Where There's Smoke

There was no letter. Her first impression was that the envelope was empty, but then she saw something crumpled in the bottom. She realised what it was just in time to stop herself from pulling it out.

The condom had been unrolled, and before she snapped the envelope shut Kate saw that whoever had sent it had first cut off the teat. Bile rose high in her throat, from humiliation as much as disgust. Her eyes stung as she walked to a nearby waste bin and dropped in the envelope. She wiped her hands thoroughly on a tissue and dropped that in after it.

Feeling pervasively soiled, she walked back towards the tube station.

The summer passed its mid-way point. Lucy and Jack took the children camping to Brighton. They were worried about leaving the house untenanted, so Kate offered to stay there while they were away. She’d never been wholly comfortable in her own flat after Paul had barged his way in, and since Miss Willoughby’s solicitors had put the old lady’s up for sale she had felt even less so. Miss Willoughby had left everything to a botanical society, her solicitor had told Kate at the funeral, a sad little affair with only Kate, the vicar and the solicitor in attendance. A lorry had arrived to clear the flat the next day, and Kate still wasn’t easy with the thought of living above the empty rooms, with their uncurtained windows and bare floors. Two weeks in Lucy and Jack’s rambling house appealed like a holiday.

“You should go on a proper one yourself,” Lucy had commented, when Kate had said as much to her.

“Perhaps later,” Kate had replied, and both of them knew she had no intention of going away.

The house seemed odd, much bigger and less friendly now that she was alone in it. Lying in bed in the spare room on the first night, she had listened uneasily to the unfamiliar creaks and noises until at some point she had fallen asleep. After that, though, she had grown accustomed to the solitude, until it no longer bothered her. Echoes of the family still filled the house, scattered toys and books and clothes, so that it didn’t seem empty so much as paused, a Mary Celeste waiting for voices and life to resume. Sometimes Kate felt like a ghost moving through it, living there but leaving no trace of herself. It was a gentle, lulling feeling.

Going there at night became a pleasure, so that she resented having to call at home to feed Dougal and check the post. The evenings were hot and muggy, and she would prepare a salad and eat it outside in the garden. Afterwards she would either just sit, or read until it became too dark to see, and then she would go inside and listen to Jack’s jazz and blues collection, head back on the overstuffed sofa as Billie Holiday bared her heart, and the moths bumped and whirred against the lampshade.

It was so long since Kate had felt relaxed that it was an unfamiliar sensation. Only the question of finding a donor still chivvied away at her, but as the weeks had passed with no further response to her advert, she had begun to accept that there was unlikely to be one. She was already considering her next step when the letter arrived.

She had not checked the box in over a week, and it was with a sense of obligation rather than hope that she called in to the depot one lunch-time. When the woman returned with an envelope, Kate felt her day lurch into confusion. She signed for it and took it outside. The memory of the condom made her handle it cautiously, and she superstitiously moved to another spot to open it.

This time there was a letter inside, neatly handwritten in blue ink on a cream vellum. There was an Ealing address and telephone number. Kate saw by the date that it had been posted over a week ago. It had been waiting for her to collect it all the time she had been lotus eating at Lucy’s.

The letter began without preamble. “I am writing in response to your advertisement for a donor for artificial insemination,” Kate read. “I am a thirty-four-year-old clinical psychologist, based in London. I am single, with no children.” Kate smiled at that, “average height, slim, with dark hair and blue eyes. If you would like to meet up, please call me at the above number after 6.00 p.m.”

It was signed “Alex Turner”.

Kate had begun walking without having any idea of where she was going. She stopped, looking around. The sunlit street suddenly seemed unfamiliar. Its brightness dazzled her, and for an instant she felt unsure of where she was. Then the sensation had passed. Folding the letter back into the envelope, she set off for the tube station.