Perfect Day

is simplistic, half of him wonders why he has never constructed his past in this attractively uncomplicated way. He loves the clarity of her thought and the refreshing absence of amateur psychology.
    Why not? he begins to ask himself. Why not see it like this?
    A future free from angst and recrimination beckons and he realizes that it is an option he can choose if he wishes to.
    ‘It’s not just that,’ he says, trying, but unable yet to forgive. ‘She stole my imagination. Even the things I made up, she would just take for herself ...’
    He can still feel the sensation of raw disbelief as his j mother handed him a proof of her novel for older children entitled A Way with Dogs, with illustrations by Bertie Rush. It was a story about a couple called the Dismals who lived in a flat beneath a woman who owned two heavy dogs who used to bounce around bringing down chunks of plaster from the Dismals’ ceiling.
    When he demanded that his mother stop turning everything he said into copy, he heard her on the phone only hours later relaying even that to her friends: ‘... and guess what he said, darling? Joan, do you have to make your living out of my life ?... Yes! It’s such an intelligent thing to say, don’t you think? He’s eight. Only just eight as well...’

    ‘It must have been hard for her,’ Kate says.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Well, she was a single mum, wasn’t she, after your dad left? It’s difficult for single mothers ’cause there’s no-one to share all the stories with, is there? No-one’s really interested in other people’s children, are they?’
    Can this be right? Is he capable of seeing his mother in this way? Has he the rigour and the strength? It’s so much easier to let the mess that his life is be her fault.
    ‘...everything’s always their fault. If they don’t love their child enough, their child’s going to hate them, if they love them too much, the same,’ Kate is saying.
    What would Joan have made of Kate?
    If she had been a next-door neighbour, or a babysitter, someone who didn’t threaten closeness, he thinks she would have liked her. But Joan never managed to be objective about his friends. She was always horrible to anyone who attempted to like him, particularly girls. Mandy Kominski (‘she was only the pastry chefs daughter, but she looked like a bit of a tart’); Juliet? ( ‘hardly the stuff of Shakespeare, is she?’).
    He sees his mother standing in the kitchen of the house in Kentish Town , wearing a huge purple Aran sweater over an old, brushed-cotton nightie . The sweater hasn’t been washed for a while and the undersides of the sleeves are slightly greasy. She’s grinding fresh basil with a pestle and her chest is concave with the effort of it...
    He switches the memory off. There’s a great rush of relief that she’s not there to judge Kate.

    ‘What happened to the magic carpet?’ Kate wants to know.
    ‘It got thrown out,’ he says.

    Kate winks at him, and then she’s off, running straight down the steepest part of the hill through grass that has grown long with the onset of the fine spring weather and has not yet been mown this year. He watches her skip and leap over the bumps and clumps, then stumble and roll over and over and over. He starts to run after her, falling and rolling, and they both end up at the bottom panting and laughing, lying on their backs just a few feet apart, looking up at the sky. His laughter stops abruptly. He turns his face towards her, tries to laugh some more and cannot. Her face is so close he can taste her warm, apply breath.
    He wants very much to make love to her again.
    ‘We’d better be off, then,’ Kate says, getting up, brushing grass from her front, then turning, not waiting for him.
    Bits of grass cling to her back. He brushes it with the flat of his hand in swift strokes. She makes him turn around and does the same to him.
    He steps towards her and takes her in his arms, holding her against him so tightly that her warmth seems to cross the boundary of clothes and skin and seeps into him.
    He kisses her lips, a quick, firm kiss, then another, softer, drawing away after each, searching the beautiful face that’s uptilted to his.
    He smoothes the hair from her face, kisses her again, drinking the sweetness of apples and chocolate, closes his eyes, wraps his arms tighter around her, keeps kissing.
    Their lips and bodies are having a silent conversation.
    Do you feel this way?
    Yes.
    Do you want to make love?
    I