Perfect Day

do.
    Are we falling in love?
    Alexander pulls away. Her navy blue eyes stare at him through long wisps of fringe, determined not to close before his do.
    ‘It keeps feeling a bit like you’re still inside me,’ she says, matter-of-factly.
    The core of him shifts from his head to his groin. Her body is like a force field pulling him towards her, absorbing him, taking his breath and making it hers. In his head, he tests the words, I love you, and instead of curdling like a lie, the silent phrase excites him like a secret gift he has for her.

    They start walking again. People pass by. Nobody pays any particular attention to them. Couples kiss in parks. It only feels special to him because it’s their first public kiss. He feels as if they have a halo around them, an arc of lights.
    He stops and kisses her again. He can’t get enough of the taste of her.
    ‘I’ve got to go to work,’ Kate says.
    Alexander calculates that it must be five o’clock. Her shift starts at six. He wants to make love to her. He wants to feel her surface against his, to bury his face in the coconut fragrance of her skin.
    It’s taken them five minutes to walk a hundred yards.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
    ‘I should have told my boss I was sick,’ she says.
    ‘So, what did you tell him?’
    She looks at him, weighing up whether she’ll divulge this information which is precious to her.
    That’s for me to know, and you to wonder,’ she says.
    They cross the road to Regent’s Park, veering away from the spot where they watched the elephants’ bathtime , hurrying along the diagonal path that crosses the vast open expanse of park.
    Alexander stretches out his hand and catches hers.
    A bright yellow plastic carrier bag swings between them with a pair of kitten-heel mules and his mother’s book inside.

Nineteen

    Kate glances back at the elephants. Other people are now standing where they stood on the park side of the fence watching the great grey beasts lope around their concrete garden. An elderly man wearing a beige cap; a woman with three small boys each a head taller than the other, standing in a row like a bar graph plotting age against height; a couple of oriental students in silver puffa jackets. If she and Alexander were standing there now, she thinks, an observer would see them differently from the way they were an hour or so ago.
    She cannot pinpoint when it changed. Was it when she gave him the book, was it looking down from Primrose Hill at the panorama of London , or tumbling, or kissing? Perhaps there was no one moment, only a chain of circumstances that gathered momentum and whirled together, turning the attraction of strangers into something else. Closeness? Affection? Love? She imagines a tornado pulling them inexorably into a twisting vortex, and it’s so scary she wants to break free and run across the great green carpet of grass so fast she can’t think.
    A hundred questions buzz around her brain.
    Is the feeling that she knows him real, or is it a distant memory of a child in a story? What happened to the curious little boy to make him grow up into a man who’s so ill at ease with his past? Does he really have no idea how lucky he was to have a mother who could write, a house full of antique carpets, a childhood spent hopping in and out of London taxis? Get real, she wants to tell him. Which is strange because he almost seems less real now than before, when she didn’t know anything about him.
    When she looks at him, she gets a hit of desire, as if he’s so beautiful she can’t believe she’s with him. Her body sparks when they touch, even if it’s just his jacket against hers, and when they kiss she finds it almost impossible to stop herself saying ‘I love you’ to him, as if something’s compelling her to express the deliriously wonderful sensation, and they’re the only words that come close to describing it.
    Is it possible to love someone and know so little about them? Perhaps it’s only possible to love someone when you know so little about them? Or do you only truly love someone when you know and are prepared to accept the things about them that you don’t like?
    Clasped in his hand, her palm starts to sweat.
    Is this the beginning or the end?
    If it were the beginning, they would be eagerly talking to each other, wouldn’t they? Divulging secrets, telling little stories about themselves.
    ‘You’re unusually quiet,’ he says, as they reach the edge of the park.
    She’s not going to