Perfect Day

with earning a living as well as being a full-time mother. Nell is resourceful. She’s coped with his moods, with his total uselessness about almost everything.
    In fact, he has become virtually redundant.
    She’d be better off without him.

    ‘And tonight, at all stations down the line, cars are parked, which will not be driven home, and relatives wait, hoping for miracles ...’
    The reporter hands back to the main newsreader, who continues with the rest of the day’s news in the low and reverent voice they’re trained to use in tragic circumstances.

    * * *

    Will Nell be hoping for a miracle, or will she be secretly relieved?
    Alexander is not certain of the answer.
    He knows that five years ago she would have wanted him to be alive more than anything else in the world.
    Then they had Lucy. People say that the love for a child is different from adult love, but he has come to believe that human beings have a finite capacity for love, especially when they’re tired and worried, and all of Nell’s went to Lucy. Suddenly it was unreasonable to ask for what they had had together. It was as if his love was no longer important to her. He didn’t resent it. Or is that dishonest? They never talked about it. It’s second nature to him to retreat into silence, but he never thought that Nell could.
    In the beginning, he knows that she thought herself unworthy of him. She mistook his moods for depth, his emptiness for mystery, and his temper for intelligence, and he didn’t let on because he is weak and a coward.
    Nell is strong. Strong enough to survive on her own.
    Would Lucy miss him?
    He doesn’t think she’d really notice. It’s only recently that he’s started to feel some of the emotions of fatherhood that people talk about. He enjoys taking her out for walks, and swimming once a week, but he thinks that the pleasure is mostly his. Only last Saturday, as they were setting off for the pool, Lucy turned to Nell and said,
    ‘Oh, Mummy, do I have to...?’
    Two female figures silhouetted by a grave, holding hands.
    They will be happier without him. The undeniable truth of it brings a lump to his throat.
    He has to remind himself that he is not dead.
    He has been presented with a Faustian opportunity to abandon his previous life and the sheer possibility of it fascinates him, and fills him with self-disgust.
    Alexander puts a £2 coin on the counter, turns up the collar of his jacket.

    ‘The headlines again. A train has crashed outside London . Up to fifty people are feared dead, many more have been taken to hospital with severe injuries. That’s the news tonight.’
    Alexander does not say goodbye to the bartender. He mustn’t draw attention to himself. A quick surreptitious glance around the bar tells him that no-one has taken any particular interest in him. There is a flashily dressed man reading the Daily Mail, and three Eastern Europeans wearing waisted leather jackets still zipped up and smoking.
    He sets off northwards, his eyes on the pavement, dodging in and out of groups of loud women on their way for an after-work drink, and shaven-headed couriers on micro-scooters. He feels he is being watched, as if he’s the moving target in a computer game and any moment someone he knows is going to pop up, with a greeting instead of a gun — ‘Hello, Alexander!’ in a bleeping electronic voice — and that will be the end of it.
    Game over.
    There’s a camera sticking out of a building above a sign that says real nudity. Who’s watching? The police? A security firm? MI5? Are they near, or far away in some other city, the task of spying contracted out to somewhere where the price of spying is cheaper?
    How many security cameras have caught him in their sights? How many miles of videotape would have to be examined to create a jumpily edited film of his day?
    ‘Here’s a number to ring if anything in this reconstruction jogs your memory...’
    Alexander imagines the presenter of Crimewatch gloating over the moments of salacious footage. Corrr , did you see that? Unspoken, but there in his smug smile. A ratings winner!
    Alexander tries to list the people whose memories might be jogged as they recognize him: the unfamiliar City commuters on the train he took; the man with the pram in the park; the cocky little waiter at the oyster counter in Selfridges...
    But he won’t be on Crimewatch .
    It’s not a crime to disappear.
    Is it?
    No-one’s going to be looking for him, because he’s dead.
    There’s