Simon Beckett - Where There's Smoke

The doctor gave a reassuring smile. She was a pleasant-faced woman in her fifties. “After that you can go home again. Then you’ll have to come back in a couple of days, and we’ll give you a pessary to make you pass what’s in your womb.”

“Will I be able to see anything?” Kate could hear the tremor in her own voice.

“You’ll probably see what you pass, yes. But it won’t be much different from a heavy period. There won’t be anything recognisable, if that’s what you mean. At this stage it’s still only cells.”

Cells. Kate pushed the image out of her mind. “What... what happens to it? Afterwards, I mean. What do you do with it?”

Her eyes went to the yellow cardboard cylinder on the window-ledge. It had stylised drawings of flames on it. The doctor saw where she was looking and gave an understanding shake of her head. “That’s only for wipes.”

She gave Kate a small plastic container, like a miniature cup. In it was a single white pill. Kate looked down at it. The tiny object seemed bland and innocuous.

The nurse held out a glass of water for her. Kate took it. The tremor in her hand caused a faint rippling of the water’s surface. She raised the plastic cup with the pill in it to her lips. Over its rim she could see the doctor and nurse watching her. She held it poised, tensing herself. One swallow and it would be done. Seconds passed.

Kate lowered the cup. “I can’t.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

She held out the container, suddenly wanting to be rid of it. The doctor took it from her.

“That’s all right, you aren’t under any pressure to go through with this.”

Kate felt her eyes begin to swim. “I’m sorry. I should never have come.”

“Don’t worry. You’re not the first one who’s got this far and then changed her mind.” The doctor gave her a smile and patted her arm, although the nurse was stony-faced as she emptied the glass into the sink. “Better to find out now than later.”

Kate felt weak and washed out as she went out into the corridor and down to the waiting area. Lucy looked up in surprise from a magazine.

“That was quick.”

“I haven’t had it.”

Lucy lowered the magazine. “Why, what’s—?”

“Please, let’s just go.”

Kate glanced at the other women in the waiting room. They looked away, but were obviously listening. “I’ll tell you outside.”

A thin skim of brown mush lay on the pavement from the snow that had fallen that morning. A few flakes still drifted down. They expired against Kate’s cheeks like cold sparks.

“What happened?” Lucy asked, as they walked away from the hospital.

“Nothing. I just couldn’t go through with it.”

“You mean you just walked out?”

Kate nodded. Lucy made an exasperated noise in her throat. “Kate, what are you thinking of? Look, perhaps if you went back in and—”

“I’m not going back.”

“Don’t be silly. I know it’s difficult, but you’ve got to face up to it sooner or later.”

“I have faced up to it. I’m going to keep the baby.”

“Oh, come on, Kate, be reasonable!”

“I am.”

“I thought it was all decided! You said yourself it was the best thing to do!”

“I changed my mind.”

They had stopped. The falling snow crystals had turned to sleet, speckling their hair with glistening beads. Lucy brushed a damp strand from her forehead. “Look, let’s get out of this muck and talk about it.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. I’ve told you, I’m keeping it.”

“You can’t keep it! Just think about what you’re doing! The father’s a raving lunatic who’s on the run for murder, he’s already threatened to kill you, and you’re still going to have his baby?”

“It isn’t the baby’s fault. The doctor was right, I can’t blame it for what its father’s done.”

“And what if it turns out like him? And it might, I don’t care what the doctor says. What will you do then?”

“I’ll have to risk it. But it’ll be as much me as him, and I’ll do everything I can to make sure it has more chances than he did.”

“And it’s that simple? You think it’ll thank you when it’s old enough to understand who its father was? What will you say?”

“I don’t know, all right? I can’t even think about what I’ll be doing tomorrow, let alone God knows how many years from now! I just know that I’m not going to kill this baby!”

“For God’s sake, Kate, it isn’t even a baby yet! Don’t be stupid!”

“I’m not being stupid.”

“No?”

Lucy cast her eyes skyward. “This is just so typical of you! You won’t listen to anybody, will you?”

Kate’s own anger had only been waiting for a focus. “If I’d listened to you I’d have been married to him by now!”

“I admit he fooled me as well, but I said from the start this was a bad idea. But you wouldn’t take any notice! You were hell bent on doing things your way, and look where it’s got you!”

“So you think this is my fault, then?”

“Since you ask, yes! Nobody made you do it, it was what you wanted. God, I could shake you sometimes! I’d have thought you’d have learned your lesson by now!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Lucy’s cheeks had flushed an angry red. “Nothing. Forget I said it.”

“No, come on, I want to know what you mean.”

“You know what I mean. I mean Paul Sutherland. You should have walked out on him months before you did, but no, you’d got to wait until he threw you out. I swear, I don’t understand you, Kate! It’s like when things get bad you go out of your way to make them worse!”

“This is nothing like that!”

“Yes, it is, it’s exactly the same.”

Kate’s face was hot. “Except this time only one of us has slept with him.”

She knew, as she said it, that she was moving the argument on to a different level, but by then it had developed a momentum of its own. Lucy glared at her, white-lipped.

“Oh, now we’re getting to it! I wondered how long it would be before you threw that one back at me!”

“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.