Perfect Day

to spoil it, so she leans over and kisses him.
    His hands come to her face, palms flat and dry against her cheeks, trembling with tenderness, and his eyes close.
    Floating in their pink cloud, she knows that at this precise moment he loves her. She wishes she could freeze time here, now, in cherry blossom heaven with him.
    His hands move from her face, smoothing over her shoulders, down her arms, taking her hands, inviting her gently to lie down beside him. She feels the bite of twigs against her back. He’s looking at her and she wants to tell him that he can do anything he wants to her.
    He sits up again abruptly, as if he’s suddenly remembered where they are.
    ‘Let’s go home,’ she whispers, her voice throaty with emotion.
    She sits up.
    He brushes twigs from the back of her hair, then pauses to smooth her fringe across her forehead, out of her eyes. It’s become his special gesture of affection towards her.
    He takes her hand and, crouching like crabs, they scuttle away from their cherry blossom hideout.

    The sun has dropped in the sky and the air feels a few degrees colder. Kate pulls the edges of her jacket together.
    The Friday night traffic is stationary on the Euston Road . After the stillness in the meadow, the traffic noise is disorientatingly relentless.
    Outside the Great Portland Street station, an Evening Standard billboard proclaims in bold black handwriting:
    TRAIN: 50 DEAD
    Alexander is pulling at her hand and running, shouting as if his life depends on the taxi he’s spotted. It stops. They jump in, tumbling against each other into the corner of the back seat, laughing.
    Her head is on his chest right where his heart is thudding. His outer thigh is pressed up against hers. As the taxi sprints down to the next red light and brakes, they’re thumped closer together. She recalls their chaste taxi ride the evening before, both of them as far apart as possible against the side windows with seatbelts sensibly fastened against any unpredicted movement. She stares out of the window. It feels like the height of decadence to be travelling by taxi when the sun’s still shining and the pavements are littered with people drinking after work.
    Her gaze fixes on a blonde young woman with a small child who is standing outside the doors of an office building. The child asks something. The woman bends forward and sticks a dummy in its mouth. The automatic doors of the building open, and four people spill out. Three men, one red-haired woman. Two of the men have mobile phones clamped under their chins. They hurry away. Something about the configuration of the redhead and the remaining man makes it clear that there’s an attraction between them. They stop at the bottom of the steps and have a conversation. Red says something that makes him laugh. Then the woman with the child spots them and starts walking towards them. The laughing couple haven’t seen her. They step towards each other for a kiss. The woman with a child is right behind them, and they’re about to kiss. Then the woman with the child taps the red-haired woman on the shoulder...
    The taxi lurches off, and Kate’s kneeling on the seat, like at the back of the school bus, to watch the denouement.
    ‘Phew!’ she says, turning round, and slumping back in the seat. ‘She’s her sister.’
    ‘What?’
    Alexander has not been aware of the unfolding drama. Men never seem to see things like that.
    ‘Maybe they meet up once a month or so, so that the one who’s working can see her nephew and the mother can get out of the house for an afternoon,’ she elaborates. ‘What?’
    ‘You’re unbelievable,’ Alexander says, kissing her nose.

    * * *

    She’s never really noticed how hideous the carpet in the hall is and how horrible the lingering scent of air freshener which doesn’t quite mask the cooking smell underneath. When the timer on the light runs out halfway up the second flight of stairs, she’s almost inclined not to push it in again so that Alexander doesn’t have to look at the dirt in the corners and the scuffed skirting board. The landing reeks of pine toilet cleaner and cigarettes. There are burn marks in a semicircle on the floor around the payphone.
    In the room, she holds up the jar of Nescafé like a character in an advert.
    ‘Coffee?’
    ‘Yes. Yes, please.’
    Now, it’s as if they’re rerunning the awkwardness of the day before, both determined to create distractions from the palpable desire that shoots between