Where There's Smoke

The confession was blurted out. Kate hid her surprise. She rolled onto her side, so that her body was touching his, aware of the cooling wetness between her thighs. “That’s nothing to be ashamed of.” She put her hand on his chest. She could feel his heart beating under it. The chain he wore around his neck felt cold as she stroked her fingers through the hairs.

“Sorry,” he said again, and Kate lightly tapped him.

“Stop it. There’s no need to keep apologising.”

Turning, she reached for the bedside table and switched on the lamp. Blinking in the sudden light, she looked back at Alex. His eyes were wet, she saw with alarm.

“Hey, come on!” She moved so she was lying half on top of him, propping herself up on her elbows. Her breasts brushed against him. She smiled. “It wasn’t that bad, was it?”

He smiled back but didn’t meet her eyes. “No. It’s just that... I’m not very good at this sort of thing.”

“You seemed okay to me.”

He gave her a quick look and, with sudden intuition, Kate understood much of his past nervousness. The tenderness she felt for him closed up her throat.

“What’s this?” she said, deliberately changing the subject. She fingered the disc hanging on the chain around his neck.

“It’s just a St Christopher.”

Kate casually slid one of her legs over him as she examined it. The medal was about two centimetres in diameter, and the design of the man carrying the child across the water was crude and stylised, not at all obvious at first glance. “It looks old,” she said, lifting it from his chest. It was thick and heavy.

“Uh, yes, I suppose it is.” He looked down at it. “It was my grandmother’s.”

“Did she leave it to you?”

Alex paused before answering. “No, she gave it to me before she died. She said it’d bring me good luck.”

Kate laid it back on his chest. “And has it?”

She moved her leg gently up and down.

“I, uh, well, yes, I suppose it has.”

He was smiling now. Kate could feel him beginning to harden again under her thigh. The St Christopher was a cold disc between her breasts as she slid on top of him. “It’s a good job you said that.”

Chapter 13

At times during the next three weeks Kate would feel an almost superstitious distrust of being so happy. It would come over her without warning, a pessimistic conviction that this couldn’t last, that there would have to be a price to pay. Then the feeling would pass, a brief cloud over the sun, and she would be caught up again in the pleasure of the present.

The sex had quickly improved. Alex was an enthusiastic if not experienced lover, and they coupled like eager teenagers, delighting in each other until both of them were sore and aching. It seemed strange at first. Even after almost four years, Kate found that her body remembered the contours and smell of Paul. He had been heavier and hairier than Alex, with a blunt, bludgeoning approach she had at first mistaken for passion, before realising it was only selfishness.

But it didn’t take long before the tactile memories of her former lover were supplanted by the new.

They didn’t go out often. Kate would hurry home at night, open a bottle of wine and start chopping-meat and vegetables. Alex would go to her flat straight from work and they would cook the meal together in an intimate awareness of the other’s presence. Sometimes they would prolong the anticipation until afterwards, but often their clothes would be scattered over the floor, and they would make love while the pots bubbled unnoticed on the cooker.

There were times, though, when Alex would fall into a quiet mood, lost in some internal world. Kate liked watching him then, seeing his face take on an unguarded, almost melancholy cast. But while she enjoyed being able to study him in these moments as she would a picture, at her leisure, there was also a muted sense of exclusion. Once he looked up without warning and caught her watching him. For an instant his face seemed blank of recognition, and in a weightless second of panic Kate felt a sudden conviction that she didn’t know him, that this was some stranger. Then he blinked and smiled, and was Alex again.

“What?” he said.

Kate went over and hugged him. “You were miles away. What were you thinking about?”

“Nothing much. Just miles away, like you said.”

The moment had passed, but not without leaving a faint trace of itself, diminished but lingering like the smell of coffee in a room. To dispel it, Kate asked something she had been meaning to for some days. “Why don’t we go to your flat sometime?”

Alex hesitated. “Why?”

“Because I’d like to see where you live. You know, see if you’re messy or tidy. What sort of books you’ve got.”

“I can tell you.”

“It isn’t the same. What’s the matter? Are you hiding something there?”

It was meant as a joke, but Alex didn’t laugh. “No, of course not.”

She felt a rekindling of unease. “Why not, then?” she asked, serious now.