Anne picked up the cigarette which was smouldering on the ashtray on her
dressing table and placed it gently between her lips. She inhaled and blew a
plume of smoke towards her reflection in the mirror. Replacing her cigarette, she
returned to the task of putting on her make up in preparation for the evening
ahead. As always, she took great care over making herself up; she had recently
been promoted to the post of cosmetics editor for a women’s magazine (not a bad
job at the age of 29) and she felt that she ought to look the part. Blusher, eye
shadow, eye liner, and mascara were all meticulously applied. Before starting to
put on her lipstick she returned to her cigarette, which had now burned almost to
the filter. After one last drag she crushed it out and glanced up at the clock.
Martin’s taxi would be arriving in a few minutes. She took another cigarette from
the red and white pack which lay open on her dressing table, lit it and inhaled
before placing it on the ashtray. As she applied her lipstick, her thoughts
wandered back to their first date, already more than three weeks ago.
* * *
They had met at a health and fitness club near where Anne lived in south west
London, and where she attended dance classes on two evenings each week. After
her classes she sometimes stopped off in the club café for a cold drink. On one of
these occasions she chatted for a while to a tall, good looking man, perhaps a
couple of years older than herself, whom she had noticed doing weight training in
the gym. She was pleased to discover on her next visit that the man, whose name
was Martin, was again in the café, and they had another drink together.
It was no coincidence that Martin was there again. He had noticed the slim,
attractive woman with beautiful eyes and long dark hair in the dance class. Martin
was immediately struck by how hot she looked in comparison to the other women
who frequented the health club, and he did his best to ensure that he was around
the café each evening when her classes finished. He looked forward to their
meetings but, to his disappointment, Anne always excused herself and left after
only a few minutes. Martin wondered why she seemed in such a hurry to leave,
and hoped that it did not betray a lack of interest in him.
The truth was that after an hour and a half in the club, Anne was in urgent need of
a cigarette. As soon as she had driven her car out of the club car park, Anne
would retrieve her Marlboros from the glove compartment and light up her post-
exercise cigarette: always one of the most enjoyable of the day. It didn’t seem
right, somehow, to admit to Martin that, however pleasant his company might be,
her need for nicotine was a much more compelling attraction.
After two or three more brief chats in the health club café, Martin asked Anne for a
date, and she readily accepted. They arranged to meet for a drink and a meal in a
nearby inn with low ceilings and wooden beams, before going on to the cinema.
When Anne arrived, Martin was waiting for her at the bar. She looked strikingly
beautiful in a short red and black dress and black stiletto heels, her dark hair tied
back and her make-up professionally applied, as always. Having ordered a drink,
she sat down beside him at the bar and, opening her bag, she said in as casual a
manner as she could manage “Oh, by the way, you don’t mind if I smoke, do you?”
Martin’s reaction was worse than she had feared.
“What!” he said, astonished, “You smoke?”
“Well, yes,” Anne hesitated, an unlit cigarette in her hand. “I do. I’m sorry – does it
annoy you?”
“Well, I…I mean, no, not really,” Martin replied, confused. “That’s to say, I’m not
bothered by the smell, or anything like that. It’s just that, well, I didn’t expect…I
mean, you don’t look like…No, go ahead, if you want to.”
Anne lit her cigarette and turned away to exhale a long plume of smoke. Martin
watched her, transfixed.
“Have you…er…smoked for a long time?”
Anne laughed and blew out another cloud of smoke. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I
started when I was fourteen. All the girls smoked. You had to, to be one of the
crowd. I’d been smoking for more than four years before I left school.”
Martin was still looking at her as if she had just confessed to eating her last
boyfriend’s liver with some Fava beans and a nice Chianti.
“And do you…um…smoke a lot?”
Anne reached along the bar counter for an ashtray and tapped the ash from the tip
of her cigarette. This was not going well. She decided that, in the circumstances,
something less than the truth was called for.
“No, not really,” she lied. “I suppose I’m what you would call a social smoker. I
have a cigarette now and then when I’m out for an evening. And occasionally at
home,” she added, not wanting to stray any further from the truth than was
necessary.
“But it’s so bad for your health,” protested Martin. “Why on earth do you do it?”
Anne was getting fed up with this topic of conversation. Most of her previous
relationships had been with smokers and she had not had to undertake the
tiresome task of justifying her habit to them.
“Because I enjoy it.” she said, shortly. She found that she was not, however,
enjoying this cigarette and, after taking another drag, she stubbed it out half-
smoked in the ashtray on the counter. Martin’s expression brightened visibly and
he changed the subject.
After this shaky start, their evening out together had gone well. They discovered
that they had a lot of interests in common and that they enjoyed each other’s
company. Anne resisted the urge to light up in Martin’s presence again. When
they had finished eating, she excused herself to go to the ladies’ room and walked
away through the restaurant, her bag over her shoulder. Martin poured himself a
glass of wine and tried to come to terms with his discovery that the beautiful Anne
was a smoker. Physical fitness and well-being had always been of enormous
importance to him and he had never understood why other people were willing to
put their health at risk by smoking. Ever since he was a boy he had been
resolutely anti-smoking. The warnings which he received at school and read in
magazines seemed to be amply confirmed by the sight of the old, unattractive men
and women smokers with coughs and throaty voices whom he met around town.
The one curious exception to this rule was his aunt, his mother’s younger sister,
who smoked and yet was neither old nor unattractive. Late one night many years
ago, during a visit by her, he had been unable to sleep and had come downstairs,
to find his mother and his aunt chatting together in the kitchen. His aunt was
smoking a cigarette and there was another cigarette burning in the ashtray on the
table. Young Martin was puzzled. He had never before heard of anyone smoking
two cigarettes at once. Could it be that his aunt was an especially heavy smoker?
An alternative explanation which occurred to him later was too shocking to
contemplate.
Martin was beginning to wonder what had happened to Anne when she
reappeared, smiling contentedly, her make-up freshly applied. He called for the bill
and they got ready to leave.
In the cinema, Anne had excused herself again during the previews, so she was
able to keep her nicotine level sufficiently topped up to see her through to the end
of the film in relative comfort. By the time they arrived back at her apartment,
though, she was beginning to need another cigarette, and she did not invite Martin
in. They kissed goodnight, agreeing to meet again soon.
* * *
Recalling that first night out now, Anne picked up her cigarette from the ashtray,
reflecting, not for the first time, on how her smoking habits had changed in the last
month since she had started dating Martin. Her thoughts were interrupted by the
sound of a taxi arriving outside her apartment. She hurriedly took several deep
drags in quick succession. With smoke streaming from her mouth and nose, she
closed the door and made her way downstairs, where Martin was waiting
impatiently for her.
Chapter 2
The relationship between Anne and Martin had developed quickly. Martin could
scarcely believe his luck. Although he had initially been attracted to Anne by her
sexy looks, he had soon discovered that she was also very amusing and highly
intelligent. It was not much longer before he also discovered that she had
energetic and demanding sexual appetites which were a good match for his own.
All in all, it seemed to him that he had found the perfect woman – except for one
thing. He wished that she didn’t smoke. He consoled himself with the thought
that, as she had said on the first evening, she seemed to be only a “social
smoker”: at least, so far as he could tell, she did not usually smoke more than four
or five cigarettes each day. Martin had never dated a smoker before, and he was
interested to notice that even a social smoker’s apartment smelled strongly of
smoke. He assumed, correctly, that the burnt, sour taste which he often noticed
when he kissed Anne was the result of the tar left in her lungs by the smoke of her
cigarettes. Rather to his surprise, he did not find this taste as unpleasant as he
might have expected, perhaps because as time went on he came sub-consciously
to associate it with Anne.
Anne, meanwhile, was spending a fortune on air freshener and extra-strong mints,
in an effort to maintain her image as a “social smoker”. During the week, she did
not have to make much alteration to her smoking patterns. The publishing office in
which she worked had an area set aside at one end of the building for those
employees (all women) who smoked, and Anne had her desk there. Evenings and
weekends, however, became much more complicated. Although on the whole she
did not smoke any less than before, she found herself having to make the most of
opportunities as they presented themselves. She fell into a routine of chain
smoking several cigarettes (a habit which she never previously had) while putting
on her make-up in the evening, just in case she later found herself unable to
smoke for a while.
When Martin visited her apartment she would pretend to be absent-minded about
her shopping, always “forgetting” an item such as coffee or milk, which she would
then go out alone to buy. There had been an awkward moment during his first visit
when he commented on the presence of ashtrays in her bedroom and bathroom.
After that narrow escape she took care to keep most of her ashtrays and all of her
spare packs well out of his sight. Hardest of all were the occasions when Martin
stayed overnight. For some years Anne had been in the habit of lighting her first
cigarette as soon as she got out of bed (and sometimes before), and she found it
hard to endure her morning cravings until she could find an excuse to be alone.
She was growing tired of the deception, and had begun to wonder how she might
find a way of telling Martin the truth when the matter was taken out of her hands.
* * *
One day Martin called Anne to say: “I was thinking of visiting my parents next
weekend – would you like to come?”
“Didn’t you tell me that they had retired and moved to live in Spain?” Anne asked.
“Yes, that’s right. We could fly out on Friday afternoon and come back on Sunday
evening, if you want.”
And so next Friday they drove to the airport, checked in and made their way to the
departure gate. Anne was sitting wondering whether she had time for a cigarette
when Martin turned to her and said: “Oh, there’s one thing I meant to tell you: my
parents are very anti-smoking. I hope you won’t mind not smoking while we’re
visiting them.”
This was unwelcome news. Anne’s need for a cigarette had suddenly become
urgent, and she excused herself on the pretext of visiting the ladies’ room. Instead,
she located the nearest smoking area, opened the fresh pack of Marlboros in her
bag and lit up, breathing thick streams of smoke out through her nose and mouth
as she contemplated the unhappy prospect ahead. Having smoked her cigarette
quickly, she lit another while she took out her make-up bag to fix her lipstick and
mascara before the flight. She was still putting the last touches to her mascara
when, to her alarm, she heard a voice announcing the final call for their flight.
Grabbing her bag, she ran back to the departure gate where Martin was waiting
anxiously for her.
“Where have you been?” he said, agitatedly.
“Sorry,” Anne replied, breathlessly, “I didn’t hear the boarding announcement.”
Only when she was on the plane did it dawn on her that she had left her cigarettes
on the table in the smoking area. How stupid of me, she thought, and for once I
don’t have a spare pack in my bag. I’ll just have to buy some when we get to
Spain.
But Martin’s father met them in the arrivals hall and led them straight to his car,
giving Anne no opportunity to visit a cigarette counter. It turned out that Martin’s
parents’ house was situated in a modern residential development in pseudo-
Spanish style, inhabited mainly by retired expatriates from northern Europe, on a
barren stretch of Mediterranean coast several miles from the nearest town. Anne
disliked it on sight. Her dislike turned to dismay when she discovered that there
were no shops or bars in the development, and that the nearest likely source of
cigarettes was in a town almost five miles away. It was going to be a very long
weekend.
Next day Martin and his parents seemed content to lie and sunbathe all day by the
swimming pool. Normally, this would have suited Anne very well but her craving
for a cigarette made it impossible to relax. By lunch time she was becoming tense
and irritable, and by late afternoon her whole body seemed to be screaming at her
for its nicotine supply. When Martin’s mother announced that she intended to cook
them all a meal at home again that night, Anne could stand it no longer.
“Martin,” she said to him, quietly, “I would like you to take me out to dinner tonight,
please. Just the two of us.”
Something in her tone of voice made Martin realise that this request was not
negotiable. His parents did not appear to mind, and in the evening Martin’s father
drove them to the nearby town. Anne was relieved to find that it was a “real”
Spanish town, whose centre was a pleasant tree-shaded plaza surrounded by
lively bars and restaurants. They entered one of the restaurants and were shown
to the (non-smoking) table which had been reserved for them. They sat down and
Martin said, brightly: “So, is everything okay?”
Anne exploded at last. “Okay?” she shouted. “You bring me to this god-forsaken
corner of Spain, you dump me in a geriatric wasteland alone with your parents,
and you ask me if everything is okay? Jesus Christ!” And with that she got up and
stormed out, leaving Martin staring after her in bewilderment.
Anne strode into the bar next door where, to her relief, she spotted a cigarette
vending machine in a corner. She hurried over to it, to discover that the only brand
which she recognised – Marlboro – was sold out. Selecting what she hoped was a
strong Spanish brand, she bought a pack, opened it and requested a light from
one of the men in the bar, who was happy to oblige. She walked out into the
plaza, inhaling deeply. The Spanish cigarette was indeed pleasantly strong, with
an aroma which reminded her of the cafés which lined the square. The nicotine
took effect and she quickly calmed down. She knew that she had been unfair to
Martin, and already she was regretting what she had said. In a sense, she
admitted to herself, this was all her fault because she had not been frank with him
from the start.
By the time she had strolled to the other side of the plaza she had almost finished
her cigarette. As she still had no lighter, she used the end of it to light another,
before beginning to walk slowly back towards the restaurant.
When she re-entered, Martin was still sitting at the table, looking up at her
apprehensively.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realise…”
“Don’t worry about it,” Anne interrupted him. “It’s my fault, not yours.” She smiled,
leaned over and kissed him, aware that she must reek of Spanish cigarette smoke.
“Look”, she said, “there’s something I want to tell you, that I haven’t been totally
honest with you about. But before I do, could we please move to one of those
tables over there?”
Chapter 3
Anne and Martin re-seated themselves in the smoking section of the restaurant.
They gave their order to the waiter and Anne lit up, using a match from a book
which had been lying in the ashtray. She took a drag and Martin noticed a faint
“pop” as she withdrew the cigarette from her mouth.
“So,” he inquired warily, watching her exhale a long stream of smoke, “are you
going to tell me what this is all about?”
“It’s quite simple, really,” Anne replied. She held up her cigarette. “I’m just rather
more attached to these than I may have led you to believe. To be honest, today
was the longest I’ve gone without a cigarette for years, and I didn’t handle it very
well.”
Martin was relieved that the quarrel was over, but concerned at the implications of
what Anne had just said.
“In that case…er…how many of these do you really smoke each day?”
“It varies.” She watched him, gauging his reaction. “Some days I only smoke
about twenty.”
Martin’s eyes widened. He tried to conceal his surprise and said instead: “I think
that if I’m going to understand this you’d better tell me all about it. From the
beginning.”
Anne shrugged. “Okay, if that’s what you really want. As I told you before, I
started smoking when I was fourteen because I wanted to be like the other girls. I
didn’t smoke much, though – only four or five a day. I was keen on sports and I
was in the high school athletics team. In fact, I was the girls’ 100 metres
champion. Don’t look so shocked. Smoking a few cigarettes doesn’t affect your
sprinting ability the way it would affect you if you were a long distance runner. Do
you remember reading about that hurdler in the British Olympic team who was a
20-a-day smoker – Shirley something or other?”
She tapped the ash from her cigarette and took another drag. “I enjoyed athletics,
but I also enjoyed dating boys, and smoking made me feel cool. After I went to
university I carried on smoking, but still only about five a day. A pack would last
me most of the week. And I joined the university athletics team and went on with
my training.”
“But what did the athletics coach have to say about you smoking?” asked Martin.
“Didn’t he nag you to stop?”
“Yes, of course he did. He told me I was a promising athlete and that with a little
improvement I could be in the team for the inter-university championships later that
year. Eventually he persuaded me that I could achieve that improvement if I
stopped smoking.”
Their starter course arrived at the table. Anne took a deep drag on her cigarette
and then crushed it out.
“So I quit,” she said. “Physically, that wasn’t too hard because I didn’t smoke
much anyway. But I enjoyed my cigarettes and, psychologically, I missed them a
lot. As a substitute for them I threw myself one hundred per cent into the training
routine. I was in the gym for hours and I was out there on the track all winter in the
wind and the rain, working at my sprint. I really tried hard. I even managed to
reduce my personal best by almost half a second.”
She hesitated and looked away. “But it wasn’t enough. I didn’t make the team. If
I’m being totally honest with myself, I was never quite up to the national standard
required.
Martin looked at her sympathetically. “How did you react to that?”
Anne gave a dry laugh. “Badly”, she said. “I was devastated. That night I went
out to a bar and drank vodka until I passed out. At some point during the evening I
must have bummed some cigarettes from someone, though I can’t remember
much about it. I woke up in the morning with a raging headache and a taste of last
night’s smoke in my mouth. I never wanted to touch alcohol again, but for some
reason the taste in my mouth made me desperate for a cigarette. I rushed out
there and then and bought a pack of Marlboro. Within a couple of weeks I was
smoking ten a day.”
She put down her knife and fork, reached for her cigarettes and paused to light
one. “I suppose I had lost my incentive to keep it down. By the time I left
university I was up to about a pack a day. That’s what tends to happen with
cigarettes, as you probably know.”
“Didn’t that worry you?”
“No, not at all,” Anne said, exhaling a large cloud of smoke. “I suppose I knew by
then that I was pretty well addicted, but it didn’t bother me. I wasn’t smoking
because I was addicted: I had become addicted because I enjoyed smoking.
There’s a big difference. If you don’t want to stop, what does it matter if you’re
addicted? I still kept running too, at least for a while, but I never took it so
seriously again.”
In spite of his anti-smoking conviction – or perhaps because of it – Martin was
fascinated. “And after that you just continued to smoke more and more?”
“Not exactly. There was a time a few years ago when it became fashionable in
London for young women to smoke Marlboro Lights instead of the ones in the red
packs, which some people regarded as men’s cigarettes. I was working in the
public relations department of my office at the time and I thought it was more in
keeping with my company’s image for me to smoke the fashionable brand, so I
switched. But I soon discovered that they didn’t satisfy me unless I smoked a lot
more of them. For example I used to smoke one or two cigarettes before leaving
for work in the morning. With the Lights I found that I needed three or four just to
get me going.”
Anne examined the tip of her cigarette for a moment, before placing it between her
lips again. She released it and made a “V” with her index and middle fingers while
dragging on it. Again Martin heard the “pop” as she took it out of her mouth.
“I stuck with the Lights for nearly two years. Then late one Saturday night I was
running low on cigarettes and went out to the local garage to stock up. They had
sold out of Lights and so I bought three packs of the red ones to keep me going for
the rest of the weekend. Once I had smoked the first pack I knew I couldn’t return
to the weaker ones. But by now I had also become set in my smoking habits and
there was no way I was going back to less than twenty a day. Not that I wanted to
cut down anyway.”
She looked up at Martin and smiled self-consciously. “So now you know it all. I’ve
been smoking between one and two packs a day ever since. Personally, I don’t
regard that as a problem. I smoke because I enjoy it and not just because I have
to keep smoking to feed an addiction. I know I ought to have told you the truth
straight away. I’m sorry I didn’t. The question is – now that you’ve heard it, do you
still want me as I really am?”
Martin contemplated the smiling, vibrant woman sitting opposite him. His glance
strayed briefly to the half-smoked cigarette which she was holding in her hand. He
transferred his gaze back to her dark brown eyes and grinned broadly.
* * *
Later that night, having eaten well in the restaurant and drunk too much wine in the
bar next door, they walked away in search of a taxi home, leaving behind an empty
cigarette pack and a full ashtray. A fresh pack of strong Spanish cigarettes nestled
safely in Anne’s bag. She hoped Martin’s parents would have gone to bed before
their return, but unfortunately they were still up watching a film on cable TV. As
Martin and Anne said their goodnights, Martin’s mother fixed Anne with a look of
disapproval, but in which Anne could swear she detected a glint of amusement.
Chapter 4
After their return from Spain, Anne no longer made any attempt to conceal from
Martin how much she smoked. It was a great relief to her to be open about it and
not to have to search for opportunities to smoke behind his back. She saw her
honesty as a new and promising development in their relationship, and hoped that
Martin saw it this way too.
Martin, however, was privately appalled to discover the true extent of Anne’s habit.
To a man who spent his life doing everything possible to maximise his physical
fitness, her heavy smoking seemed to be little short of self-abuse. He tried to tell
himself that this was the same girl he had been dating for the last two months, but
he found himself seeing her through new eyes. Sometimes he would covertly
observe as she sat smoking while she read a book or a newspaper. Her cheeks
would hollow as she drew on her cigarette, and then, after what seemed a long
time to him, she would allow the smoke to escape gradually through her nose and
mouth, more wisps continuing to appear with each breath until she was ready to
take another of her deep drags.
Martin could not stop himself thinking about the damage which he imagined each
of these drags doing to Anne’s slim body. He reminded himself how perfect she
was in every other way, and did his best to ignore her smoking. But the more he
tried to ignore it, the more he seemed to notice. He would lie in bed in the morning
after she got up, listening for the click of her lighter as she lit her first cigarette of
the day. By the time he had showered and shaved and made his way to the
kitchen for breakfast, the air would be thick with smoke as she lit her third or fourth
cigarette of the morning. In the evenings, he noticed that when she was putting on
her make-up to go out she would sit and smoke one cigarette after another, and he
wondered how she had acquired that particular habit. The hint of huskiness in her
voice which he had found so alluring now took on a more sinister overtone. At
night he would usually go to bed before her and then lie waiting for her to finish her
final cigarette of the day before she came to join him, the smell of smoke strong in
her dark hair and the taste of the cigarette’s last, tar-concentrated half inch on her
lips.
* * *
One night Martin and Anne had been making love in typically boisterous fashion in
Martin’s bedroom. Anne lay for a while, out of breath, and then got up and walked
through to the kitchen. She re-appeared holding a cigarette and sat down on the
edge of the bed. Martin lay watching her as she sat smoking, naked, her cigarette
in one hand and the dish which she used as an ashtray in the other. Anne became
aware of his gaze.
“Sorry,” she said. “Do you want me to take this back to the kitchen?”
“No, there’s no need,” replied Martin. “It’s not that. I-”
“Is something wrong?” Anne inquired.
“It’s – well, it’s difficult to explain. It’s all to do with how I feel about you. I watch
you smoking cigarettes and I can’t help imagining the effect they’re having on you
inside. I just hate the thought of you hurting yourself so badly with them. It’s
almost as if – this may sound crazy, but it’s as if every time you put one in your
mouth I feel a physical pain, like it’s hurting me too. When I see you reaching for
them and opening the pack I have this sudden surge of anger. I want to rush over
and grab them and crush them and save you from them somehow. Does any of
that make sense?”
Anne laughed. “Don’t be silly,” she said, tapping ash into the dish. “You’ve been
reading too much anti-smoking propaganda. It’s all exaggerated. Not everyone
who smokes dies of it, you know. People smoke for years without doing
themselves any harm. The fact is that only a small minority get lung cancer.
There’s no reason why I should be one of those. Stop worrying about it – the
statistics are on my side.”
“Are they?” replied Martin. “What do the statistics tell us about someone who
smokes forty cigarettes a day, and inhales every one of them right down to her
toes, the way you’re doing just now? If you ask me, I think you’re fooling yourself.
I hear the way you cough in the bathroom in the morning. And not only in the
morning, either. It’s started, Anne. You’re only twenty-nine, but it’s affecting you
already.”
Anne did not reply immediately, but sat looking down at the cigarette burning
between her polished fingernails. There was admittedly some truth in what Martin
said. She didn’t like her cough, which seemed to have got worse in the last year or
two. But in all other respects, she reckoned that she was about as fit as could be
expected, considering that she did not have time to take as much exercise as she
ought to.
“So what are you suggesting?” she said at last. “I hope you’re not going to nag me
to quit. I’ve told you I don’t want to.”
“No,” Martin agreed, “I can see that that would be pointless. But I did wonder
about something else. Tell me, how do you decide when to smoke another
cigarette?”
Anne thought about this. “It’s not a question of deciding,” she replied. “You don’t
decide to be hungry or thirsty, do you? My body tells me when it’s time for a
cigarette.”
“Yes, but I guess there must be times when you enjoy it more than others. I
mean, aren’t there some which you really look forward to, and others which
you just smoke out of habit?”
“I suppose so,” said Anne, taking a last drag from her cigarette and putting it out in
the dish. “Why?”
“Well, say you were to choose the ones you enjoy the most – let’s say the best five
each day – and cut out the rest, you’d still get a lot of the enjoyment but at a
fraction of the health risk. How about that?”
Anne pulled on a t-shirt and went through to the kitchen, where she sat down at
the table to drink a glass of water and to think over what Martin had said. It was
true that there were certain cigarettes each day which she particularly enjoyed.
The one with her morning coffee, for example. The one after lunch. The one with
a drink when she came home from work. The ones in her car before and after her
dance class. The last one at night. Above all, the first one in the morning. It was
also true, she supposed, that there were others which were less important to her.
She opened the pack which was lying on the table and discovered that it had just
one cigarette left in it. She tried to remember what she had been doing while she
smoked each of the other nineteen, but could recall only about five of them.
Maybe Martin was right: maybe the truth was that some of the time she was just
smoking out of habit and could cut out those cigarettes without missing too much
enjoyment. There was little to lose by giving it a try. And there might be something
to be gained. Her relationship with Martin was getting quite serious: this could be
a good way to demonstrate her long term commitment to making things work out
between them.
Anne took the cigarette out of the pack, lit it and walked back through to the
bedroom. Martin looked up at her expectantly.
“Only five a day is out of the question,” she said. “Could you live with ten?”
Martin grinned. “It’s not my life we’re discussing. Do you think you can do it?”
“Why not?” replied Anne, as she exhaled a plume of smoke. She laid her cigarette
down on the dish and took off her t-shirt. “Now, are we going to talk about my
smoking all night, or do you want to do something more interesting instead?”
Chapter 5
So Anne gave it a try. She made a plan: each pack would have to last her for two
days. If she smoked too much on day 1, she would smoke less on day 2. It would
be easy to see whether she was succeeding in sticking to the limits which she had
set herself.
And for a while she did succeed. Or, at least, she did succeed provided you didn’t
count the occasional cigarette bummed from friends; or taken from the emergency
pack in her office desk; or from the emergency pack in her car; or from the
emergency pack on her bedside table. When she smoked too many on day 1, she
smoked less on day 2; or, at least, she kept a count of the excess, with the
intention of smoking less on day 3, or, anyway, smoking less next week. When the
“excess” got above 20 she stopped counting.
* * *
It was Anne’s birthday. To celebrate, Martin had taken her out for dinner to an
expensive out of town restaurant beside the River Thames. It was a warm summer
evening, and they were seated at a table near the river in the restaurant’s garden
where Anne could smoke. As they sat waiting for their main course to arrive,
Martin, looked across at Anne, admiring, as always, her casually stylish dress
sense; her perfectly applied make-up; her long, well-brushed hair; her dark, brown
eyes. She’s so wonderful, he thought to himself. Which reminded him that, in
once respect, things were not working out quite as he had hoped they would. He
said, quite gently: “It’s not working, is it?”
Anne, who had been playing with her cutlery in order to distract herself from
reaching for another cigarette, looked up in alarm. “What’s not working?” she
asked, anxiously.
“Cutting down on your smoking. You’re back where you started, aren’t you?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Anne replied, defensively. “All right, I admit that some days
are better than others, but what did you expect?”
“Name one day in the last two weeks when you smoked less than twenty.”
Anne thought for a moment. “Last Sunday.” she said, triumphantly.
“True,” admitted Martin. “But then you didn’t get out of bed until three o’clock in the
afternoon, having sat up all night with Laura drinking us out of red wine. And you
managed to get through two packs during that night alone.”
Anne started to laugh at the memory, her laugh gradually turning into a cough.
She abandoned her cutlery, took out one of her Marlboros, and lit it. “I suppose
there are just a lot more enjoyable cigarettes in the day than I had realised,” she
said, exhaling smoke as she spoke.
But she knew that this was not the whole truth. Although she was not going to
admit it to Martin, she was secretly alarmed that her attempt to cut down had failed
so quickly and so completely. Anne was a very well-organised person, who liked to
think that she lived her life exactly as she wanted to in every respect. (At work her
colleagues privately regarded her as a bit of a control freak.) She had always
assumed that if the day came when she no longer wanted to smoke, then she
would simply stop, just as she would move house if she became bored with where
she was living. Now, for the first time, she had discovered that she was under the
control of her nicotine habit, rather than the other way round. She did not find this
an appealing discovery. Maybe one day she really would have to quit to protect
her health: if so, would she be able to do it? What if she became pregnant and
had to stop for the health of her baby?
Anne’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of the waiter with their main course.
She took another drag. Martin watched the twin plumes of smoke stream from her
nose as she emptied her lungs for one more, final drag before she crushed the
cigarette out in the ashtray, exhaled another large cloud of smoke, and began to
eat.
* * *
Having abandoned the pretence that she was cutting back to ten cigarettes a day,
Anne returned once more to her usual smoking patterns. She had a nagging
feeling, though, that things had subtly changed: something about smoking was no
longer quite the same. It was not that she found it less pleasant; quite the
opposite. But now that it had been demonstrated to her that she was not in control
of her nicotine habit, she began to notice its effects on her more than she had
done before. She found her cough more irritating. She appeared to have no
stamina for physical exercise at all. It occurred to her that her body might be
sending her a distant early warning of trouble ahead. She began to wish that she
had never agreed to Martin’s proposal, and tried to persuade herself that she was
imagining these tell-tale symptoms.
Eventually there came an incident which Anne could not ignore. Martin telephoned
her at work one afternoon to say that he had been given two tickets for a West End
show that evening. Anne was working late, and so they agreed to meet at the
theatre. When Anne eventually finished work, she had less than half an hour to
make the journey from her office to the theatre, and on going outside she
discovered that it had begun to rain. She sheltered in a doorway while she waited
for a taxi to come along. And waited, and waited. Because of the rain, taxis were
in short supply, and cab after cab went by full of passengers. It was nearly a
quarter of an hour before she spotted a taxi at last, emerging with its hire sign
illuminated from a side street into the road where she was standing. She walked
towards it waving her arm, but failed to catch the driver’s eye. The taxi moved out
into the road but then turned to drive off in the direction away from where Anne
was frantically signalling. She threw away her cigarette and started to run after it
as fast as she could. The taxi was now stopped at a red light about a hundred
metres away, its hire sign still on. Before Anne had covered half the distance to it,
she felt her chest becoming tight and painful. Her heart was hammering as it
demanded more oxygen than her lungs could supply. Unable to continue running,
she stopped and tried to force her lungs to take deeper breaths, but succeeded
only in triggering a coughing fit. When she looked up again the taxi had gone.
Gasping from her effort, Anne stood in a shop doorway and got out her cell phone.
“Martin? Hi, it’s me…What? No, I’m all right…I’m just…out of breath, that’s all.
Look, I’m sorry, but I’m going to be late…”
Anne put away her phone and, for once, resisted the urge to take out her
cigarettes. Still breathing heavily, she began to walk slowly towards the nearest
Tube station.
* * *
“I’ve decided to stop smoking,” Anne announced out of the blue, a few days later.
“I’m pleased to hear it,” Martin replied, cautiously. “What’s caused the change of
mind?”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said. I don’t suppose I can go on smoking two
packs a day for ever, can I? Maybe you’re right – maybe I’ve been doing it for too
long already. I used to be able to run 100 metres in 12 seconds and now I can’t
run it at all. And it seems that I’m not able to cut down to just a few each day. So if
I’m going to have to quit altogether it may as well be sooner rather than later. I’ve
always told you that I only smoke because I want to. This is my chance to prove it
to myself.”
“You’re quite right. If you’re determined to stop, then of course I’ll help you in any
way I can,” Martin assured her. He put his arms round her and kissed her. “Good
for you, Anne. I know you won’t regret this.”
Anne looked at him scornfully. “Of course I’ll regret it,” she said. “I love smoking.
It’s going to be absolute hell.”
Chapter 6
As before, Anne made a plan. She had read advice in a “quit smoking” guide on
the internet that the best method was to take a break from her usual routine and try
to quit cold turkey, and so she and Martin arranged to take time off work and
booked themselves a last-minute activity holiday in a beach resort on a Caribbean
island. They arrived at their hotel late in the evening and, after unpacking, they
went down to the bar where Anne sat and finished the cigarettes in her pack,
smoking each one down to the stub.
When there was only one left, she excused herself to Martin and walked outside to
the patio. A warm breeze was blowing in from the sea. She sat down alone at a
table under a palm tree and lit her last cigarette, inhaling less deeply than usual so
that it would take longer to smoke. She tried to remember what it was like not to
be a smoker but, apart from the brief interlude at university, her memories were too
far back in her youth to afford much of a clue. As a small child she had hated her
father’s smoking and nagged him persistently that it was bad for him. All of that
changed one day in her early teens when her friend Katie invited her into a shed at
the bottom of the garden where, to Anne’s surprise, Katie produced a pack of
Benson & Hedges, and the two girls practised smoking to impress the boys at a
party that night. She remembered, too, the day when she bought her own pack for
the first time, in a corner shop whose owner took a relaxed attitude to the age of
his customers. As she unwrapped the pack and took a cigarette out of it, she had
quietly murmured under her breath the words “I smoke.” just to see how it
sounded. It sounds good, she had thought to herself.
It still sounds good, Anne reflected wistfully, as she returned her attention to the
cigarette which she was now holding and of which, despite her efforts, very little
remained. She continued to take small drags until the last of the tobacco burned
away and it went out. She dropped the lipstick-stained filter on the ground,
crushed it symbolically with her heel, and stood up to rejoin Martin in the bar.
During the next two weeks they passed the time surfing, windsurfing, paragliding,
and participating in every other available activity, in order to try to occupy Anne’s
attention. In the evenings they dined in non-smoking restaurants and Anne drank
too much wine as an inadequate substitute for the nicotine which she craved. For
the first week she suffered dreadful withdrawal symptoms: headaches, chest pains,
dizzy spells and panic attacks. Despite their busy sport schedule, she seldom
lasted more than ten minutes without longing for a cigarette. Martin did what he
could to help her, tolerating her foul moods and fits of temper, calming her down
when she panicked, drying her tears when she cried. It was not a very relaxing
fortnight for either of them, but by the end of the holiday Anne’s symptoms were
much less acute and she had succeeded in resisting all temptations to smoke. As
she walked quickly past the duty-free cigarettes at the airport without making any
purchase, she smiled proudly at Martin, although inwardly she suspected that the
worst was yet to come.
And so it proved. By nature, Anne was a very strong-willed woman and, having
made the decision to give up smoking, she was determined to prove to herself that
she could see it through. But as she had feared, once back at work and into her
normal routine, her cravings got worse, not better. When she woke in the morning
she would reach automatically for the pack on her bedside table before
remembering with dismay that it was no longer there. Breakfast without a cigarette
left her unprepared to start the day. In the office she moved to sit at a desk away
from the smoking area but still found herself thinking about cigarettes a hundred
times a day. She stopped drinking coffee because the taste of espresso without
tobacco made her feel even more miserable. In the evenings she stayed at home
rather than go out to smoky bars and parties. She and Martin made an effort to
spend more time with Martin’s friends (none of whom smoked) than with Anne’s
female friends (most of whom did smoke). This removed a source of temptation
but did nothing for Anne’s social pleasure. There were many times when she
found herself on the brink of failure. On one occasion, after a particularly difficult
day at work, she got as far as joining the queue at the cigarette counter in the
supermarket, before willing herself to walk away without making a purchase.
Eventually, Anne did allow herself the pleasure of an evening out with her own
friends. They were sympathetic to her predicament and did their best not to smoke
as much in her presence as they would normally have done. Even so, Anne felt a
pang of envy each time she watched the girls light up. She could not help noticing
the expressions of satisfaction and pleasure on their faces as they inhaled during
the animated conversation. Again, though, she held firm and did not dare even to
ask for a drag of someone else’s cigarette. They’re just feeding an addiction, she
told herself: they’re not really enjoying it. But she didn’t entirely believe this. As
she made her way home at the end of the evening she tried to feel triumphant at
having stayed smoke-free, but merely felt dejected and wondered whether she had
spoiled the evening for the others.
Weeks and then months passed, although to Anne it seemed like years. And
slowly – very slowly – but surely, she began to recognise the unmistakeable
evidence that there were benefits to quitting smoking. Her morning cough had
almost disappeared and when she woke up her chest no longer felt heavy and
tight. She could laugh without her laugh turning into another cough. She realised
that she had been fooling herself to believe that smoking had not been affecting
her in other ways. For the first time in years she was able to walk up stairs without
losing her breath. She could run for more than a few yards without her heart rate
rising to an alarming level. Her stamina at the dance class improved and she
began to think about enrolling for more advanced sessions. She became aware,
with hindsight, that she had previously been spending much of her life breathless
without appreciating it. Everything she ate tasted better. She calculated that
cigarettes had been costing her, on average, around $400 every month, and
decided to use the money she was saving to take out a loan on a new car, with
leather upholstery which smelt clean and fresh. Although she still had the urge to
smoke many times a day, she now had some real justification for telling herself that
she should not give in.
The Christmas holiday season came and went, and Anne took part in the usual
social whirl without succumbing to frequent temptation. Tentatively, she began to
describe herself as an ex-smoker, and dared to contemplate a future life without
cigarettes.
Martin, of course, was absolutely delighted by Anne’s success. He had not
honestly expected her to stay quit for long, and she had surpassed all his wildest
hopes. He, too, was looking to the future: one in which he imagined Anne playing
a central role. Everything was going very well indeed.
Chapter 7
One evening Anne and Martin were watching television in Anne’s apartment when
the phone rang. It was her mother, with the news that Anne’s father had had a
heart attack and had been taken to hospital. Anne’s parents lived in the north of
England, some four hours’ drive away. Anne wanted to set off immediately, but her
mother disagreed.
“I don’t want to think of you driving up through the night,” she said. “It’s blowing a
gale here. The medics are saying that the attack might not be serious. You can
probably stay there until the morning, at least. I’ll call you again as soon as I have
any more news.”
Anne sat by the phone, worrying about her father and fearing the worst. I ought to
have visited them more often, she thought to herself; I just hope it’s not too late. I
hope he’s okay. Martin felt very sorry for her. He sat down beside her and put his
arm round her.
“I wish there was something I could do to help,” he said, unhappily “Anything at
all?”
“Thanks, but there’s nothing…Well, yes. There is something,” said Anne. She
hesitated, and took a deep breath before continuing. “I know you won’t like doing
this, but what I really need is a cigarette. I don’t want to leave the phone. Please
go out and get me a pack of Marlboro. You remember the ones I used to smoke,
in the red pack?”
Martin stood up, taken aback. “Are you kidding?” he exclaimed. “I thought that…”
“Please don’t argue,” Anne interrupted. “I’m sorry, Martin: I just have to have a
cigarette. It’ll only be for tonight – honestly. The supermarket along the road will
still be open. You’ll need to get me a lighter, too.”
In the circumstances, Martin was not going to refuse Anne’s request, but he carried
out his errand with a heavy heart. This might turn out to be a temporary lapse, but
Martin was not at all convinced that it would.
For the first time in more than six months, Anne put a cigarette between her lips
and brought the flame of the lighter to its tip. She drew the smoke first into her
mouth and then into her lungs, relishing the familiar sharp taste and the sensation
of the smoke inside her chest. A tidal wave of pleasure and relief swept through
her body from head to foot. She held the smoke in her lungs for as long as she
could, exhaling only when she needed to breathe in again. To repeat the
sensation, she inhaled and held the smoke in once more. Memories flooded back
of all of the most enjoyable cigarettes she had ever smoked. She remembered
especially the day she had returned to smoking during her unsuccessful athletics
career. After her long abstinence the sudden rush of nicotine from her deep drags
made her dizzy. Reflecting that she hadn’t felt a hit like this since she was a
schoolgirl smoker, she smiled involuntarily and sat back with her eyes closed.
Smoke streamed from her nostrils as she emptied her lungs again. To Martin,
observing, it appeared that all of his suspicions had been quickly confirmed. Anne
looked up and smiled apologetically.
“Thanks, love,” she said. “I feel better already. You know, I really do believe that
he’s going to be all right.”
Two hours and six cigarettes later, the phone rang at last. The news was good:
the heart attack had not been severe and Anne’s father had received prompt
treatment. She agreed with her mother that she would delay her visit until the
following evening. “They think it’s likely he’ll make a full recovery.” she explained
after she had rung off. She was about to say something else but stopped.
“What’s the matter?” asked Martin.
Anne continued, reluctantly “They also said that if he hadn’t stopped smoking ten
years ago it might have been fatal.”
Martin could think of nothing useful to say in response to this, so he went to the
kitchen and brought back two glasses of wine with which they toasted Anne’s
father’s health. Eventually he stood up to go home, and nodded towards the red
and white cigarette pack on the table.
“You won’t need the rest of these now,” he said, optimistically. “Shall I throw them
away?”
“No, don’t do that,” said Anne, quickly. “It would be a waste. I might have just one
more tonight. Then I’ll give the others to the girls in the office tomorrow. I
promise!” she added, catching Martin’s sceptical expression.
After Martin had gone, Anne took a cigarette from the pack and contemplated it for
a moment before lighting it. She had smoked the others to relieve her worries; this
one would be purely for enjoyment. She inhaled deeply and lay back on the
couch, wreathed in clouds of smoke which curled all around her, savouring the
pleasure which she had been refusing herself for so long. I ought to feel ashamed
of this, she thought, but instead it seemed so normal, so natural, to look down and
see a cigarette burning between her fingers; to touch the filter to her lips; to taste
the smoke on her palate and to feel its hot bitterness as she drew it over her throat
and down into her lungs; to watch another stream of smoke appear in front of her
as it cascaded from her nostrils. She felt as if she had returned from a long and
lonely journey in a strange, cold country, and it was good to be home.
She finished the cigarette and stood up, yawning. The tension and anxiety of the
night having evaporated, she suddenly felt very tired. Time to go to bed, she
thought. After just one more cigarette.
In the morning Anne woke with a familiar taste in her mouth. Her hand went out
automatically to the bedside table, only to find it empty as usual. As she drank her
breakfast cup of tea, she glanced at the pack lying on the kitchen table,
remembering once again the particular pleasure of the first cigarette of the day.
She opened it and looked longingly inside. But no, she had promised Martin, and
she closed it again, put it in her bag and left to go to work.
* * *
It was mid-morning before she found time to visit the smoking area in the office.
As she walked in with the Marlboro pack in her hand, the girls looked up and
smiled. One of them said: “Welcome back, Anne. We knew we’d see you here
again eventually, although you held out a lot longer than we all expected. Like a
coffee?”
“Well, actually…” Anne began. She looked down at the pack in her hand and the
last remnants of her resolve crumbled. From somewhere inside her head she
heard her own voice from the past whispering, quietly but confidently, “I smoke.”
With a small but determined nod to herself, she made her decision. “Yes, please,
coffee would be lovely,” she said. “Er…can someone give me a light? I seem to
have left mine at home.”
Chapter 8
Martin and Anne saw very little of each other during the next month. Martin was
working away from home through the week and Anne spent the weekends visiting
her parents. Her father was out of hospital and making a good recovery. Late one
Sunday evening, Anne was driving back to London when she called Martin from
her car.
“Hi,” he said. “How are things?”
“Fine,” said Anne. “I thought I might call in to see you on my way home.”
“Sure,” replied Martin. “I was about to go to bed, though.”
Anne grinned. “That’s just what I had in mind.”
She let herself into Martin’s apartment, undressed quietly and slipped into bed
beside him. Half-asleep and half-aroused, he turned over and began to kiss her.
At once he seemed to grow tense, though he said nothing. Anne knew without
having to ask that he was smelling and tasting the many cigarettes which she had
smoked in her car during the long journey home. Oh, well, she thought, he had to
find out sooner or later. I’m not playing games again this time.
To Anne’s relief, Martin’s discovery had not diminished his desire for her. Almost
the reverse, it seemed: Martin was plainly as hungry for her as ever. They made
love energetically, if rather silently. Afterwards, Martin propped himself up on one
elbow and looked at her reproachfully.
“You promised.” he complained.
Anne shrugged, but said nothing. She was wishing she hadn’t left her cigarettes in
the car.
“So what next?” Martin persisted. “Are you going to try to stop again?”
Anne shook her head. “No,” she said, firmly. “At least, not any time soon. I don’t
even want to think about it. You’ve never smoked. You just can’t imagine how
much I hated not smoking.” She sat up in bed. “There wasn’t a day went past
when I didn’t want a cigarette so badly. Sometimes I woke up in the morning
crying at the thought of yet another day ahead without smoking. I tried to hide it
from you, but you must have realised that I was unhappy most of the time, didn’t
you? I don’t want to go back to feeling as bad as that again.”
“Perhaps you just went about it the wrong way,”, Martin suggested. “You could try
using some help next time – you know, like nicotine patches, or hypnosis, or
something.”
“No, you’re missing the point,” Anne replied. “I’m not just talking about the struggle
I’d have if I tried to stop again. What I’m saying is that I don’t actually want to stop
at all. I tried being a non-smoker and I didn’t like it. That morning after my dad’s
heart attack I made a conscious decision. I wasn’t drunk or stressed out. I had a
choice to make and I chose to smoke.” She looked at Martin steadily. “And I
haven’t regretted it for a moment.”
“But you enjoyed being healthier,” Martin protested, despairingly. “You liked having
more stamina for your dance class. And you were glad to be rid of your cough.
You said so.”
“Yes, that’s all true,” Anne agreed. “It was nice to feel fitter, and to be able to walk
upstairs without getting a pain in my chest. I liked not having this cough all the
time. The extra money was useful, too. But…well, all I can say is that it just wasn’t
enough to be worth it. I’m sorry, Martin, I enjoy smoking too much to want to stop
again. In the end I’d rather be happy and breathless than fit and miserable.”
Anne got out of bed and began to dress. “And now,” she said, “I’ve got to go. I
have an early start tomorrow.”
‘Also,’ she thought to herself, but did not say aloud, ‘I’m dying for a cigarette.’
* * *
It was Anne’s turn to be busy working away from home, pursuing a promotion deal
for her magazine with a temperamental supermodel. Another three weeks went
past during which she did not see Martin at all. She tried to phone him whenever
she had time, but always reached his voicemail. Eventually when she was at
home one evening she succeeded in catching him on his cell phone.
“Hi, stranger,” she said. “I’m back, and I was wondering if you were doing anything
on Friday night?”
“Sorry,” he said, “I can’t make it on Friday.”
“Oh, well, what about Saturday, then?”
“Umm-no,” Martin replied. “I can’t do Saturday either, I’m afraid.”
“You’re very busy, all of a sudden,” Anne said, teasingly, “Not seeing someone
else, are you?”
“Well, I…As a matter of fact, I…er…yes, I am.”
Anne’s heart was pounding. She reached automatically for her cigarettes. “Who is
she, Martin? Do I know her?”
“Her name’s Carol,” Martin said, reluctantly. “You might have seen her at the
health club. Tall, with short blonde hair. Always on the running machines. She’s
very fit…” His voice tailed off.
“So it’s all over between us?” Anne demanded. “Is that what you’re telling me?”
Martin did not reply. Anne’s hand shook as she lit a cigarette. From the other end
of the phone, Martin could hear the click of her lighter followed by an intake of
breath as she took a deep drag. Still he said nothing.
“But why, Martin? It’s because I started smoking again, isn’t it?”
Martin spoke at last. “It’s like I said before. I love you, Anne; I really do, but I can’t
live with the thought of you hurting yourself forty times a day. For a while I
believed we had got it beaten. I was so happy to see you getting fitter and
healthier, and I thought you were enjoying it too. Now I don’t think you’ll ever be
free from smoking. You’re hopelessly addicted. I’m very sorry, Anne. I just can’t
bear the thought of spending the rest of my life watching you killing yourself with
cigarettes.”
They talked for a little while longer and then rang off, promising vaguely to meet up
soon for a drink. Anne sat smoking and thinking about what Martin had said. It
hadn’t come as a complete surprise to her: ever since the night of her father’s
heart attack she had sensed that he was distancing himself from her, preparing the
ground for a tactical retreat. So why had she let it happen? Why hadn’t she been
willing to do what she had to do to save her relationship with the man she loved?
Even as she asked herself these questions, she knew that the experience of the
past year provided the answer: she was a smoker, and there was no more to be
said about it. Smoking was a part of her, as natural as eating or sleeping or
breathing. Her cigarettes were her best friends and she had been lost without
them. They helped her to think; they made good times better; they comforted her
when she was unhappy. She knew that she would miss Martin, but she also knew
that she would not wake up in the morning crying and craving his company.
Anne put her cigarette down in the ashtray and went to the kitchen to pour herself
a drink, still thinking about Martin. He had made his choice, just as Anne had
made hers. Maybe in future she should restrict herself to dating smokers:
experience had shown that they were less likely to bother about her own habit.
She coughed, and reflected ruefully that her chest felt as heavy as ever before.
Perhaps Martin was right: perhaps her best friends had already begun slowly to kill
her. One day she would definitely have to think about quitting for good. But not
today.
Wiping away a tear, she walked back to the lounge with her glass of wine. She
picked up the cigarette which was smouldering in the ashtray and placed it gently
between her lips.
Epilogue
Martin
Martin’s new romance with the tall, blonde Carol was going well. They were both
good at sports and were able to play a variety of games against one another, such
as tennis and squash. With their shared interest in sport they found that they had
a lot of friends and acquaintances in common, which added to the enjoyment of
the parties and other social activities which they were now attending in each
other’s company. They hadn’t yet been to bed together, but all the indications were
that this would not be long delayed.
At times, Martin couldn’t help comparing Carol with Anne. Carol did not smoke, of
course, and her apartment always had a fresh and fragrant air about it. She
herself used a variety of essential oils which made her skin smell sweet and
wholesome. Her hair smelt of aromatic conditioner. Her body was slim and well
toned. It was easy to imagine her as a partner for life and, one day, as a mother –
the perfect role model for her future family, and for his.
But there were other days when Martin missed Anne very badly. She had been
more fun to be with than any other girl he had ever dated, as well as being the
most beautiful. Sometimes he would lie in bed and imagine that she was still there
beside him. He would picture her dark eyes and recall the feel of the curves of her
body. Stop it, he would say to himself: it’s over. Remember instead the smell of
cigarette smoke in her hair, the bitter taste of tar on her breath. But when he did,
he would find to his horror that, despite his aversion to smoking, he was growing
hard.
Martin was confused. What kind of man was he to be turned on by the effects of
Anne’s unpleasant and unhealthy addiction? The truth, he now realised, was that
he had been turned on by them from the outset. Why had he not been able to
admit this to himself until now? And why did his thoughts about Anne in turn revive
much earlier memories of women smokers? One thing was certain: he would
never tell a living soul about this. What would his friends think of him if he
confessed to being aroused by remembering the smell of cigarettes on a woman’s
breath?
And so Martin would fall asleep, looking forward to his next date with Carol, yet
dreaming, secretly and guiltily, of one last smoke-flavoured kiss from Anne.
Anne
After her father’s illness and then her break-up with Martin, Anne considered that
she deserved a treat. She had never been to the United States and, on an
impulse, she booked herself a return flight for two weeks’ holiday. She had no
concerns about travelling alone: she liked the idea of the independence which it
would allow her. She did not, however, relish the prospect of a non-smoking
transatlantic flight, and armed herself with a plentiful supply of nicotine gum. After
a week’s sightseeing around New York City, she decided to hire a car and see a
little of America outside the big city.
Anne’s first night away from New York found her in a town in New Jersey. She
checked into a hotel and, feeling in the mood for company, went down town to see
what might be happening. She entered a lively-looking bar, sat at the counter and
ordered a drink. Opening her bag, she took out her Marlboros, happy to discover
that the restrictions on smoking to which she had been subject in New York did not
yet apply here. She put a cigarette in her mouth and was about to start searching
in her bag again when she heard the click of a lighter and glanced up. A man who
looked like a heavier version of Tom Selleck was smiling down at her. She
accepted the light from him gratefully.
“Thank you.” she said, and in doing so she accidentally blew some smoke towards
the man’s face. Oh dear, she thought, I hope he didn’t think that was rude.
The man smiled again. “You’re welcome,” he replied, “I don’t recall seeing you
before in this watering hole.”
by Richard