘Well, when you’re in Bali , you can have a fresh pineapple juice on me.’
    Kate takes a very tentative bite, but an enormous crack opens up down the side of the chocolate coating, and she knows that a big piece is going to fall off onto her lap as soon as she takes her mouth away.
    Bali . She had forgotten all about Bali .
    The chocolate falls, she kicks it away with her heel. A lone pigeon pecks at it and tries to carry the whole piece off to some less public place where he can eat it all by himself, but he’s not quick enough and a whole flock of pigeons descends squabbling; some of the geese look up from the lake to see what the matter is.
    Alexander, who appears unaware that he’s sitting on the edge of a major bird incident, suddenly notices. His eyes fall on the piece of chocolate and on Kate’s boot trying surreptitiously to shoo the birds away. He looks from the ground to her face and smiles. And then he puts his free arm around her shoulder. She lets her head rest on his shoulder, and he squeezes her arm, gently, just above the elbow, and there’s more intimacy in that small squeeze than in anything they have yet done together.
    She sits perfectly still, not wanting to move a cell in case it makes him take his arm away as casually as he draped it there.
    How sad he is.
    She would love more than anything in the world to make him happy.
    She watches the passers-by.
    A woman with a toddler in a buggy is smoking, flicking her cigarette ash far too casually near the child’s head. She’s wearing a cheap-looking waisted leather jacket and her ears are pierced in about twenty places.
    Next there’s a couple with a pram and it looks like their first time out with the baby. The guy keeps bending over the pram to tuck in the baby’s blanket, and the woman’s tummy hasn’t yet gone back in after birth.
    An old bloke hobbles past. He has a shock of white hair and a stick, and looks a bit like the one who used to lead the Labour Party, the one who wore a duffle-coat to the Cenotaph, and that’s all anyone can ever remember about him. Kate can’t think of his name.
    There’s an elderly woman with a fitted greenish tweed suit and two miniature dogs on leads who are straining to get away. Her hair is exactly the same