Perfect Day

magnitude of his betrayal suddenly seems infinitely greater.
    He needs a payphone, but he can’t find one. Every other person who passes him is chatting into a mobile. He’s tempted to grab one and run off.
    Nell.
    There’s a payphone in one of the streets that leads down to Shaftesbury Avenue . A couple of tramps are sitting by the door, but the booth is miraculously empty. When he steps inside, he realizes why. The stench of urine is so strong he nearly gags. Someone has tried to smash out one of the panes of glass. Probably to get rid of the smell.
    The connection is made.
    Alexander breathes again.
    The phone rings.
    Nell has a phone right by her desk. Usually she picks it up straight away.
    He pictures the phone ringing in an empty living room.
    Nell’s in the bath and doesn’t hear it at first, then she’s out, dripping all the way down the wooden stairs.
    Ring ring .
    Nell’s in the garden picking a bunch of narcissus. She drops her secateurs and runs to the house pulling off her gardening gloves as she goes.
    Ring ring .
    If Nell knows about the train crash, it’s very unlikely that she’s gone out, especially without putting on the answerphone . Nell listens to the radio all the time. There’s no way that she hasn’t heard about the crash.
    Alexander puts the phone back down. He sucks in breath, trying to slow down his heartbeat, clasps his hands tightly together. The touch of palm on palm is strangely reassuring.
    In front of his face are several dozen prostitutes’ cards advertising sex with and without violence. What sort of a man rings one of these numbers? He thinks about Marie’s room, the tented bed, the painted window. He switches off the memory.
    Alexander picks up the receiver again and redials home very carefully in case he stabbed out the wrong number the first time. He listens to the familiar ring of the telephone at home, silently rehearsing: Hi, it’s me. Look I’ve just heard about this crash... Yeah, I went for a bit of a walk in Regent’s Park...
    If he says no more, Nell will believe it.
    It will even be true.
    Ring ring .
    After the initial relief of knowing that he’s alive, she may even be pleased to imagine him wandering round the park.
    Ring ring .
    She’ll assume that he was thinking about them. About the new baby.
    Ring ring .
    He’ll have to say that he’s happy about it now.
    Ring ring .
    Maybe it’s not so bad.
    Ring ring .
    It’ll be a new life!
    Ring ring .
    Not as bad as being dead, anyway.
    Alexander replaces the receiver again, and stares at it as if there’s a chance that Nell might at any moment ring him back.
    He tries to picture the calendar that hangs in the kitchen. Was there an appointment that he has forgotten, a parents’ evening, a meeting of Nell’s book group?
    Perhaps she has gone to her mother’s.
    He tries to remember Nell’s mother’s number, but his mind is blank.
    He rings Directory Enquiries, but Lavinia is unlisted.
    ‘Oh. Really?’
    He sounds more disappointed than he actually feels. Speaking to Nell is going to be difficult enough. He doesn’t think he could cope with Lavinia right now.
    He can’t believe that Nell’s just gone out.
    He rings home again.
    Ring ring .
    Where is she?
    Ring ring .
    Why would she go out?
    Perhaps Lucy’s been taken ill.
    Surely the chance of two disasters befalling them in one day is too great?
    Except that disaster has not befallen him, not a real disaster.
    He drops the receiver back onto its rest.
    There must be a perfectly simple explanation that’s eluding him in panic.
    Make a plan.
    Ring from the station.
    And if she still doesn’t answer, he’ll call in at her mother’s on the way home.
    He opens the newspaper.
    All railway services on his line have been suspended.

    In the bar, a television is showing aerial pictures of the crash sight. The camera zooms in.
    Half of the train is burnt-out like scrap in a breaker’s yard, half of it still looks as it usually does, but it’s lying on its side, zigzagging across the line like a child’s toy that’s been played with and discarded.
    He’s standing on the footrest of his barstool trying to get a better look when the bartender asks what he wants, and he sits down quickly, afraid to appear inappropriately ghoulish.
    ‘An espresso, please... That’s my train,’ he adds, quietly, wanting to tell someone. Sharing information will make it sink in.
    ‘One espresso coming up!’
    On the screen, the reporter is standing a few yards