Ten Stories About Smoking (6 page)

Linda was different, she could see it the first time they’d met, a dislocated look in her eyes, a brittleness to her long, starved body. Just being next to Linda made her feel alive and
vital, the potential intimacy charging like static between them. Christina looked at her now, across the glass-topped table, her body smoother and less ragged, her complexion clear but her eyes
still betraying her confusion. If only she would talk more, open herself up.

‘And if you do meet someone you can always try IVF or adopt, can’t you? Have you thought about adoption?’ Linda put out her cigarette and shot her a wry smile.

‘I think I might need a man before I start thinking about the babies, Chris.’

Defeated, Christina drank the last of her wine and suggested a game of Scrabble.

They played Scrabble, then Yahtzee. At just before midnight, Daniel and Christina went to bed, leaving Linda to smoke one final cigarette before going up to her attic room. She was drunk and
woozy, not quite yet ready for sleep, but tired all the same. The heaters were off and the air was cooling rapidly. She smoked the last of the cigarette and thought again of the house in
Sardinia.

She woke early – before six – and could not get back to sleep. Her head throbbed and she drank the whole pint of water she’d put on the bedside table, then
went to the bathroom to refill it. There she paused and decided to have a bath rather than go back to bed. She ran the water and poured in the almond and honey oil. The steam made her feel better,
her mouth rejuvenated by a vigorous brushing of her teeth. She got into the water and closed her eyes, imagining herself bathing at the house in Sardinia, or soaking herself after a hard day
looking after Poppy. Her bedsit seemed so very far away, its dampness, its chill draught and cooking smells. She would not go back: she belonged here, with Poppy.

It felt strange to have a plan, to have a clear and definite strategy, but she liked it. For so long, she felt, she had drifted in and out of life, never knowing what it was there for. But now,
in this claw-footed bath inside the huge Buckinghamshire house, it made sense; her childlessness now not quite a blessing but something neat, something explainable. All she needed to do was give
Poppy the pink jumper with the white horses on it and show Daniel and Christina just how much the child wanted and needed her auntie. Then the whole plan would fall into place. Daniel would drive
her home, she would pack up her belongings and perhaps she’d knock on the door of the pinched divorcee and give him the Ella Fitzgerald record as a parting gift.

Using the shower attachment she again washed her hair with mint and tea-tree shampoo, and conditioned it with the jojoba conditioner. She wrapped it in a towel, turban style, dried herself and
then put on the white hooded bathrobe that was hanging on the back of the door. She opened the frosted window and steam wafted out on to the morning air. The swimming pool had leaves bunched at its
edges: they would need to be fished out before she and Poppy jumped in later.

Back in her room she went to open her bag and paused. There was a rich and powerful smell coming from the bag, an overwhelming stink of stale cigarettes, and of unaired rooms where smoke had
lingered for weeks and months. It caught at the back of her throat; and she thought then of what Carl had said about being too clean. She understood what he’d meant suddenly: only when
you’re clean do you realize just how dirty life is.

She removed the plastic bag in which she’d put Poppy’s jumper. The jumper was wrapped in paper decorated with illustrations of horses. She put her nose to it gingerly, hoping perhaps
that somehow the package itself had escaped being tainted with the stench. But it hadn’t. It smelled dreadful.

Linda unwrapped it fully just to be sure. The smell was noxious, insufferable, so strong she could feel it taking over the air in the room. She held it towards the light, and noticed that the
horses on the front were no longer white but a dirty yellow colour, like old men’s teeth. Linda kept it held it up to the light to be sure, but there could be no mistaking the dirt that had
embedded in the horses and the jumper.

She saw how the pattern was crooked and the horses difficult to tell from any other kind of animal, that the stitching was erratic and the arms a different length. It looked monstrous. She
scrunched the fabric into a ball. As she did there was a loud bang at the door.

‘Auntie Linda! Auntie Linda!’ Poppy said. ‘Are you awake?’

‘Don’t come in,’ Linda shouted, throwing the jumper to the floor. ‘Please, Poppy, please don’t come in.’

The last time I’d seen Angela Fulton she was leaving Wigan’s World Famous Winter Wonderland dragging a three-foot stuffed rabbit through a field of dirty fake snow.
I’d won the luckless animal for her moments earlier, but it had not proved the conciliatory gesture I’d hoped. Instead, Angela had stormed off in exasperation and hurled the rabbit onto
a pile of rubbish sacks by the exit. I watched her leave and in an impotent rage headed to the refreshment tent and got drunk on mulled wine. By the time I got home, all of her possessions were
gone.

We were in our early twenties then, the two of us pale and skinny and living in an exacting proximity to each other. We knew no one else in Wigan, and made no effort to mix with people outside
of our respective jobs. Instead we sat in our smoky one-room flat, talking, occasionally fighting and in the evenings making love. Afterwards, by the light of a low wattage bulb, we’d inspect
our bodies: the constellations of bruises our bones had made.

How we endured such isolation for so long is hard to say. I suspect now that we found it somehow romantic to live such a shabby, closed-off life. We had no television, no phone; just our books
and an inherited Roberts radio that only picked up Radio 4 and John Peel. There was the odd excursion to Liverpool and Manchester, to the Lakes and the Wirral, but for the most part we stayed
indoors, paralysed by the intimacy of our affair.

Of course, it could not last, and those last few months were unbearable, horrible. Without either of us noticing it, the real world slowly began to encroach. I started to go out on my own and
come back late at night, drunk and insensible. Angela would disappear for hours without ever divulging where she was going. To spite her, one evening I came home with a second-hand television set
and placed it pride of place on the dresser. In retaliation, Angela insulted the way I looked, the length of my hair, the state of my clothes, the number of cigarettes that I smoked, my childish
sense of humour. One night she threw a book at my head and called me a thoughtless fucking cunt. The next morning neither of us could remember what I was supposed to have done.

Angela was not my first love, nor I hers; but it felt like we should have been. Years later, I would imagine her laughing at the appearance of my new girlfriend; in idle moments wonder whether
she still dressed the same way. Late at night I’d remember her naked body, picturing her with a waxed bikini line that she’d never had. In such moments, I would consider trying to find
her again, but didn’t have a clue where to begin. Still, the compulsion was there: like a seam of coal, buried yet waiting to be mined.

That morning I left my house and took the Underground to work, bought a coffee and drank it at my desk while reading the newspaper. At 9 a.m. there was the usual departmental
meeting, which was swiftly followed by a conference call. I ate my lunch in the courtyard and then browsed in a bookshop. When I arrived back in the office I had nineteen voicemails: three of which
were just the sound of a phone being replaced on its cradle.

I answered the emails, returned the phone messages and was about to make my afternoon cup of tea when the phone rang again. It was a number I didn’t recognize. I hesitated, then picked up
the receiver. There was a pause and then a woman’s voice asked for Marty. She was the only one who’d ever called me Marty.

Angela sounded exactly as she had before, and I recalled for a moment the way she used to breathe heavily in my ear. She asked me how I was and I stuttered, then stood up for no
good reason. There was a pause, a long one. Eventually, I asked her how she’d got my number.

‘You’re on the Internet,’ she said.

‘I’m on the Internet?’ I said.

‘Everyone’s on the Internet,’ she said.

I asked her what she wanted. She asked if I was with someone. I said no, not really. She told me she’d booked us a hotel. I asked where. She said Swindon.

‘What’s in Swindon?’ I said.

‘I will be.’

‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I mean—’

‘Oh come on,’ Angela said, ‘we both know you’re going to say yes, so why waste the time?’

I had never been to Swindon before, and all things considered, it is unlikely I will ever go to Swindon again. On the train, there was something about the look on the
passengers’ faces, a certain kind of blankness. I burrowed into my seat and took out a newspaper, but realized I’d read it all at breakfast. Instead I went to the buffet car and came
back with some Chinese nuts and a can of Bass. In the silent carriage, I apologetically opened the can and crunched the snacks. I tried the crossword, but couldn’t concentrate on even the
simplest clue.