Read Perfect Day for Free Online Page B

‘you’ll still be who you are even if you’re in Timbuk -bloody-too.’
    ‘I don’t want to change,’ Kate says carefully, ‘I just want to see something different.’
    ‘Well, I’m moving in with Des, then,’ says Marie, defeatedly .
    ‘Up to you.’
    ‘ D’you want a coffee?’ Marie’s as quick to forgive as to threaten.
    ‘No thanks, it’ll keep me awake,’ says Kate, feeling suddenly enormously affectionate towards her sister.
    She takes her skirt off and climbs into the bed. Marie’s scrupulously clean about changing the sheets each time she brings a client back, but the bed still smells of sex and her current perfume.
    Marie fidgets about the flat rearranging things and smoking. Kate sits up and folds herself over the side of the bed to reach her suitcase. She yanks it out, opens the catches and pulls out her notebook. The cover is navy blue leatherette and there is a strap with a lock. Kate has the tiny key in her purse along with a St Christopher medal she was given as a First Communion present.
    Marie watches Kate as she starts to write.
    ‘Still got that book?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Marie gave it to her on her eighteenth birthday. Kate suspected she’d nicked it from W.H. Smith.
    ‘I bought that for you.’
    ‘It’s the best present I ever had.’
    ‘Really?’ Marie’s face lights up. ‘Let’s have a look.’
    Kate happily hands it over, knowing that Marie hasn’t the patience to decipher her tiny writing.
    ‘I met this bloke, but I didn’t bonk him,’ Marie pretends to read.
    ‘Give it back!’ Kate laughs.
    Marie tosses it at her.
    With a stranger, you can be who you want to be... Kate writes.
    Marie draws back the covers and lies down next to her.
    ‘ D’you mind if I have the light out?’
    ‘Go ahead.’
    Kate closes her notebook, locks it and swings down to put it back in her suitcase.
    There’s a light-pull above the bed. The room is dark apart from the pink, green and orange fluorescent stars and the tip of Marie’s cigarette.
    Kate wishes she’d had a chance to write everything she wanted. Sleep will make her more distant from him. In the morning she may have forgotten what it felt like when he kissed her.
    ‘Do you ever make bargains with God?’ she asks Marie quietly in the darkness.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘You know, promises in return for favours ‘Oh, you mean, like, I promise I’ll give up smoking if I’m not pregnant... that sort of thing?’
    ‘Yeah... well, sort of...’
    ‘All the time,’ says Marie. ‘Why?’
    ‘Doesn’t matter.’
    There’s a moment’s silence then Marie says in a singsong voice, ‘Dear God, if I can have this stoopy film star bloke, I promise to go to Mass every day for the rest of my life...’
    ‘Be quiet,’ Kate scolds, but she’s giggling.
    Please God, give me one day with him, and I’ll go back home.
    The thought flies through Kate’s head before she can stop it. She doesn’t think it counts unless you say it out loud.
    ‘If I could just have a day with him...’ she says. ‘You’d promise what?’ Marie wants to know.
    ‘Do you think going to Mass would be enough?’
    ‘For a whole day with the man of your dreams? Doubt it,’ says Marie, giving the hypothetical negotiation serious consideration. ‘Anyway, a day wouldn’t be enough. You don’t want just a day, really. You’re only saying it because you think that in a day he would see how wonderful you were... and then it would be up to him, not God...’
    ‘Don’t be stupid!’
    But Marie’s analysis is uncannily close to what Kate was thinking.
    Marie starts to murmur the Lou Reed song, ‘Perfect
    Day’.
    ‘Stop it!’ Kate says.
    But Marie just gets louder.
    ‘...drink champagne in the park...’ she trills in a Lesley Garrett crescendo.
    ‘It’s not champagne anyway, it’s sangria,’ Kate interrupts.
    ‘What’s sangria when it’s at home?’ Marie wants to know.
    ‘Cocktail or something.’
    ‘It’s about heroin, that song,’ says