Where There's Smoke (1997)

by Simon Beckett

  Lucy bit off whatever she had been going to say. "So have you actually found a clinic that'll do it?"

  "There's one in Birmingham -"

  "Birmingham!"

  "I know it's a long way, but they seem pretty good." That wasn't the only reason. Kate had phoned a good portion of the clinics listed in the HFEA's brochure—including the one she had already been to—before eventually finding one that was prepared both to treat a single woman and use a known donor.

  Lucy was tight-lipped with silent criticism. "So what do you do now?"

  "I've made an appointment to see the counsellor. I suppose I'll take it from there."

  Angus had begun to fidget. Lucy slid him off her knee. Sniffling, he tottered back to his fire engine. "Don't you think this is all getting a bit out of hand?"

  "Why? You said yourself there was no harm in talking to somebody about it."

  "Yes, but you've already done that." Lucy watched Angus sit down heavily on the grass and pick up the red plastic toy. "This isn't just talking any more, is it? You're acting like you're planning to actually go ahead with it."

  "You mean you thought I wasn't serious." Kate heard the acerbic note creep into her voice.

  "No, but…" Lucy stopped.

  "What?"

  "It doesn't matter."

  "Yes, it does. What?"

  Lucy sighed, as though she found the entire subject tiresome. "Well, I just know what you're like. If you get your mind set on anything, you're like a dog with a bone. You won't let go, and I can see this turning into something like that. Another 'project' you've got to see through. And I think you're making a big mistake."

  Kate could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks. "And that's all it is, is it? Another project?"

  Lucy wore the expression of someone who wanted to talk about something else, but wasn't prepared to let go of their point. "No, I'm not saying that's all it is, but -"

  "Yes, you are!" Kate could feel the last strings of her temper slipping through her fingers. "You act like this is just some sort of—of whim you can talk me out of!"

  A flush had begun to creep up Lucy's neck to her cheeks, which were still red from earlier. "Look, Kate, it's your life. If you're serious about wanting a baby like this, then I'm not stopping you. But I still think you're digging a hole for yourself, and you're not going to get me to change my mind, so you might as well stop whingeing on about it."

  The words hung in the air between them. The silence grew, broken by distant laughter in the park and the sound of Angus pulling the fire engine's ladder up, then down.

  "I'd better go," Kate said.

  Lucy gave a terse nod. Neither of them mentioned the lunch they were supposed to be having. Kate walked away without looking back.

  Her anger barely diminished during the tube ride back to the agency. Even there the conversation still left her raw enough to snap at Caroline for failing to find a file quickly enough. She went upstairs to her office. It was stuffy and close, so she opened a window and turned on the fan before sitting down to work.

  The breeze from the fan stroked her face as she called up the Parker Trust file. But the concentration wouldn't come. She found herself either staring out of the window or doodling on her notepad while the laptop's cursor blinked, waiting.

  When the phone rang, she answered it, irritatedly. It was Lucy. "Sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have had a go at you."

  Kate's sense of umbrage lingered a moment longer, then collapsed. "It's okay. I was a bit touchy myself."

  "Fancy coming round for dinner some time this week? We can have a proper talk then. And I promise I won't let Jack anywhere near the kitchen."

  Smiling, Kate accepted, glad the near-argument had been patched up before it could begin to fester. But Lucy's words stayed with her, pricking at her thoughts like a splinter. Am I doing the right thing?

  There was a commotion from downstairs. Kate hoped a drunk hadn't wandered in. It sometimes happened. She pushed herself back from her desk, and as she did so the raised voices were drowned by sudden thuds and bangs.

  There was a scream, and then Kate was out of her office and running downstairs.

  The door at the bottom of the stairs opened before she reached it and Caroline ran out. From behind her it sounded as though the office was being wrecked.

  "They're fighting! They're fighting!" Caroline yelled, wide-eyed.

  Kate pushed past her. Josefina was at the other side of the office, white-faced. A desk was tipped on its side. Chairs were scattered, and in the middle of the room two figures wrestled. One was Clive. The other was Paul.

  "Stop it!" she shouted. They took no notice. Clive flicked her a quick glance, and then grunted as they slammed into a filing cabinet. It rocked, almost falling. Kate ran down to the basement kitchen. A heavy red fire-extinguisher was clipped to the wall. She tugged it free and staggered back upstairs with it. There was another crash from the office.

  The two men had fallen onto a second desk, still clutching each other. Hugging the extinguisher under one arm, she pointed the nozzle at them and set it going. A jet of water shot out, and Kate moved nearer, directing it into their faces. They spluttered, shielding their eyes, but Kate kept it on them until they broke apart.

  "Get away from him, Clive!" she ordered, still keeping the spray on them. Clive hesitated. "I said get away! Now!"

  Reluctantly, Clive moved back. Kate struggled to turn the extinguisher off. The water finally died to a dribble, then stopped. She glared at where Paul and Clive stood, both panting, water plastering their shirts to their chests and dripping off their faces. Around them, the office was in turmoil. At least one chair was broken, and a leg had snapped off the desk they had overturned. Kate glared at them. "What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?"

  She was shaking, not from fear but with an incandescent anger.

  Paul wiped water from his face. One cheek was swollen. He pointed at Clive, sullenly. "I came to see you, and this prick wouldn't let me!"

  "He came in drunk and tried to barge upstairs," Clive snapped, staring at him. Paul turned towards him again, and before they could restart the fight Kate moved between them.

  "Get over there, Clive. Go on."

  Still glowering at the other man, Clive moved across to the other side of the office, where Josefina and Caroline, who had ventured back in, huddled. Kate confronted Paul. "Well, I'm here! What do you want?"

  He seemed deflated by her aggression. It took him a moment to pump up his anger enough to answer. "I came to give you some good news!" he said, face twisting. "I've been fired! Satisfied, now, are you?"

  Kate felt a pang of sympathy. And guilt, she admitted. She stamped down on both. "I'm sorry you've lost your job, Paul. But it's nothing to do with me."

  "No?"

  He gave a bitter laugh. "I bet you're heartbroken, though, aren't you, you backstabbing bitch?"

  Clive started forward. She shot him a look, stopping him, and turned back to face Paul. Her anger had burned down to a weary impatience. "I'm going to put this as simply as I can," she said, trying to speak levelly. "I'm not interested in you, your job, or your problems. You got yourself fired because you're a self-pitying drunk who always has to blame someone else. I don't want to see you again, I don't want to hear from you again, and I don't want to talk to you again. Now get out of my office before I call the police."

  Paul blinked. He glanced around, and for the first time seemed to notice that other people were watching. He looked bewildered, as though he didn't understand how he came to be there. Then he drew himself up and stared at her. "You wait. You just wait."

  He nodded to himself as he went to the door. "You just fucking wait."

  He went out, slamming the door. It bounced back on its hinges and swung open again. Kate watched, half expecting him to reappear, but he didn't. She could feel herself beginning to tremble as reaction set in. She looked around the wreckage of the office and felt a lump form in her throat.

  "I'm sorry, Kate.
It all got a bit out of hand."

  Clive looked shame-faced. He was still soaking wet. Kate saw that his lip was bleeding.

  "Are you okay?" she asked.

  He touched his hand to his mouth and gave a weak grin. "I think so. Been a long time since I've been in a scrap."

  "It wasn't Clive's fault," Caroline said, coming forward. "He just tried to stop him when he started going upstairs. Clive didn't start it."

  Kate nodded and managed to give Clive a smile. "No, I know. But in future -"

  The window behind her shattered. She ducked as broken glass struck the back of her head and shoulders, and glimpsed something flying past. She looked up in time to see Clive race to the door and tear it open.

  "No, Clive! Clive!" she shouted. He stopped, poised on the doorstep. "Let him go."

  Clive hesitated, then closed the door. Glass crunched under his feet. Kate looked at the window. The vertical blind was hanging half off. Where the name of the company had been stencilled on the glass, now there was only a jagged hole.

  There was a moan. Kate turned around and saw Josefina clutching her arm, her face screwed up in pain. Caroline was supporting her, looking if anything even more stricken.

  "She got hit by that," she said, nodding at a half housebrick on the floor.

  Kate went over. The Spanish girl slowly removed her hand to reveal a bloody gash on her forearm. Josefina sucked in air with a hiss and sat down.

  "It only just missed your head," Clive said, giving Kate a grim look. The back of her neck prickled as she remembered how close the sharp-cornered housebrick had come. She pushed the thought aside.

  "Get the first aid box, will you?" she told him. "I'll phone the police."

  Kate cleared up the wreckage of the office by herself after the police had taken their statements and left. Clive had gone to the hospital with Josefina, and she had sent Caroline home early. The girl was too shaken to be of any use, and Kate didn't really want any help anyway. Setting the office to rights was a sort of penance for letting her private life spill over into business.

  It took longer than she'd expected, though, and by the time she arrived at her flat that evening she felt exhausted.

  She poured herself a glass of wine and put some pasta on to boil, before remembering that she'd told Miss Willoughby she would visit her.

  Kate looked at her watch. She could still make it before visiting time ended, and she knew the old lady would be expecting her. But the thought of turning out again was too much. With the relief from making the decision only slightly tinged with guilt, she phoned the hospital and was put through to the ward sister.

  "I was supposed to be visiting Miss Willoughby tonight," Kate told her. "Can you give her my apologies and tell her I'll see her tomorrow instead?"

  The sister hesitated. "Are you a relative?"

  "No, just her neighbour."

  She guessed from the sister's tone, but still asked, "Is everything all right?"

  "I'm afraid Miss Willoughby died last night."

  Kate felt no real surprise, only a tired sadness. "What happened?"

  "It was heart failure. It was very quick. There's always a risk at that age, and after the sort of shock she'd had…" The sister didn't bother to finish. "Actually, I'm glad you've called," she went on, bad news delivered. "She put down her solicitor as next of kin, but we're not sure what to do with her personal effects. Do you know if she had any friends or relatives?"

  "No," Kate said. "No, she didn't have anybody."

  CHAPTER 7

  It was late afternoon when the train arrived back at Euston. Kate stepped down from the carriage and made her way with the few other travellers towards the exit. Their footsteps echoed in a complicated cross-rhythm. It was strangely deserted on the hot Saturday. With the sunlight suffusing through the high windows, it assumed a hushed, almost dream-like quality, and Kate remembered her anxiety dream of being lost in a crowded station. Now, though, as she walked through the almost empty concourse, she knew exactly what she was doing.

  She caught a taxi outside the station. It was an extravagance when the tube was almost as convenient, but she didn't care. She gave the driver Lucy and Jack's address and sat back, feeling her body hum with barely suppressed exuberance.

  The taxi dropped her outside the house. She struggled with the gate, which was almost as dysfunctional as hers, and went up the path. After a moment Lucy answered the door, wiping her hands on a towel.

  "So how was Birmingham?" she asked, standing back to let Kate inside.

  "Oh…okay."

  Lucy cocked an eyebrow. "Judging by the look on your face it went better than okay."

  She closed the door. "Go straight through. We're out back. I'll be with you in a minute."

  She went upstairs. As Kate began to go down the hallway, Lucy leaned over the banister that fronted the first-floor landing. "And keep an eye on what Jack's up to with the barbecue, will you? He pretends he knows what he's doing, but he hasn't a clue."

  The warped French windows in the lounge were thrown open. Beyond them, the garden was overgrown and unkempt. Someone had made a token effort to cut the grass, trimming a shaved square in the centre of the ankle-deep lawn. Over one corner of the high, crumbling brick wall that screened the house from its neighbours hung the heavy branches of a laburnum.

  Emily and Angus ran up to Kate as soon as she went out. Emily, older and more shy, presented her face for a kiss, but Angus, still unsteady on his feet, demanded to be picked up. His mouth was orange from the ice-lolly he clutched in one fist.

  Jack was standing by a home-built barbecue, made from bricks. Smoke crept up from the grey-black lumps of charcoal, jerking back and forth as he fanned it vigorously with a piece of wood. He wore a grubby white T-shirt, and his hairy legs stuck out from beneath a pair of knee- length shorts. He grinned at her, red-faced and sweating. "How you doing, Kate? Grab a beer. Or there's wine in the kitchen, if you want it."

  "Beer's fine, thanks."

  Setting Angus down, she went to the plastic cooler beside the barbecue and took out a chilled bottle. She opened it and drank. She hadn't realised how thirsty she was until she tasted the cold liquid.

  "Look at you, dressed up to the nines, and swigging beer from a bottle," Lucy said, as she came through the French windows. "Oh, God, you've let Angus near you. There's orange lolly all over your skirt."

  Kate glanced down at the stains on the cream-coloured fabric. There was a smear on her sleeveless white top, too. She didn't care. "It doesn't matter."

  Lucy regarded her. "My, it must have gone well!" She led Kate over to a table and plastic chairs, clustered in the shade of the overhanging laburnum. Emily went with them. "Go and help Daddy, Emily, there's a good girl," Lucy told her.

  "Angus can help Daddy," the little girl said, climbing on a chair next to Kate.

  "Angus'll get in the way. Go on, you'll have all evening to pester Kate, but Mummy just wants to talk to her now."

  With a moue of disappointment, Emily slid off the chair and trudged over to the barbecue.

  "I don't mind her staying," Kate said.

  "No, but I do. I've not told her the facts of life yet, and I don't want her suddenly asking what 'insemination' means in the middle of Tesco's."

  Lucy settled back in her chair. "So. What happened?"

  Kate tried to sound blasé. "They told me there's no problem."

  "Just like that?"

  "More or less. I've got to wait for the results of the blood tests and everything," she held out her left arm, displaying the plaster the nurse had put over the needle mark, "but assuming they're okay I can go ahead."

  "And they're willing to use whoever you pick for the donor?"

  "They say so, yes."

  Lucy's face showed what she thought of that. "So they'll basically impregnate anybody who asks, then."

  "Of course they don't."

  Kate felt her mood touched by irritation. "Particularly not anyone single, like me. You have to satisfy them
that you're capable of bringing up a child on your own. Emotionally as well as financially. And they wanted to know how I'd cope with working and being a mother."

  The word "mother" sent a thrill through her. It seemed to take on a whole new context. She cleared her throat. "I told her—the counsellor—that for a lot of the time I could probably work from home, or even take the baby to the office with me. Then, later, I'd have to think about finding a nursery for some of the time."

  Lucy gave a snort. "You haven't even had the poor mite yet and already you're farming it out."

  "I'm being realistic. You'd be the first to criticise me if I wasn't. Anyway, the counsellor was satisfied, and they take the child's welfare pretty seriously."

  "So that's it, then? You're going ahead?"

  Kate looked away from Lucy's interrogative stare, watching Emily and Angus as they played near their father. "I don't know. I haven't made up my mind."

  "Are you sure?"

  She tried to sidestep the question. "It's no good deciding anything until I get the results of the tests."

  She could feel Lucy watching her. After a moment Lucy sighed. "What's this place like, anyway?"

  Kate took a colour brochure from her bag and handed it across the table. Lucy studied the photograph of the tree-shrouded building on the cover.

  "The Wynguard Clinic," she read. "Well, that's certainly not NHS, is it?"

  "No, it's private."

  Kate told herself there was no reason to feel defensive. "They don't just do DI, though. They carry out all sorts of fertility treatments. And they've got a fully equipped maternity unit."

  It had been a far cry from the first clinic she had visited, air-conditioned and carpeted. Lucy's mouth turned down slightly at the corners as she flicked through the brochure. "So what's this going to cost you, then?"

  Kate noticed that Lucy spoke as if the decision was already made. She didn't correct her. "It's a bit more than the other place."