Perfect Day

make her more interested in it. Parenthood is full of these fine judgements. Nell makes the split-second decision to remain seated. She puts a hand lightly on Lucy’s shoulder, and together they watch the aerial pictures of the train, followed by a reporter standing in front of the wreckage. Back in the studio, the newsreader is interviewing the Minister for Transport. Then there’s another report, from a station car park where the reporter is saying with grave melodrama,
    ‘...and only time will tell whether the owners of these cars will return tonight to drive them home...’
    As the camera pans out, Nell’s clutch tightens on Lucy’s shoulder.
    The car park in which the reporter is standing is unmistakably the next stop down their line. Some of the fast trains stop there and not at their station. Nell sits forward listening intently for a repeat of the details of the train they’re talking about.
    ‘Mummy...’
    ‘Shush!’
    ‘... our main story tonight is the train crash on the...’
    ‘Mummy!’
    ‘Yes, what?’
    The news moves on from national disaster to foreign famine.
    ‘Mummy, is that Daddy’s train?’

Twenty-three

    ’… And now back to our top story today. Another packed commuter train has crashed just outside London ,’ says the DJ. ‘Our reporter’s at the scene. Andy, do we know anything further about why this happened?’
    ‘We have a few more details, mostly just confirming what we had been unofficially told,’ the reporter replies and then, as if he’s reading from a press release, lists the time of the train, its starting point and its destination.
    Alexander’s standing in the newsagent’s on Old Compton Street . The words from the radio echo in his head like a premonition, because he has heard them before.
    He hears the same words every morning crackle over the loudspeaker at his station.
    The information takes a moment or two to sink in.
    It is his train that has crashed.
    In a flash of extraordinary clarity, he suddenly understands why this day has been so unreal.
    He is dead.
    The unnatural light under the cherry tree was Heaven.
    For a moment, relief floods pleasantly, warmly, through his veins. He’s perfectly happy, like the moment just after waking in a palpitating sweat from a bad dream.
    He is dead.
    He is not responsible for anything that has happened today.
    He finds himself staring at the cover girl on this month’s issue of FHM.
    This morning, he remembers, he caught the earlier train.

    ‘... fire in the front two carriages was so hot, about 1,000 degrees we understand, and the emergency services are saying that it may be impossible to tell how many people have perished in there for some time. Recovering the bodies is going to be a long and gruelling process. I understand they’re going to have to identify people by jewellery, and frankly, they’re saying that they may never know the exact number of people who travelled on the... ’
    Alexander’s thinking of the gilt earrings of the woman who sits opposite him, the Walkman earphones clamped round the brush head of the man in the seat beside. It occurs to him that if he’d been in his usual seat, there would be nothing to identify him. If he had waited for his usual train, he might now be a pile of gravelly ash, the products of cremation.
    Instinctively, he touches his arm, taking a pinch of shirt sleeve between thumb and middle finger and rubbing it together as if testing the quality of the fabric.
    ‘Anything else?’ the man at the till asks him.
    Alexander roots about in his jacket pocket for change.
    He takes an Evening Standard off the top of the pile and pushes past the queue that has built up behind him.
    Outside, he scans through the first few pages for details.

    * * *

    Nell!
    Nell will have heard about the crash and will have tried to ring him.
    His school will have told her that he hasn’t been in.
    He switched off the mobile she gave him and he doesn’t know whether when she rings it, there will be a message to tell her that it’s off, or whether it will simply ring and ring and ring.
    He remembers the Paddington crash, the terrible poignant ringing of mobile phones all round the burnt-out carriage as people desperately tried to speak to relatives who would never answer.
    He retrieves the mobile from the depths of one of his pockets and switches it on. It beeps twice, then the screen says ‘Low Battery’ before cutting out.
    Nell.
    Nell will be beside herself with anxiety.
    The