Where There's Smoke

“I’m not throwing anything back at you. I’m just reminding you that you’re not as perfect as you think.”

“Perhaps not, but at least I’m capable of having a relationship without it turning into a disaster!”

“Oh, fuck off!”

They stared at each other, wide-eyed at the suddenness of the breach. Their breath steamed in a cloud around them. All at once neither could meet the other’s eye.

Lucy spoke first. “All right, I will. But just don’t come running to me and Jack in future.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t.”

They began walking in opposite directions. Kate half expected to hear Lucy shout her, and half wanted to turn round and do the same herself. But Lucy didn’t shout, and Kate kept on walking. When she reached the corner and glanced back, Lucy had gone.

Morning sickness was a joy Kate hadn’t counted on. She’d known, intellectually, that she could probably expect it, but she had found out that expecting it and experiencing it were two different things. She had put her attack of nausea in the library down to shock at first, until it happened again the next morning. Since then it had been a regular part of her daily routine; along with showering, getting dressed, going for the tube, she knew that at some point she would also have to incorporate vomiting into her schedule.

It wouldn’t be so bad, she thought, if it came along at the same time every day. She knew that Lucy (although she tried not to think about Lucy) had been as regular as clockwork, making sure she was near a bathroom between eleven and quarter past each morning. But Kate’s own attacks were sporadic. The queasiness she would wake up with could linger all day, like a low-grade hangover. Or it could send her running for the bathroom before she left her flat in the morning. It was just something else she couldn’t predict.

She felt the nausea begin to build as she sat on the tube. Anxiously, she counted the stations still to go. King’s Cross was still several stops away. She sat perfectly still, trying not to dwell on it. The train lurched and whined to a halt in the tunnel. The sudden jolt made Kate break out in a clammy sweat, a sign she had come to recognise as meaning that vomiting was imminent. She prayed for the train to move again, trying to think if she had anything in her bag to be sick into. There was nothing except the bag itself.

She closed her eyes, but that only made her feel worse. The train jerked forward, and with relief Kate saw the lights of a platform appear outside the windows. Without caring which station it was, she hurried off and pushed through the crowd waiting to board. Breathing as steadily as she could through her nose, she ran up the escalators, eyes scanning desperately for a toilet sign.

There was one on the upper concourse. She had a bad moment when she couldn’t find a twenty-pence piece for the turnstile, but then she was inside and bolting the cubicle door behind her.

The only thing to be said for it was that it was over quickly. Feeling wretched, but less so than before, she rinsed her mouth out at a sink and dried it on a paper towel. She looked at herself in the mirror above the taps.

Her face looked pale, the skin under her eyes bruised. You wanted this she told herself. Too late to feel sorry for yourself now.

The sickness left her blood sugar screaming for renewal.

She debated whether to call Clive and tell him she would be late, but decided he would work that out anyway, and went into a coffee shop just outside the station.

She ordered a croissant and jam, and a weak, milky tea. The coffee smelled wonderful, but she’d found that she had no stomach for it anymore. She wondered what else she would be giving up before the nine months was over.

She felt more like herself when she came out and went back down the escalator to catch a train. As if the break in her journey had set a precedent, she was in no rush now to get to work. It was almost eleven before she turned into the row of Georgian terraced houses. The light was on in the downstairs office of the agency, and through the window she saw Clive clutching a bundle of papers to his chest. She had time to notice the harried expression on his face before she opened the door and her greeting died on her lips.

The office was a shambles. The desks had been tipped over, and the filing-cabinet drawers had been pulled out and emptied onto the floor. Paper was strewn on the carpet like snow. Clive turned at the sound of the door opening, the armful of papers still held to his chest.

Josefina and Caroline were both kneeling down, gathering up more sheets.

Kate found her voice. “What’s happened?”

Clive set the papers down onto a chair. “We’ve been burgled. Well,” he amended, “we’ve been broken into. There doesn’t seem to be much missing.” He looked around, wryly. “So far as we can tell, anyway.”

She closed the door and walked inside, picking her way carefully through the turmoil. “Have you called the police?”