Perfect Day

shrinks away from Frances .
    ‘I haven’t been planning to do anything,’ she says.
    ‘You even look good in black.’
    ‘Stop it!’ Nell shouts.
    ‘... You won’t even have to look like a bitch.’
    ‘Stop it,’ Nell whispers.
    She feels as if she’s being battered.
    Is this what Frances really thinks, or is it some horrible, inappropriate joke? Nell stares at the person she thought loved her just a little bit too much, and sees how wrong she was. Frances hates her.
    Suddenly all the tiny oddities and signals that didn’t seem to fit Frances very well, which she always privately put down to a slight inclination towards lesbianism, fall into a different shape.
    ‘Why do you pretend to hate him?’ Nell asks.
    ‘It’s easier,’ Frances says simply.
    ‘Lucy!’ Nell calls, her focus suddenly sharpening.
    ‘Oh, Mum-my!’
    ‘Get ready. Now!’
    Surprised by the hard edge of Nell’s voice, Lucy puts on her anorak and picks up her dolls immediately.
    ‘I am ready,’ she says.
    Nell hurries her along the dark passageway to the front door, opens it and hustles Lucy up the slippery stone steps to the car. She does not look back. Her hands are shaking as she does up Lucy’s seatbelt and closes the car door. As she walks round to her side of the car, she can hear Frances inside the flat howling Alexander’s name. And still half of her wants to go in and tell her that everything will be all right, and the other half just wants to get the terrible anguished sound out of her head.

    Nell’s on the road out of Brighton before it occurs to her that other cars keep flashing her. She looks at her dashboard display and sees that she has forgotten to turn her headlights on. She twists the left-hand indicator wand. The lights come on. She breathes as if for the first time since getting away from Frances .
    ‘We had a lovely day, didn’t we, Mummy?’ Lucy says.
    ‘Yes, we did,’ Nell says.
    ‘It doesn’t matter that we didn’t say goodbye to Frances , does it?’ Lucy asks.
    Their hurried exit has obviously disturbed her.
    ‘No, it doesn’t matter,’ Nell reassures her.
    ‘It doesn’t matter that we didn’t say goodbye to Daddy this morning, does it?’ Lucy asks.
    Nell hesitates.
    ‘No, we’ll give him a big hug when he comes home, won’t we?’
    ‘Yes we will.’
    In the rearview mirror, Nell watches her child settle back happily.
    If he comes home. Should she prepare the child for the possibility that he might not return, or that he’s injured? No. Not yet.
    A car passes her. She had not been aware of its approach. She grips the steering wheel very hard. She has no confidence about where her car is on the road. She sees red lights in front of her and takes her foot off the accelerator. The red lights recede and she realizes that they were not the brake lights of the car in front but the tail-lights. It’s as if the part of the brain that holds the memory of driving has been shut down. She looks at her speedometer. She’s only doing 30 miles an hour on a dual carriageway. At this speed, it’ll take over two hours to get home. In the opposite lane the traffic returning from London looks like one entity — a string of chaser lights — moving towards her. Nell wonders if shock actually alters perception.
    Mirror, signal, manoeuvre, she tells herself, recalling the basics of driving from long ago.
    ‘Shall we have the radio on?’ she asks Lucy.
    ‘All right, but no news,’ Lucy says. ‘I’m completely sick of news.’
    Where does Alexander sit on the train? It’s the front two carriages that are affected. Does he always sit in the same place? Does he get himself a cup of coffee from the buffet and read the paper? Is there a buffet? Or one of those trolleys? Is there enough room for him to sit down and prepare his lessons? Does he sit at a table, or in one of those seats with a pull-down tray like on a plane? Or does he stand up, trying to affect indifference as he’s pressed against other people’s bodies as the train goes round bends? She doesn’t know. She has never asked him. She knows nothing of the details of his day.
    She pictures him standing there, his first inkling that something has gone wrong, the train skidding to a halt, making himself rigid for impact. There’s a burning smell, and Alexander’s shouting that they must get out. Quick.
    ‘Mummy?’
    They’re coming up over the South Downs . They’ve gone at least five miles and she can’t remember anything about