Perfect Day

write the books, get the money, learn to drive, buy the car and everything... he might be divorced by then.’
    They both giggle.
    ‘It’s possible,’ says Marie.
    ‘It’s possible,’ Kate echoes.

Thirty-one

    ‘We could always go back to Italy … ’ Alexander suggests.
    ‘Things are never as good when you go back.’
    ‘No, you’re right,’ Alexander agrees. He thinks for a moment. ‘How about Spain ?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ says Nell, braking as the red tail-lights of a lorry appear on the distant incline in front, her brain refusing to make the leap of faith that the vehicle is moving.
    ‘I don’t know Spain at all,’ she says, putting her foot on the accelerator again when they’re close enough to see the lorry itself, indicating to overtake, even though there’s nothing behind her.
    ‘Neither do I ,’ says Alexander, brightly. ‘We could discover it together. The three of us... The four of us?’
    She knows he’s looking at the side of her face, smiling, trying to elicit a positive response. She can’t look at him, because she’s so tired that the road is taking all her attention.
    The headlights of the car light up a white sign that says ‘Tiredness can kill. Take a break.’
    She should stop, but she wants to get home. The road is so dark it feels like uncharted territory, and Alexander is being so uncharacteristically chatty and charming, she’s lost confidence in her judgement.
    Has she been too hard on him? Has she merely imagined all the moods and silences of the last few months? Has she even created them to fit in with some subconscious plot of her own? There’s no possible reason to leave him if he’s like this. He’s like the man she fell in love with. She wishes that she could react more positively to his suggestions.
    It’s been a long day, she reminds herself, as their turning off the motorway approaches. She’s tired and tense from driving. Everything will be clearer after sleep.

    The tick- tock of the indicator as they turn into the drive and the crunch of gravel, like the drag of a wave on a shingle beach, are comforting sounds for Nell. They remind her of waking up after the long journey back from childhood holidays in Cornwall and the poignant but complete feeling that another summer was over.
    She switches off the engine with a sigh, turns off the headlights.
    ‘Where’s Lucy?’ Alexander asks, as if it’s only just occurred to him that she will not be at home on her own in a dark house.
    ‘Chris took her for the night,’ Nell says, opening her door and getting out.
    Alexander gets out too.
    ‘Chris?’ he says. ‘Who’s Chris?’
    ‘Chris and Sarah, you know. Parents of Lucy’s friend Ben?’
    ‘The waving jogger,’ Alexander says, with a hint of contempt in his voice.
    ‘Have you ever slept with Frances ?’ she suddenly hears herself demanding, looking straight at him across the car roof as if it’s a negotiating table.
    Alexander hesitates long enough for her to know that whatever he replies, he has.
    ‘Yes,’ he admits.
    She’s much more shocked than she thought she would be, even though it now seems so obvious she can’t imagine how she missed the signs.
    ‘Why didn’t you ever tell me?’ she says, crisply, unable to look at him now. She stoops down and snatches an empty sweet packet off the floor beneath the driver’s seat.
    ‘You never asked,’ says Alexander.
    She looks at him despairingly.
    ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I do that, don’t I?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Make things your responsibility when I’m trying to avoid answering questions.’
    ‘Yes. You do.’
    She’s amazed that he’s prepared to acknowledge it. It makes her feel really bad for underestimating him.
    ‘It was only once,’ Alexander explains. ‘I don’t know why I did it. Drink, I suppose.’
    Nell slams the car door. Locks it. She doesn’t know whether she wants to hear the details or not.
    They walk towards the front door side by side.
    ‘We’d been to see this peep-show in Shinjuku...’ Alexander says. ‘No, not like that,’ he adds, as she looks sharply at him. ‘A whole crowd of us. We were drunk. It seemed like a bit of a laugh, but it wasn’t. It was just sad, tawdry... Afterwards we drank a lot of beer. And then it was just me and Frances...’
    ‘And?’
    ‘It was long before I met you. I was ashamed to tell you, I suppose.’
    He finally answers her question.
    ‘And what happened after?’ she says, more softly.
    ‘I made it clear