Where There's Smoke

Neither of them spoke again during the journey. Alex sat bunched in the corner, staring out of the window. Occasionally he dabbed at the corner of his mouth with the bloodstained napkin the head-waiter had insisted he take. Kate sat at the other side. There could have been a glass wall between them.

The taxi pulled up outside her flat. Alex continued to stare through the window as she opened the door.

“I’m sorry,” she said. He nodded. He looked as dispirited and dejected as a schoolboy who had lost a fight. Abruptly, she turned to the taxi driver. “We’ll both get out here, thanks.”

Alex turned to her, alarmed. “No, I’ll go home—”

“No, you won’t. I can’t let you go like this. The least I can do is let you get properly cleaned up.”

“No, really—” he began, but she was already on the pavement, the taxi door standing open as she paid the driver. After a moment Alex got out. He waited behind her, silent, as she unlocked her flat and led him up the stairs. “The bathroom’s through there. If you want to change your sweater, I’ve got a T-shirt that’ll probably fit you.”

Leaving him, she went into the kitchen and set the coffee percolator on to boil. Then, rummaging in a drawer until she found a baggy T-shirt, she went to the bathroom and knocked on the door. Alex opened it a crack. He had taken off his sweater, and through the gap in the doorway she could see how white his skin was. The silver chain lay pale around his neck. “Can’t promise much for the style,” she said, passing him the T-shirt. He smiled, a little nervously, as he took it.

Kate went back to the kitchen. The coffee hadn’t started to bubble. She set out two cups. Then, taking a tumbler from a cupboard, she went into the lounge and poured a large brandy into it.

There was a noise from the doorway. Kate turned as Alex came in, pausing uncertainly in the doorway. It was strange seeing him in her lounge, wearing her T-shirt. She held out the tumbler. “I thought you could do with this. Coffee’s on its way.”

He accepted the glass with mumbled thanks. Kate sat in one of the armchairs. Alex went to the other. He took a sip of brandy, and winced. Gingerly he touched his mouth again.

“How is it?” she asked.

“Okay.”

She looked down at her hands. “I’m sorry about tonight. About what happened.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does. You got dragged into a situation that... well, it wasn’t your problem.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“Yes, I do, I owe you an explanation, at least.”

Kate felt the need of a brandy herself. But she was determined to abstain. She wasn’t going to risk anything interfering with the chances of becoming pregnant. “I used to be involved with Paul. We were at the same agency for a while, but then things got unpleasant and I left. I didn’t see him for years, but then I won a pitch he wanted, and he lost his job, and now he blames me.”

Alex looked into his glass. “How involved were you?”

“We lived together for over a year. I thought... well, I was thinking in terms of marriage and babies. I must have been stupid.”

“Why?”

“Oh, it isn’t really worth going into.”

To her surprise, though, she found she wanted to. “I just didn’t see what sort of person Paul was, that’s all. He was the agency’s marketing director, and I was the new girl. I suppose I was flattered that he took an interest in me. It took a while for me to realise he was taking an interest in half the other girls in the office as well. And anybody else that took his fancy. By the time I did, we were living together.”

Kate swallowed. She could feel Alex watching her. “Anyway, eventually I confronted him. He denied it, and like a fool I believed him. But then something else would happen, and I’d confront him again, and he’d deny it again. That went on for a while, and then one night we had a blazing row. You know, a real vase smasher. And he didn’t deny it any more. He said — he said it was my fault. That I drove him to it.”

She stopped, remembering the crushing lack of self-respect. She shook it off and went on. “I should have left him then, but... well, I didn’t. We made up. But now he knew he could get away with it, he didn’t even try very hard to hide what he was doing any more. And then—” She broke off.

“What?” Alex asked.

“Nothing. I just left him.”

“What were you going to say?”

“Nothing,” she repeated, but there was no conviction in her voice. She could feel Alex watching her. “He gave me VD.”