Perfect Day

says.
    Kate turns on the bath taps.
    He knows that it’s time for him to go, but it is so strange, so completely unexpected to find himself in such a room, he finds it difficult to make the move. It’s like that bit of a dream when you’re beginning to wake up but you don’t want to leave, and you try to will yourself back to sleep.
    ‘Did your sister decorate it herself?’ He hears himself sounding like a guest making polite conversation at a vicarage tea party.
    On the bedside table there’s a glass bonbon jar filled with brightly coloured wrapped sweets. Without really thinking about it, his hand goes into the jar. They’re not sweets, they’re condoms. He looks at the flat strawberry-coloured packet in his hand and drops it quickly back, hoping that Kate hasn’t noticed.
    ‘God, this is the worst gum I’ve ever chewed,’ Kate says.
    ‘What?’
    ‘That’s what Marie says.’
    She nods at the jar.
    ‘Oh. Right.’
    ‘What do you think this is, then?’
    Kate’s fingering the shiny tenting.
    ‘Silk?’ he suggests.
    ‘Lining material from gents’ suits,’ says Kate triumphantly, as if she’s caught him out again. ‘She got it cheap from somewhere in Whitechapel. She saw them doing the same sort of thing on Changing Rooms, you know, romantic, a touch of the Arabian Nights about it. The carpet spoils it...’
    He notices for the first time the dusty Axminster in an ugly pattern of red and brown.
    ’…but you can’t have stripped boards in a place like this,’ Kate tells him knowledgeably, ‘you’d hear everything. Sit down.’
    There’s a choice of a hard wooden chair that has clothes piled on top of it, or the bed. He perches on the chair.
    ‘How did your sister get into this line of business?’ he asks, waving a hand around.
    ‘She’s always had men after her. She had a load of photos done and came to London . She got a part in a movie, you know the sort I mean. It went from there, I suppose. She’s a table dancer now,’ Kate informs him.
    She bends to test the temperature of the water in the bath. A gap between the edge of the T-shirt and the top of her pants reveals the base of her spine and the two slight hollows just above her buttocks.
    He wants to touch her there.
    She kicks off her shoes, pulls down her trousers, wincing as the material catches her wounded knee, and then before he’s had time to think about leaving, she steps into the bath with T-shirt and knickers still on, sits down and smiles at him as if to say: you didn’t think I was really going to take my clothes off in front of you!
    A few wisps of her blood thread up through the water.
    Her panties become transparent, showing her little triangle of black pubic hair. The bottom of her T-shirt goes loose. He’s more aroused than if she had stripped. He feels his erection pressing against the zip of his trousers.
    ‘I must go,’ he says quietly.
    He bends over the bath and touches her lips with his. For half a second there is a slight, soft adhesion. Her breath tastes orangey, his nostrils breathe in the coconut smell of her.
    ‘Thanks for the walk.’
    He turns to leave, not able to look at her again.
    ‘I enjoyed talking to you,’ he says at the door.
    ‘Me too,’ she says, then bends her knees and slides the top half of her body, including her head, right under the water.

    * * *

    The front door slams behind Alexander. He looks at his non-existent watch again.
    A woman with short peroxide white hair is walking up the alleyway. She stops in front of him. She has a key in her hand. It takes him a moment to realize he is standing in her way.
    ‘Did you leave something inside?’ she asks in the same accent as Kate’s.
    He looks at her. She has Kate’s face, but rounder, some would think prettier, but her eyes have no expression. It’s Kate’s face when the dream turns into a nightmare.
    ‘No,’ he says.
    ‘It’s just gone nine,’ she tells him.
    ‘Right. Thanks.’
    ‘The night’s still young,’ she says. Her lifeless eyes glimmer with invitation.
    ‘I’m going home,’ he says, and hurries down the alleyway, not looking back.

Two

    It’s silent under the water. Kate stays down as long as she can, and when she bursts up for air, she hears the door to the flat being opened. She knows that it can’t be him coming back in, but she allows herself a moment’s hope. The touch of his lips is still on hers. She shuts her eyes and sinks down into the water again. Her breasts feel