Where There's Smoke

Kate went back into the hall, untying her hair with a little sigh of relief. The message light was flashing on the answerphone. She played back the tape, but whoever it had been had hung up without speaking.

Barefoot, she went into the lounge. Like the rest of the flat, its walls were plain white, partly because she preferred the simplicity of such a colour scheme, and partly because the house faced away from the sun and was quite dark. Even now, when it was still light outside, the white walls did little to lift the gloomy twilight.

Kate switched on a table lamp. The furniture in the room was clean-lined and modern, except for an old pine seaman’s trunk that served as a coffee table. On the wall was an abstract oil she’d bought from an exhibition, the only splash of colour on the otherwise blank backdrop. The flat was much cosier in winter, when the long nights came and she could draw the curtains and fill the corners with artificial light. Now, though, dark as the flat was, there was something not quite right about having a lamp on when it was still daylight outside. She turned it off again and switched on the TV instead. Idly, she flicked through the channels. There was nothing on that interested her, but it illuminated the room a little, and the sound of voices gave the flat a less empty feel.

There was a miaow as the cat wrapped himself around her legs, butting his head against her ankles. “You hungry, Dougal?” She picked him up. He was big, even for a tom, with close-set eyes that gave him a stupid, perpetually surprised expression. He had come with the flat, an extra that hadn’t been mentioned by the estate agent when she’d bought it. The middle-aged couple who’d lived there before hadn’t bothered to take their pet with them when they’d left. Kate hadn’t wanted a cat, but Dougal had been either too stupid or too determined to accept that. He wriggled free and jumped onto the floor, miaowing. “All right, I know it’s dinner-time.” Kate went into the kitchen and took a tin of cat food from the wall cupboard.

The cat jumped up onto the work surface and tried to eat the meat as she was forking it into the dish. She pushed him back down. “Just wait, gutbucket.”

Kate set the dish on the floor and watched as the cat began to gulp at the food. She considered getting something to eat herself. She opened the fridge, stared inside, then closed it again. A bray of false laughter came from the lounge. Kate went back in. A sitcom was on the TV, noisy and colourful. She switched it off. The hysterical images disappeared as the screen went blank, the laughter abruptly severed. Silence crowded into the room. It seemed darker than ever, but she made no move to turn on the lamp. From the kitchen she heard the faint sound of the cat’s dish softly scraping on the kitchen floor. What’s wrong with me? Winning the Parker Trust account was the biggest coup of her career. She should have been euphoric. Instead she felt nothing. There was no satisfaction, no sense of having achieved anything. Nothing, after all, had changed. She looked around the darkening lounge. Is this it? Is this all there’s going to be. The sound of the cat-flap slapping shut came from the hallway. Dougal had eaten his fill and gone out again. She was alone. All at once the darkness, the quiet was oppressive. She turned on the lamp and quickly set the CD playing without caring what was in it. The sound of Tom Jones belting out ‘It’s Not Unusual’ filled the room. Kate went into the hallway and picked up the phone. She had made no arrangements to go out that evening, knowing that if she had lost the pitch she wouldn’t want to. Now, though, the thought of staying in by herself appalled her. The phone rang only twice at the other end before a woman’s voice answered. “Hello?”

“Hi, Lucy, it’s Kate.”

“Oh, Kate, hi! Hang on.” There was a hollow clunk as the receiver went down. Kate heard Lucy raising her voice in the background. There was a childish objection that she overruled, then she was back. “Sorry about that. Slight disagreement over which programme we want to watch.”

“Who won?”

“I did. I told her she could either watch EastEnders with me or go to bed. So she’s suddenly an EastEnders fan. Anyway, how did it go?”

“We got it.”

“Oh, Kate, that’s fantastic. You must be over the moon!”

“Well, I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet.”

“It will! So you’re off out celebrating tonight, then?”

Kate transferred the receiver to her other ear so she could hear better over the noise from the CD. “Er, no. Look, I wondered if you fancied going out somewhere? My treat, so long as Jack doesn’t mind babysitting.”

“Tonight? Oh, Kate, I can’t! Jack’s not going to be in till later.”

Kate kept the disappointment from her voice. “It doesn’t matter. It was pretty short notice.”

“I know, but we’ve not been out together for ages! Tell you what, why don’t you come over? Bring a couple of bottles of wine, and with a bit of luck we can be pissed by the time Jack gets home.”