Simon Beckett - Where There's Smoke

The heat bore into her. She settled back, gingerly letting her shoulders touch the hot wooden panelling. Almost immediately she could feel the water from the shower dry on her skin, and be replaced with perspiration. Through the wall, she could feel the pulse of a distant generator. Other than that, the sauna was dark and silent, separate from the world outside. She closed her eyes and let herself drift.

“Best part of it, this, isn’t it?”

Kate opened her eyes and gave the woman an acknowledging smile, but said nothing. She wasn’t in the mood for conversation. The woman, though, apparently was.

“Do you mind if I put some water on the stones?”

Kate opened her eyes again. “No, go ahead.”

The woman rose from the bench and went to the wooden bucket by the brazier. She took the ladle from it and poured water on the hot grey rocks. Steam gushed from them with a hiss, and Kate felt a wave of heat hit her. The woman sat down again on the lower bench. She was about Kate’s age but heavily built, with large, low-hanging breasts and a loose, flabby stomach. When she leaned back, Kate saw the red striations of stretch marks running across her belly.

“Two more minutes and I think I’m done,” the woman said, amiably. She puffed out her cheeks and wiped a strand of damp hair from her forehead. “You feel as if you’ve sweated about a stone off just from sitting here, don’t you?”

“I wish,” Kate said. The woman glanced at her and cocked an eyebrow.

“You don’t look as though you need to.” She patted her stomach. The flesh of it wobbled like suet. “It’s when you get one of these that you’ve got to worry. I was expecting to snap back into shape after I’d given birth.” She grinned. “Fat chance.”

“What did you have? A girl or boy?” Kate’s disinclination to talk had vanished. She tried to keep her eyes on the woman’s face, but the flaccid stomach held a morbid fascination for her.

“Both. Twins, six months old, now. We’d got it all planned, we were going to wait until we were thirty and then just have one.” She chuckled. “So much for planning. And to add insult to injury I’ve got this as a reminder.” She nodded down at the folds of flesh. “They call it an apron, would you believe? The doctors have told me I can have plastic surgery, but I thought I’d try and work it off first. I feel like telling everybody, ‘I’m not really fat! This isn’t my fault!’” She laughed again. “Well, I suppose it is. Serves me right for having kids in the first place. I just wish they’d warned me I could end up looking like this. I might have had second thoughts.”

“Do you think you would? Really?” Kate asked. She felt a twinge of unease, not so much from the idea of her own body changing, as the thought of regret afterwards.

The woman wiped sweat from her forehead. “No, not really. You know what you’re getting into, don’t you? But if I were you I’d make the most of a flat stomach while you’ve got it. It’s never the same afterwards, I don’t care what anyone says.”

She stopped and suddenly regarded Kate. “Don’t tell me you have got kids?”

Kate was glad her face was already flushed from the heat. “No. Not yet.”

The woman laughed again. “Thank goodness for that. I’d have thought life really was unfair then!”

She stood up. Her stomach hung in front of her like a deflated beachball. “Well, that’s enough for me. Bye.”

Kate smiled as the woman left the sauna. Cool air swirled briefly against her as the door was opened and shut, then the heat closed in again. She looked down at her own stomach, taut and unlined, and tried to imagine it flabby and loose.

She closed her eyes again and tried to relax, but the post-exercise mood was broken. When another woman entered the sauna, Kate went out to shower and dress.

The hospital was only two tube stops away from the gym. She went through the automatic doors into the clinical atmosphere of overheated air and disinfectant with a familiar sense of apprehension. First her father, then her mother had died in hospital. Her father had lingered in a coma for weeks after being knocked down, and after that her mother had sunk into a gradual fade that ended less than a year later in the same intensive care unit, as her reluctant heart finally gave up. Since then, the long corridors and harshly lit waiting rooms of any hospital seemed to Kate like a separate world, a surprise cul-de-sac from normal life where death and bad news waited. As she went into the lift, it occurred to her that maternity hospitals were an exception. The thought cheered her, briefly, before the lift doors closed.

The ward was long, with a central aisle running between parallel rows of beds, like a barracks. Walking down it, Kate almost went past Miss Willoughby without recognising her.

One side of the old lady’s face was a livid bruise, with stitches cutting across her forehead and cheek. The eye that had been swollen shut the night before was now the size and colour of a Victoria plum, startlingly vivid against the pale flesh and white wisps of hair. Her wig had been left behind when they had loaded her into the ambulance the night before, and without it she looked shrunken and robbed of identity.

Kate stared at her from the bottom of the bed, shocked despite having told herself what to expect. The old lady was asleep, and Kate felt an urge to turn round and leave. But as she was wrestling with the temptation, Miss Willoughby stirred, and her single good eye slid open.

Kate forced herself to sound cheerful. “Hello, there!”

The old lady looked at her without recognition. Then a slow smile lit up her face. “You shouldn’t have bothered to come.” Her voice was slow and drowsy with painkillers. She made a feeble attempt to push herself up on her pillows, but it amounted to little.

Kate held out the bunch of flowers she had brought. “I hope you like carnations.” As she said it she saw that the old lady couldn’t take them with her wrist strapped up. “I’ll put them in water.”

There were several empty vases by a sink at the end of the ward. Kate arranged the flowers in one and took them back to Miss Willoughby’s bed. A burst of laughter came from the bed opposite, where a group of half a dozen or so visitors were clustered around an elderly woman. She was sitting propped up by pillows, surrounded with cards and flowers. Kate set down the vase on Miss Willoughby’s bedside cabinet. There was nothing else on it except for a water jug and glass.

“So, how are you?” she asked, aware that question was inane, but unable to think of anything else to say.

“Not too bad.” It was an effort for the old lady to keep her eye open. Her mouth worked as if she was thirsty. “They’ve pinned my hip, so that’s all right. My eye hurts a little, though.”

Kate looked at the swollen flesh of her face. It made the back of her legs creep. “Can you remember what happened?”

A slow frown crossed the old lady’s face. “I can remember two young men coming to the door. Boys. They were very polite. One of them felt ill... He wanted a drink of water, so I let them in. I started to ask if they wanted tea, but... I think one of them must have pushed me...”

Kate couldn’t bring herself to say anything. Miss Willoughby moved her head slightly from side to side in a tired shake. “I can’t understand it... I used to teach, but it wasn’t like this... I’d got nothing for them to steal. Why do this for a few pounds?”

“I didn’t know you were a teacher,” Kate said quickly, seeing her growing upset. The old woman’s frown faded as older memories replaced the more recent one.

“I taught for nearly forty years. At the same school. Girls.”

Her eye slipped shut, and Kate thought she’d fallen asleep. But a moment later she spoke again. “You wonder where it goes to, the time.”