Where There's Smoke

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.”