Perfect Day

says.
    ‘Why’s that?’
    ‘Because their stars are always crap,’ she says, ‘and if you were an astrologer you wouldn’t write crap stars for yourself, would you?’
    She’s off again looking across the river, pointing things out to him.
    ‘Look at all those churches peeping over the top of the buildings,’ she says. ‘Look at this duck. The river’s so high, he’s frightened to go in. Go on, Mr Duck, you’ll float, you daft bird!’
    Alexander looks at the duck who’s standing on the embankment wall shivering.
    ‘Look at this!’ Kate scampers over to a row of little shops called Gabriel’s Wharf. The wall behind has been painted to look like a pastel market square. ‘Gorgeous, this, isn’t it?’ she says.
    He thinks it’s a kitsch tourist trap, but he doesn’t say so.
    He watches her longingly gazing into windows filled with beads and rings and mirrors with sparkly mosaic frames.
    ‘Like treasure,’ she says.
    The word unravels the knot of memory that has been tugged tight ever since he found himself following her out of the bar into the bustling sunshine of Soho .
    When he was a child he had an imaginary friend who appeared in his dreams and led him on adventures. He remembers exactly the excitement of following him through the gap in the hedge at the bottom of their tiny patch of garden, along the overgrown path down the back where the dustbins lived, through the used car lot, and down the warren of terraced streets towards the swishy long grass of Parliament Hill Fields. In search of treasure.
    The memory seems so clear now, he’s slightly shaken by it, as if what he is doing now was foretold long ago.
    ‘What?’ Kate asks him.
    ‘What?’ he repeats, inanely.
    ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,’ she says.
    Beside the river, where the Jubilee Walk ends and the pavement narrows, a man and a woman are kissing on a bench in the softening light, drinking each other, oblivious to anyone else in the world.
    The waterfront path winds its way between converted warehouses and wharfs. Beneath the arches of Blackfriars Bridge a saxophonist is playing ‘ Moon River ’. The melancholy notes sing that the day is ending, the adventure almost over. Soon Alexander will wake up, his imaginary friend will be gone.
    In front of the Tate Modern Kate looks back at him to check he’s still there, misses her footing on the slippery gravel and crashes down onto her left knee.
    Alexander crouches down beside her.
    ‘Sorry,’ he says, feeling guilty that she was looking at him and not at her feet.
    ‘It’s not your fault,’ she says.
    Her left hand is grazed. She brushes the dust off, then turns her leg over cautiously. Her trousers are torn and there’s gravel embedded in the bloody wound of her knee.
    ‘Yuk,’ she says.
    ‘Can you walk?’
    ‘Course I can.’
    She takes his hand and he pulls her to her feet.
    ‘We’d better get this washed,’ he says, looking round, as if a first aid post will suddenly manifest itself on the lawn.
    He holds out his arm and she half hops along beside him. He feels her energy in the grip on his arm and he can tell that she’s in some pain but determined not to cry. Instinctively, he drops a kiss on the top of her head. She looks up at him.
    ‘I’m sure there’s a hospital near here,’ he says briskly, trying to divert the sudden frightening and overwhelming sensation of attraction.
    ‘I don’t need a hospital. I just need cleaning up.’
    There seems to be nobody around. The Globe theatre has closed for the night. A last crocodile of Japanese teenagers is piling onto a coach. The other buildings around are offices. The air temperature has dropped a degree or two.
    ‘Look,’ says Kate: ‘the water is so high, it looks like the City is floating.’
    Across the river a couple of gold weather vanes atop church steeples glint with the last rays of evening sunshine, but the buildings are lifeless grey. It does look like a massive island, almost sinister, and it is eerily quiet apart from the slop of water beside them. It feels as if they are alone in a deserted city.
    And then, around the next building, they find themselves in the hubbub of the forecourt of a busy pub. The noise and laughter of after-work drinkers and the smell of cigarettes and beer are as welcome as an oasis in the desert. Kate looks up at him.
    ‘ London ’s like that,’ she says.
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘One minute you’re all alone, then you turn a corner and it’s so noisy,