Perfect Day

dull becomes vibrant.

    At North Greenwich he gets off the train. The walls of the station are covered with tiny deep blue tiles like the lining of a Hollywood swimming pool. The vast hall of station that stands as a monument to the failed ambition of the Dome is empty like an airport terminal that has closed for the night.
    Outside, it is eerily quiet. Alexander looks at a map of the area and then at the bus information. The tube station is much further from the centre of Greenwich than he imagined. There are still buses due, but it’s difficult to believe that they will be making the journey to this deserted place on the chance that there’s a passenger.
    There’s nothing lonelier than standing at a bus stop late at night when you don’t quite trust that a bus will come. Alexander fidgets from foot to foot, then sets off walking away from the great white hump of the Dome.
    A sense of foreboding settles on him as he crosses the wasteland of the Greenwich peninsula, his footsteps echoing metallically around him. He walks past the looming skeleton of a gas cylinder, a vast empty car park. The new, well-signposted, well-lit roads are sinister without traffic.
    Underground he was shrouded in the cosy security of optimism, but the real world above feels boundless and unwelcoming. Doubt rippled with fear races through his mind as he quickens his step across the tarmac and concrete no man’s land.
    Perhaps he was naive to think that everything can be all right after what he has done today.
    In the distance, a brightly lit double decker bus rises out of nowhere on its uneconomic route to a place where nobody goes any more. Alexander sprints towards a bus stop.
    The driver opens the doors to let on his sole passenger but does not return his huge, relieved smile.
    Inside the bus is full of colour. Bright yellow poles to grip, jauntily patterned seat coverings. The doors hiss and clunk shut behind Alexander like a protective valve. He feels safe again.
    Signs of life begin to appear beside the road. A car wash. A warehouse of tiles. A council estate. A hospital. Now the bus is back in familiar territory, trundling through the mix of drab poverty and gleaming wealth that characterizes the streets of inner London . There’s a tattoo shop, a tatty fish and chip bar and next to it a brand new Internet café; a Chinese supermarket, a side street of bijou terraced Georgian houses with Saabs and Japanese 4x4s parked outside; an old-fashioned barber’s shop with a red and white twirly pole, a cut price furniture store. The grimy thoroughfare becomes a boulevard running beside the elegant white palaces and colonnades of Greenwich College and Maritime Museum .
    Alexander remembers walking in an unruly crocodile down this very street with his school class. He can’t recall much about the observatory, or the museum, except standing astride the time line being slightly disappointed that it felt exactly the same as standing anywhere else.
    In the afternoon, they were allowed to run loose in Greenwich Park . His mother had forgotten to pack him a lunch. He sat slightly apart from the other boys in his class, and Mandy Kominski sashayed over and offered him half of her bagel. He remembers the softness of the cream cheese and lox, the hard shine of the crust, and Mandy smiling at him as he took his first bite and his attempt to smile back as best he could with his mouth full.
    ‘She fancies you!’ the boys chorused.
    And later, Mandy’s friend, whose mouth was full of braces and whose name he cannot remember, came over to deliver the whispered message that yes, Mandy did fancy him. But he had no idea what to do or say, and the smoked salmon repeated on him all afternoon.

    The bus stops outside the museum to pick up a middle-aged woman with dyed blond hair, painted dark eyebrows and a fake fur coat. She glances at him, then sits down, tossing her head a little haughtily. The bus starts again.
    Mandy’s declaration by proxy was his first experience of relationships with girls. He remembers her confidence, how attractive it made her, and how devastated he was to be dismissed a few weeks later for his failure to turn up to their first date. She never gave him a second chance. It made him wary of confident women for many years.
    At university, and beyond, the women he chose to go out with were usually beautiful and neurotic, with long dark hair and suicidal tendencies.
    And then there was Nell.
    Nell has an inner confidence that makes