Where There's Smoke

CHAPTER 4

When she was six, there had been a suburban cinema not far from her home. It had been run-down and struggling even then, on a downslide that would end with it becoming first a bingo hall, then a supermarket, and finally a car park. But for Kate, who had never been to any other cinema, the chewing-gum-patterned carpet and threadbare seats didn’t matter. They were part of the darkened atmosphere, along with the rustle of crisp bags and the cigarette smoke that meandered in the flickering beam of light overhead. The images on the screen were a window to another world, and once lost in that technicolour glamour, the shabby theatre, school, and even home itself became insubstantial as ghosts. Her visits to the old cinema were rare, but all the more treasured because of that. When she found out that Jungle Book was being shown again, it became her mission in life to see it. The film wasn’t new, but that hardly mattered to Kate, who had missed it the first time around. Her mother told her they would go to see it “soon”, a typically vague assurance that she was already coming to interpret as “never”, unless she pushed. Which she did, until finally her mother agreed to take her on a Saturday morning. First, though, there came the ritual of Weekend Shopping.

Kate’s mother had insisted that the best cuts of meat for her father’s tea, and for Sunday lunch the next day (another ritual, equally sacred), would have gone by the time the film was over. So Kate had trailed around after her, agonising over each minute spent in the butcher’s and greengrocer’s as her mother intently considered each item before she either bought it or moved on to another. By the time they arrived at the cinema the feature had already started, and Kate’s mother refused to pay for something they wouldn’t see all of. The ticket clerk suggested coming back for the later showing, but her mother was already drifting out, the attempt made, duty done. They had gone home, where her mother had continued with the business of fretting over her father’s tea. Kate watched as she chopped vegetables and carefully cut off every scrap of fat from the meat, so that her husband wouldn’t have to face that chore himself when he ate it. Kate had waited until her mother was completely engrossed, and then quietly set off for the bus stop. The ticket clerk, a florid woman with badly permed hair, had recognised her when she slid the money she had taken from her piggy bank through the hole in the glass screen. “Let you come on your own, has she?” the woman asked, mouth tightening in disapproval. Kate let her silence answer. The woman pushed her ticket through the slot. “Don’t deserve kids, some people,” Kate heard her mutter, as she went inside. It was early evening when she arrived back home. Her parents were furious. Looking back, Kate supposed they must have been worried, but that didn’t come through at the time. Only the anger. Her father had hit her and sent her to bed without anything to eat. Her mother, bewildered at her daughter’s wilfulness, followed his example, as she always did. “Your father’s tea was ruined! Ruined! You bad girl!” she had hissed before closing the bedroom door. Kate cried herself to sleep, hungry and with her father’s handprint livid on the skin of her leg. But she had still seen the film. As she had grown older, the incident had passed into family lore, diluted and joked about, but never forgotten. “Just took herself off, without a word to anyone,” her mother would say at family gatherings. “Typical Kate. Even then she was always a stubborn little thing. Determined to do what she wanted.”

And, accepting the polite laughter, Kate would look at her mother and still see the perplexity in her eyes behind the social smile. She wondered what her parents would say if they had been alive to see what she was doing now. She told the taxi driver to stop as soon as she saw the gas tank she’d been given as a landmark. She knew it was irrational, but she didn’t want him to know where she was going. The driver, a middle-aged Indian man, spoke to her over his shoulder through the glass partition as she handed him the fare. “Do you want a receipt?”

It was her suit, Kate thought, that and the leather briefcase, marking her as a businesswoman. She had worn them as camouflage, she saw now, a pretence that her visit was official, not personal. “No, thanks.” She wanted only to be away from the taxi, with its musty odour of cigarettes and worn leather. She climbed out quickly onto the pavement, delaying over putting away her wallet and smoothing her skirt until the taxi pulled away with a rattle of blue exhaust. The fumes trailed in the still, warm air, dissipating slowly. Squinting in the harsh sunlight, Kate looked around to get her bearings. The street was deserted. Nearby a newsagent’s shop stood with a curtain of multi-coloured plastic strips hanging in its open doorway, swaying slightly. Further along was a garage, wooden doors pulled back to reveal a shadowed interior. The tinny echo of a radio came from inside, but there was no other sign of life. The sun bore down on her shoulders. Its dry heat was hot on the back of her neck, contradicting the spring chill in the air. She could feel it pressing against her through the lightweight jacket as she began walking. The empty street made her feel as self-conscious as if she were on display. The clinic was on the opposite side of the road to the gas tank. It was set slightly back from the pavement, with spaces for car parking in front. Flat-roofed and brick, it was as unprepossessing as a warehouse. Kate felt a flutter of nerves as she approached. A single step led to glass-panelled double doors. On the wall at one side of them was a small white plastic sign. In plain black lettering it said, “Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology”.

What am I doing? The question jumped out at her with sudden clarity. She looked around, guiltily. But no one was watching. The street was still empty. The doors creaked as Kate pushed them open and went inside. They swung shut behind her with a squeal. She stood in a small foyer. The floor was died with yellow vinyl squares, scuffed and pock-marked but clean. The place had the bottled-up smell of any public building. A sign saying “Reception” pointed down a corridor. Kate hesitated a moment before following it. The door to the reception office was slightly ajar. She knocked lightly on it and pushed it open. The two women in the room turned to look at her. One was middle-aged and sat behind a desk. The other was younger, and stood holding a folder.

“I’m … I have an appointment,” Kate said. The younger woman smiled. “Kate Powell, is it?” Without waiting for a reply she strode forward, her hand outstretched. Kate took it. “I’m Maureen Turner. We spoke on the phone.”

Her manner was relaxed and friendly and, with a sudden inversion, the building no longer seemed quite so dingy and alien. Kate smiled back, relieved. The woman spoke to the older one. “We’ll be in the end interview room, Peggy. Can you arrange for two teas to be sent in?” She turned to Kate again. “Is tea all right? The coffee maker’s on the blink, I’m afraid.”

“Tea’s fine,” Kate answered, realising as she said it that she didn’t really want anything. But the other woman was already walking out.

“It’s just down here.”

Kate fell in step beside her. Their footsteps clicked on the died floor, slightly out of synchronisation. The woman opened a door at the far end, holding it open for Kate to precede her. Inside, it was hot and airless. Several low plastic armchairs were set around a wooden coffee table. It looked like a teachers’ staff room, Kate thought.

The woman went to the big window and began wrestling to open it. “I think we’ll let some fresh air in before we start,” she said, straining against the window catch. “Sit down, make yourself comfortable.”

Feeling anything but, Kate chose the nearest chair. Air leaked out of the plastic cushion in a slow hiss as she settled into it. The window came open with a jerk, and the woman brushed her hands as she turned away from it. “There. That’s better.”

She sat down herself and gave Kate another smile. “You found us without too much difficulty, then?”

“Yes, fine. I got a taxi from the tube station.”

“Probably wise. I’m not the best when it comes to directions.”

Kate smiled politely. She knew the small-talk was intended to put her at ease, but it was having the opposite effect. She felt her edginess returning. The woman set her file on the low table between them.

“Are we the first clinic you’ve approached?”

“Yes, I got your number from my GP.” Kate hoped her nerves didn’t show.

“So you haven’t had any counselling on donor insemination before?”

“Uh, no, no I haven’t.”

“Fine, that’s no problem. Now — “

There was a rap on the door. It opened immediately and the older woman Kate had seen earlier came in, carrying a tray. There was a pause while she set it down and left. Kate fought the urge to fidget, answering yes to milk, no to sugar as the tea was poured and stirred. A cup and saucer was passed across. Kate took it and sipped, tasting nothing but heat and a faint sourness of milk. She put it down again. The woman took a sip from her own cup before placing it on the table.

“To start with, as you know, I’m a counsellor, not a doctor, and this is just an introductory session. All that’s going to happen today is that I’ll tell you a little about donor insemination itself, and the legal aspects that are involved. Then, if you’re still keen, we’ll take a couple of blood samples for routine tests. But I’ll come to that later. If you have any questions, or if there’s anything you feel unsure about, feel free to stop me and ask.”

Kate nodded, not trusting her voice. She reached for her cup again, to give her hands something to do.

“Right, now, I gather you’re unpartnered?” the counsellor continued.

“Is that a problem?” Kate set down the teacup without drinking.

“No, not at all. I know not all clinics will treat unpartnered women, but we try not to discriminate. However …” Kate stiffened as her expression became more sober “… we are required by the HFEA — that’s the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the regulatory body — to take into account the welfare of the child. So later I’d like to talk about how you see yourself dealing with issues like combining work with raising a child, and the pros and cons of telling your child how it was conceived. Is that all right?”

Kate said it was. The words “your child” rang in her head, so that she had to concentrate on responding.

“The insemination procedure itself is quite straightforward,” the counsellor went on. “The sperm’s kept frozen in straws, like a tiny drinking straw, until we need it. Then we use one of these …” she picked up a slender metal tube, which reminded Kate of a blunt-ended knitting needle, from the coffee table “… to introduce the sperm into the cervix.” She smiled. “We leave it to thaw out for a few minutes first. But that’s basically all there is to it. It doesn’t hurt, you don’t need an anaesthetic, and there’s no more risk of miscarriage than with a normal pregnancy. You don’t even have to get undressed, except for your pants and tights. And you can carry on as normal afterwards just as you would after ordinary intercourse.”

Kate sat forward to examine the tube. Her nervousness was forgotten now. “How do you know when to do it?”

“Obviously, it has to coincide with your ovulation cycle, which you’ll be responsible for timing yourself. We’ll double check ourselves when you come in for your treatment, to make sure the egg’s about to be released. If it was, and we were satisfied everything was okay, we’d go ahead.”

“How many, uh, treatments does it usually take?”

“It varies. Some women become pregnant in the first cycle, but we can go up to nine. Other clinics might do more, but we take the view that if it hasn’t worked by then, it probably isn’t going to. And at three hundred pounds per cycle it wouldn’t be fair to carry on indefinitely.”

She gave Kate an apologetic look. “I should point out that as a single woman you won’t be eligible for any help with costs from the NHS. You are aware of that, aren’t you?”

Kate said she was. She hadn’t expected any help anyway.

“In that case I’ll move on to the donors themselves,” the counsellor said, and Kate felt some of her earlier nervousness return. “To begin with, we screen every one for relevant medical and family history, and test them for HIV, hepatitis, and other sexually transmitted diseases. Then the sperm is frozen and stored for a minimum of six months, until a second HIV test has been carried out, to reduce the risk of infection.”

Kate had been listening intently. “Are the donors all anonymous?”

“If you mean as far as you would be concerned, then yes. But of course their identity’s known to the clinic.”

“But there’s no way I could find out who it was? If I wanted to, I mean,” Kate persisted. She had gathered as much from the magazine article, but she wanted to be sure. “Absolutely none. We’re forbidden by law to reveal who they are.”

“But what if there’s a mistake, or something goes wrong?”

The counsellor was clearly used to such anxieties. “If we had any doubts about a donor, we wouldn’t use them. That’s why we check with their GP and carry out all the tests beforehand. But we have to protect their interests as well. It’d hardly be fair if they had to worry about the Child Support Agency knocking on their door in ten years’ time. We can’t disclose their identity any more than we can disclose yours. And I’m sure the last thing you’d want would be for some stranger to turn up and announce that he’s the father of your child and wants visiting rights.”

“Has that ever happened?” Kate asked, alarmed.

“Not so far as I’m aware. But that’s the whole point of the donors remaining anonymous, so that problems like that don’t occur.”

Kate accepted that, but she still hesitated before asking the next question. “How much would I know about the father?”

“It’s better to think of them purely as the donor, not the father,” the counsellor corrected her, with a smile. “We’re allowed to divulge certain non-identifying information, such as their hair and eye colour, occupation and interests. But any more than that would risk infringing the donor’s anonymity.”

“So who decides which donor to use? It isn’t just a random selection, is it?”

“Oh, no! We only use donors from the same ethnic group as the recipient, and we try to get as close a match as possible as far as body type and colouring. Even blood group, if we can. We can’t guarantee a perfect match, but we do our best.”

Despite the reassurance, Kate felt her unease growing. “Supposing I didn’t want the same physical type as me? Can I specify what sort of donor I want?”

“Well, we try to co-operate with your preferences within reason, but there are limitations. For one thing we only have a limited donor panel to choose from, so if we have to change the donor during treatment it might not be possible to find exactly the same physical type again.”

“You mean you might use more than one donor?” That was something the magazine article hadn’t mentioned.

“We’d try not to, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. If, for example, we ran out of samples by the donor we’d been using.” The counsellor’s face grew concerned. “You look as though you have a problem with that.”

Kate struggled against the growing tide of disillusionment. “It’s just that … well, I know the donor has to remain anonymous, but I thought I’d have more say in who it was. Or at least be told more about them. What sort of person they are. I didn’t realise I’d have to let someone else decide for me.”

“I’m afraid we can’t let people pick and choose to that extent,” the counsellor said. She sounded genuinely sympathetic. “It isn’t the same as a dating agency. There are strict guidelines we have to follow.”

Kate couldn’t bring herself to look at the other woman.

“It still seems like I’d have to take an awful lot on faith, that’s all.”

“We do vet the donors very carefully.”

“I know, it isn’t that.” She shrugged, embarrassed. “I just can’t imagine having a child by someone I know so little about.”

The admission made her feel stupid and naive, but she recognised the truth of it. She knew now that she could never accept having a child if she couldn’t choose the father herself. She felt her face beginning to burn. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve wasted your time.”

“Not at all. That’s what these sessions are for. It’s a big decision, and you need to be sure before you make it.”

“I suppose it’s the same at every clinic?” Kate asked, without much hope.

“More or less. You certainly wouldn’t be able to find out more information about the donors, wherever you went. Unless you go abroad, perhaps. The law might be different somewhere like America. I daresay you can even choose the donor’s IQ and shoe size over there.”

Kate forced a smile. Even assuming that that was true, she couldn’t afford either the time or the money to go to another country for treatment. She prepared to leave. But before she could, the counsellor, who had been watching her worriedly, seemed to reach a decision.

“Of course,” she said, carefully, “some women don’t bother with clinics at all.”

Her expression was guarded as she looked across at Kate. “It isn’t something I’d recommend, obviously. But you find that some lesbian couples, for instance, carry out DI on themselves because a lot of clinics refuse to treat them. They ask a male friend to be the donor.” She paused to let that sink in. “It really isn’t all that difficult when you think about it. All you need is a paper cup and a plastic syringe.”

Kate knew why the counsellor was telling her this, but she was too taken aback to say anything.

“I’m not suggesting anyone should try it, you understand,” the counsellor added quickly, seeing her expression. “It would mean using fresh sperm, so there wouldn’t be any of the legal or medical safeguards there’d be at a clinic. I just thought I’d mention it as a matter of interest.”

“Yes, but I don’t think …”

“No, no, of course. I probably shouldn’t have said anything.” She clearly wished she hadn’t. There was a silence. The counsellor sighed. “Well, perhaps you’d like to have another think about what you want to do,” she said.

Depression settled on Kate as she waited at the tube station. When the train arrived, she sat in a window seat and stared out into the blackness of the tunnel. Her reflection in the glass would wink out when the train came to the sudden brightness of a platform, only to return again when the platform was left behind. At one stop, a sullen-looking young woman got on with a fractious baby. Kate watched as she hissed a warning to the child, giving it a quick shake, which did nothing but make it cry harder. After that, the young woman ignored it, staring into space as if the squalling infant on her knee wasn’t there. Kate looked away.

She came out of King’s Cross into the weak afternoon sun and made her way to the agency. The burned-out warehouse was still standing, although the lower-floor windows had been boarded up. Its blackened roof timbers stood out against the blue sky like steepled fingers, and a faint scent of charred woodĘlingered around it. Kate had almost grown used to the blackened shell, but now she walked past quickly, like a child hurrying by a graveyard. She threw herself into her work as best she could for the rest of the day, succeeding in holding back the disappointment for a little while, at least. But it was still there waiting for her. With a sense of dread she heard the others preparing to go home, and knew it couldn’t be avoided for much longer. She was still trying to, even so, when Clive came up to her office.

“We’re going for a quick drink,” he said. “Do you fancy coming?”

“Oh … thanks, but I think I’ll skip it for tonight.”

Clive nodded, but didn’t go out. “Look, don’t mind me asking, but are you all right?”

“Fine. Why?”

“You just seem a bit preoccupied lately.”

The impulse to tell him almost won out. “It’s probably trying to guess what quibble Redwood’s going to come up with next,” she said, lightly. “Thanks for asking, but I’m fine, really.”

He looked at her for a second or two, then accepted it. “Okay. See you tomorrow.”

Kate said goodnight. Clive went back downstairs, and a little while later the front door slammed. In its aftermath, the office sank into the hollow quiet of an empty building. She tried to continue working, but found herself listening to the stillness until it seemed to be soaking into her. She cleared her desk and went home.

The sun was setting when Kate arrived at her flat. As she went down the path, she took her keys quietly from her bag, hoping to get in for once without being intercepted by Miss Willoughby. But as she reached out to unlock the front door, it swung open of its own accord. Cautiously Kate pushed it open the rest of the way. The door to her flat was still closed and unmarked, she saw with relief, and afterwards she would recall with guilt that her first concern had been a selfish one. Then she saw that the old lady’s door was ajar.

“Miss Willoughby?” Warily, she stepped into the entrance hall and knocked on the half-open door. “Hello?”

Silence greeted her. Kate gave the door a gentle nudge. The flat’s hallway yawned in front of her. At the far end a doorway led into what looked like the lounge. A noise was coming from it, a low murmuring, indistinct but constant.

“Miss Willoughby? Are you there?”

There was no answer. Kate stood uncertainly, not sure whether to close the front door or not, torn between wanting a quick means of escape and not wanting anyone else to walk in. Finally, she shut it. Then she went into the old lady’s flat.

A fusty smell of boiled vegetables and camphor, a distillation of old age, closed around her. Kate slowly made her way down the hallway towards the lounge. She stopped just before she reached it, suddenly struck by the absurdity of what she was doing, wondering if she shouldn’t simply run upstairs and call the police. But the silence of the place mocked that as cowardice. She stepped forward and pushed open the lounge door.

The noise she had heard came from the television, playing a quiz show at low volume in one corner. Light from it flickered over the dark Edwardian furniture, and over the parlour palms, aspidistras and rubber plants that filled the room. Their profusion was so great that it took Kate a moment to see that the drawers on the old bureau were pulled out. The cupboard doors of a sideboard were also open, their contents strewn untidily on the floor.

“Miss Willoughby?”

There was a low moan. Kate turned to where it came from and saw a pair of thin, stockinged legs sticking out from behind the drop-leaf table.

She ran over to them.

The old lady was lying on her back. Her head was turned sideways, and her forehead and cheeks were smeared with blood that looked like black oil in the dim room. One eye was swollen shut. The wig she always wore had slipped off, exposing a bony scalp covered with thin strands of white hair. She looked like a baby bird fallen from the nest.

The eye that wasn’t swollen flickered open as Kate crouched beside her. She muttered something indistinct.

“Don’t try to talk,” Kate told her, frightened that the effort would cause the ragged breathing to slow and stop. She looked wildly around, both for a telephone and to make sure that no one was behind her. But there was neither. She hesitated a moment longer. Then, as the eye slid shut and the voice slurred into silence, she turned and ran upstairs.