Perfect Day

swelling from the hormones of pregnancy. The line between her tummy button and pubic hair is darker. She recognizes exactly the same overwhelming, inarguable pressing tiredness that she had when first pregnant with Lucy. She wonders if the child inside her is another girl.
    ‘Something momentous is going to happen ...’
    She can hear Alexander downstairs in the kitchen washing up the cups. He is showing that he wants to try. If they both try, maybe there’s enough love to get by, and to make a happy life for their children. Maybe that is what grown-up love is — an unspoken decision to stick together, because it would be worse to be apart.
    She pulls a long nightie over her head. It’s tartan winceyette, dark green and red, very practical for getting up in the night.
    Tonight, she remembers, she does not have to get up.
    She takes it off.
    Alexander is coming up the stairs.
    ‘It’s funny without Lucy here, isn’t it?’ she calls.
    ‘Very peculiar,’ he says.
    Nell gets into bed, pulling the duvet up to cover her body, suddenly shy at the prospect of him discovering her naked.
    She hears him brushing his teeth and flushing the toilet. He’s taking an inordinately long time, and when he emerges, he has taken off his clothes and folded them in a neat pile. He’s holding a bath sheet around his bare body.
    Is Alexander so determined to change his ways that he’s now resolved to fold his clothes as well? This is a day she thought would never come.
    ‘Something momentous is going to happen... ’
    She’s about to say: Look, you don’t have to go to such lengths!
    But she stops herself. Like most resolutions, this is bound not to last, so why not enjoy it while it does?
    ‘Did you bring my water?’ she says, as he comes over to the bed, still in his towel.
    ‘Oh, I’m sorry...’
    ‘Doesn’t matter.’
    He hesitates, weighing up whether she means it against the bother of going downstairs again, then he switches off the light, drops the towel to the floor and gets into bed beside her.
    He rolls onto his left side with his back to her, the way they always sleep.
    ‘Are you tired?’ Nell asks him.
    She feels wide awake all of a sudden, and strangely happy.
    She can’t tell whether he’s even noticed that she’s naked.
    ‘Very,’ he murmurs.
    ‘Me too,’ she says.
    She turns over so that they’re lying like spoons and when he doesn’t stir at the touch of her skin on his, she tells herself that it’s wiser not to attempt to make love now when they’re both exhausted.
    In the morning, she’ll bring them tea and toast in bed, and maybe, without the threat of interruption, they will have a blissful time together among the crumbs, as they always used to.
    And then they will collect Lucy, and she will present Alexander with his hideous shell rabbit, and maybe they will all go out for the day as a family.
    She moves her head across the pillow and plants an affectionate kiss on Alexander’s back, nuzzling her face in the soft warm hollow between his shoulder blades.

    She wonders why his skin smells of coconuts.

    THE END