Simon Beckett - Where There's Smoke

“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.

“It’s just...” He was frowning, not looking at her. Then he sighed. “Well, it’s a bit of a dump, that’s all. I haven’t bothered doing anything to it, because I wasn’t planning on staying there very long. I suppose I’d be embarrassed for you to see it.”

The stirrings of alarm that Kate had begun to feel receded.

“There’s no need to be. I wouldn’t mind.”

“No, but I would.” He smiled. “If you want to go there, we can do. But give me a few days to tidy up first, okay?”

She grinned. “Okay.” Relieved, she put it from her mind. She wasn’t in any hurry. There was plenty of time.

Besides, she enjoyed being in her flat with Alex. The first weekend there they had spent almost entirely in bed. They had ventured into the kitchen occasionally to prepare a snack, and once they had taken the quilt into the lounge, where they spread it on the floor to watch For Whom the Bell Tolls while rain lashed the window, and the gas fire murmured its blue dance. The familiar surroundings, which had once felt so lonely, now seemed intimate and cosy. Often they would just lay and talk. Alex was a good listener, and she found herself opening up to him more and more, sometimes about incidents she had almost forgotten. One evening she told him about going alone to the cinema when she was a little girl. She had intended the story to be funny, but Alex seemed to see past the humour.

“How long ago did your parents die?” he asked, when she had finished. They were lying on the settee, naked after sex. Kate’s head was resting in the crook of his arm.

She counted back, lightly tracing a pattern on his chest. “My mother died when I was nineteen. My father died a year before that, just after I’d gone to university.”

“Do you miss them?”

The question sobered her. She found she couldn’t give a simple answer. “I’d have liked them to meet you,” she said.

Alex didn’t comment. Kate watched the hairs on his chest spring back up in the wake of her fingers. “No, I don’t suppose I do miss them, in the conventional sense. Not in the way I’d miss someone like Lucy. I loved them, and it was a jolt when they died, but we didn’t see much of each other once I’d left home. And we didn’t know what to talk about when we did.”

“Didn’t you get on with them?”

It wasn’t something Kate let herself think about very often, but now she considered it. “It wasn’t that we didn’t get on, so much. It was more that we just didn’t understand each other. We didn’t seem to have anything in common. I always felt I was never who or what they wanted me to be.” She gave a quiet laugh. “I sometimes wondered if there hadn’t been some mix-up at the hospital and they’d been given the wrong baby by mistake. They’d wanted a boy, for a start. Then my mother found out she couldn’t have any more children after me. So I was a big disappointment all around.”

“Did they actually say that?”

“Not in so many words. But sometimes my mother used to act like she resented me, because I wasn’t the boy she’d wanted to present my father with. Everything had to fall in with what he wanted. It was like there was only one person in the house who counted. He expected to have his own way, and my mother saw her role as making sure he got it. And I was expected to go along with that as well. It was probably a relief for everybody when I left home.”

She looked up at Alex. “What about you?”

“Me?”

“What was your childhood like?”

She felt him shift slightly. “Nothing exceptional. Abroad every year for holidays, bikes at Christmas. Boringly normal, I suppose.”

“How about your brothers? Did you get on with them?”

“Oh, yes. I mean, there was a bit of tormenting went on, with me being the youngest, but it was always good-natured. They were quite protective, really.”

Kate fingered the solid coldness of the St Christopher on his chest. She could feel it sometimes during their lovemaking, its coolness tracing rhythmic patterns on her breasts. “Tell me about your grandmother.”

“My gran? What about?”

“Just what she was like. You said you were close.”

Alex was quiet for so long she thought he wasn’t going to reply. When he did his voice had softened. “She was great. If I’d cut myself, or got in trouble, or... or whatever, I could always go to my gran and tell her, and she’d listen. And when I’d done something wrong, she’d tell me, but she’d never get cross, or shout or hit me. She was always there.” He stared at the ceiling. His eyes were bright.

“How old were you when she died?” Kate asked.

“Fifteen. She gave me this,” he touched the St Christopher, “the week before she died. It’d belonged to my grandad, and she said I should wear it because it’d bring me luck. It was almost like she knew she wasn’t going to be there to look out for me for much longer.” He stopped. “You were saying about your parents,” he went on in a brisker tone. “Did you get on any better with your mother after your father died?”

Kate let him change the subject. “There wasn’t really any difference. I hoped that she might come out of his shadow, you know? Start living her own life. But she never did. It was like she lost interest in everything. Every time I came home from university, I could see how she’d deteriorated. It was horrible. It was like she was winding down, as though she’d no reason to carry on living without him. She kept all his clothes, all his things, and talked about him as if he was still there. She’d even cook his favourite meals, even stuff she didn’t like, right up to when she died.” She paused, remembering. “I still can’t make up my mind if it was love or not. It never seemed healthy. I always told myself I’d never let anyone dominate me like that.”

“You nearly did, though.”

She glanced at Alex. Two patches of colour burned on his cheeks. “You’re not jealous of Paul, are you?” she asked.

He tried to sound dismissive. “No, of course not.” He avoided her eyes. “I just don’t like to think of you with someone like that, that’s all.”

Part amused, part annoyed, Kate wriggled around until she was facing him. “That’s not a very professional attitude, is it? I thought psychologists were above such things?”

“Perhaps... perhaps I’m not a very good psychologist.” She had the impression that he had changed his mind at the last second about what he was going to say.

“I’d have thought you’d be pretty good,” she said. “You’re a good listener. That’s a lot of what psychology’s about, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yeah. There’s plenty of listening, but that’s about all. Psychologists don’t actually do anything.” His tone was uncharacteristically bitter.

Wanting to pull him out of his suddenly dark mood, Kate bent her head and lightly nipped the flesh of his chest in her teeth. “I’d better keep you busy, then.”