Perfect Day

feel the eyes of the school turn to him. The other children enjoyed her visits because it meant an afternoon with no work, but the whole day was ruined for Alexander, even the morning before she arrived, when his every thought anticipated the outfit she would choose for her appearance. The clothes she wore ‘as an author’ were always her most embarrassing — long skirts made out of Indian cloth that smelt of incense, a floor-length knitted cardigan, bright silk scarves, bangles that clinked, and once, to his horror, a bindi mark on her forehead because it was Diwali .
    ‘But we’re not Hindu,’ he remembers pleading over his Sugar Puffs.
    ‘But it’s lovely to celebrate all our cultures, darling,’ she told him, licking the tip of her kohl pencil.
    He can see now that she enjoyed the visits because it gave her people to talk to during the day. It is only since he’s been a parent that he has been able to imagine the loneliness of her life then, and it makes him sad that she died without knowing that he understood. But even though he can acknowledge that she didn’t set out to humiliate him, the recollection still makes him simmer with anger.
    ‘Where do you think she got her ideas?’
    He throws the question back at Kate, then pulls the book out of the bag and flicks through, stopping at certain pages: a little boy lying on a Persian carpet, a little boy beachcombing in drizzling rain; a little boy with his nose pressed up against the window of a taxi looking at the lighted windows of an elegant Georgian terrace.
    ‘Every single thing I ever did or said went into a book.’
    Kate takes the book from his hands, sits down on a bench and starts to read it. She’s sitting right back and her legs are crossed from the knees, swinging. The slow rhythm of her concentration eases the tension that is stretched across his shoulders. He walks backwards and forwards in front of her.
    ‘She must have been really proud of you,’ Kate says at last, closing the book.
    ‘It’s not as simple as that,’ Alexander says, suddenly irritated by Kate’s straightforward take on everything. ‘She stole my childhood.’
    He remembers the time when Disney expressed interest in the film rights to the Sasha books. For a week or two, the excitement in the dark little house was almost tangible as Joan made mental lists of what they would do with the money, and all. the time Alexander was secretly hoping that some miracle would prevent his life from becoming a two-dimensional cartoon with an American accent, like Christopher Robin had. When Disney pulled out of the deal, the guilty feeling that he had somehow caused his mother’s disappointment was tempered by the balm of his relief.
    ‘ It’s part of being a family, isn’t it?’ Kate says breezily. ‘I mean you have all these stories and memories, but there’s like this official version that one member of the family tells best, so they’re the one that always has to tell it at weddings or family get-togethers.’
    Alexander’s immediate reaction is to disagree. His family was not like other families. He has always thought that his childhood was uniquely disadvantaged. He wants her to feel sorry for him, he realizes. Women have always felt sorry for him when he’s told them about his mother’s books. It’s another stage of the mating ritual. If he allows Kate’s version to be correct, then several of the pillars on which he has built his life come crashing down.
    Kate picks up the book again.
    ‘It’s better than a photo album, this,’ she says, patting it. ‘Most parents record their children with a camera, don’t they? Or a video, if they can afford it.’
    ‘It’s not the same thing,’ he protests.
    But he’s asking himself, why? Why isn’t it the same?
    ‘Not everyone has to put up with kids at school taking the piss out of their photo album,’ he says. But it sounds rather lame, and he knows what she’s going to say next.
    ‘Oh, I expect they were just jealous.’
    ‘It didn’t feel like that.’
    He’s horrified by the childish petulance that still has him in its grip.
    ‘No, not then, maybe, but now that you’re grown up,’ Kate says encouragingly. ‘I mean, if she’d been a photographer and taken pictures of you all the time, you wouldn’t feel robbed, would you?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ he admits.
    ‘Or a painter who’d painted you?’
    ‘I don’t know...’
    ‘It’s just what she did.’
    Half of him thinks Kate’s reasoning