Perfect Day

wear. You know, Teevers or Beavers or something.’
    ‘Walkers? Hang on...’
    Nell knows what’s coming next.
    ‘No, he hasn’t got a beard,’ she says. After sport and exercise, facial hair is what Frances most dislikes.
    ‘He’s not like you’re thinking at all. He’s a cool guy, you know. He looks good in clothes. He’s kind of sussed. You feel confident in him. You could tell him anything.’
    ‘Have you told him about the baby?’
    ‘ Er ... no.’
    ‘But he’s really into children, right?’
    ‘Yes, but not in a boring way. In a sexy way.’
    ‘You’re weird.’
    ‘He’s the only person in the world I feel entirely comfortable leaving Lucy with,’ says Nell, trying to explain. ‘Sometimes, if I’m struggling with a deadline, he’ll take her home from school and give her tea. He’s made his house nut free so that she’s safe there. I know that if she falls over, he’ll know what to do. If she starts wheezing, he’ll notice and give her her inhaler. He’s been trained to use the EpiPen ...’
    ‘And that’s the sort of thing you find sexy???’
    ‘I’m bored with everything always having to be so difficult. I know that the difficulty is what I really loved about Alexander initially, but after a while it’s just boring.’
    ‘You want a nice, predictable existence...’
    ‘I want reason. I know it sounds impossibly middle-aged...’
    ‘Reason?’
    ‘You don’t feel like sex unless you’re relaxed, do you? I’ve found it hard to relax since I’ve had Lucy.’
    ‘Doesn’t Alexander ever look after Lucy?’
    ‘Alexander thinks that looking after her is sitting on a bench on the village green reading the Sunday newspapers while she plays on the climbing frame. She fell off once, and had to have stitches in her ear.’
    ‘Poor Alexander,’ says Frances .
    ‘Poor Alexander?’
    ‘He must have felt terrible.’
    ‘He should have been watching,’ Nell snaps back.
    The words hang in the air, making Nell feel as if she’s the one who’s been unreasonable.
    ‘They go for walks, find rabbits...’ Frances remembers.
    ‘Once.’
    ‘Oh come on, Nell, he’s Lucy’s father and she loves him. Lots of fathers don’t quite know how they’re supposed to be with small children. Mine didn’t, but it didn’t mean I didn’t love him, or him me.’
    Frances stands up, busies herself collecting all the dirty cups from the kitchen surfaces. She turns on the hot tap, squirts Fairy Liquid into the sink and plops the mugs in. The atmosphere in the room feels as if she’s angry with Nell. Nell’s confused. She thought Frances was just being devil’s advocate, but it seems that she really is defending Alexander. She doesn’t understand why Frances of all people should sympathize with Alexander of all people. And yet what she’s saying is undeniable. It’s not what Nell expected from her, but she should have known better than to predict what Frances would say. Nell feels an enormous well of fondness for her friend. She watches Frances throwing mugs into the sink and scrubbing them with a long-handled brush. She notices that her shoulders are heaving.
    ‘ Frances , what’s the matter?’
    She stands, stretches a comforting arm towards her back. It is shrugged away before it even touches.
    ‘Nothing,’ Frances says curtly.
    ‘Tell me.’
    Frances turns round, drags her sleeve across her eyes.
    ‘I’m just jealous,’ she says.
    ‘Jealous?’
    ‘Yes, jealous, you daft bitch!’
    The words are said affectionately, but alongside the crying, they’re a shock. In all the years of knowing her, Nell cannot remember seeing Frances cry.
    ‘Jealous?’ Nell reiterates, remembering what it felt like to be an English language teacher trying really hard to understand what a student was struggling to say, but unable to get through the mispronunciation. There was that terrible time when she mistook ‘homeless’ for ‘omelettes’.
    ‘You don’t see it, do you, Nell? You’ve never seen how lucky you are, have you?’ Frances says.
    There’s a mountain of foam building behind her in the sink. Nell wants to say, ‘Turn the tap off,’ but she doesn’t dare. All at once Frances laughs, and turns round again and swishes through the foam with her washing-up brush muttering to the wall in front of her.
    ‘You look like Meryl Streep , or a Botticelli angel or something; you get the dream relationship with a bloke everyone else wants to fuck; you get the baby, the house in the