Beneath the Skin Read online

There’s absolutely no doubt, she thinks, as she slips the car into gear, it feels good to make decisions and be useful. And for once, useful to somebody other than Sophie.

  Sami lobs the half-eaten Big Mac back into its cosy little box.

  I don’t even like McDonald’s, he thinks morosely, and yet I’m here, sitting on a plastic seat made for kids, rubbing shoulders with a take-out full of chavs.

  A middle-aged geezer wearing a shabby tweed jacket stares at the red tray with bloodshot eyes. Sami stands, picks up the tray and places it before the man. ‘Here you go, mate. Nuggets and fries untouched.’

  The man doesn’t look the least bit offended. ‘Cheers.’ He cocks his head to one side. ‘Would you like to join me?’ he asks, nodding to the vacant bench opposite him.

  Sami sits down, wondering what the fuck he’s doing. He’s the only person here in a suit, his hair looks shit, his eyes sting and he’s bought an expensive green dress for Sophie that she’s sure to detest.

  ‘Escape from the office?’ the man asks, delicately dipping individual fries into a small plastic box of tomato ketchup.

  Sami pictures the telephone on his office desk, knows it will torment him when he gets back. Clients and his mum have his private number too. Still, he’d probably best unplug it for a while. He gazes at the man, notes that his cheeks resemble red sandpaper and wonders for a moment what has brought him so low.

  ‘Ever made a complete arse of yourself?’ Sami asks.

  The man smiles. Some teeth are missing, the others are brown. He has an eloquent voice. ‘Too often to remember. Booze. I like it more than I like anything else.’

  ‘I don’t even have that excuse.’

  Sami rubs his eyes as he thinks about earlier. He scrambled out of his car and followed her to the house as soon as she returned, eager, smiling and stupid.

  ‘What are you doing here, Sami?’ she asked. ‘I’ve had a really busy morning.’ Her face was impassive with just a hint of colour in her cheeks.

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased to see me,’ Sami found himself saying to her. Pathetically. Like a petulant child.

  The man opposite regards him with curious eyes and nibbles carefully at the chicken nuggets. But Sami drifts, picturing the frown of uncertainty on her lovely face. What is it about her? he wonders. What yanks at his heart? He’s always thought she’s attractive, but there’s something more. Something he can’t quite define, which bizarrely reminds him of his feisty eldest sister, the one who was always there for him when he was picked on at school. Ramona would laugh her socks off if he told her his heart was hurting. Indeed he would like to confide in her, she’d put him straight in a trice. But Ramona lives in America with her brood and a broken love affair isn’t something he can discuss over the telephone, even on his private bloody line.

  ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’ he had asked again to cover his lover’s silence.

  She didn’t reply but put her keys in the lock and softly pulled him by the hand into the house, closing the door, but remaining in the hall. ‘Look, Sami, I don’t think we should do this any more.’

  She’s finishing with me, he thought, his mind pitching. She’s fucking finishing with me.

  ‘Oh, and what is “this”?’ he asked. Defensive. Stunned. Hurt.

  ‘Seeing each other,’ she replied. ‘Having sex.’

  ‘I thought we made love,’ he said, almost shouting. No pride. No fucking pride.

  She reached again for his hand. Her voice was gentle, kind. It made him feel so much worse. He felt like crying. ‘Come on, Sami, we’ve always been friends, let’s keep it that way.’

  An argument at the counter brings Sami back to Thursday lunch at McDonald’s. He shakes his head, feeling a chesty tightness in his lungs from the fried oil in the atmosphere, just like the young Samuel who’d stuff down his burger and fries ferociously despite the discomfort. He knows the stinging eyes and the tightness comes from rejection and humiliation, too. Like fat boy Samuel, the boy who had no friends.

  Sami clears his clogged throat, aware that the man is openly gazing. ‘Penny for them?’ the man asks.

  ‘I’ve been a complete wanker,’ Sami replies. ‘But I’ll get over it. Come on, let’s get out of here. I’ll buy you a pint.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  David walks. His plan is to catch a taxi, a taxi home to shower and shave. That’s as much of a plan as his muddled mind can manage. His head is inordinately painful and he’s so very tired. It vaguely occurs to him that perhaps he’s concussed from the crack to his forehead and nose last night and he smiles an ironic little smile. He’s leaving a hospital. A more sensible man would turn around and get himself checked out. But David isn’t bothered. Res ipsa loquitur, the matter speaks for itself. He’s clearly not a sensible man. The foolishness of the past week and month, hell, the past year, are ample evidence of that. Besides, the hurting head blocks out all his guilt, his lies, and complaining about a headache seems childish, indulgent and unfair given Charlie’s condition.

  He wanted to puke in the hospital. He was shocked by all the tubes and wires and drips attached to Charlie’s body, the spiteful winking monitors and he wanted to vomit.

  ‘He’s sleeping,’ Helen said. She said those words clearly, but he hadn’t heard, not really heard. Then Charlie’s body twitched and the relief drained him of speech, of movement, of thought. It was all he could do not to climb on to the bed next to him, to hold on to him tightly and sleep. But then Helen started to talk.

  Busy roads have become country lanes, the town of Macclesfield is behind him, the opportunity to catch a taxi long gone. But the autumn sun is warm on his back, the walk is clearing his head, helping him to focus on the conversation with Antonia in the early hours, to remember what she said.

  It was the perfume, he now recalls. He was thinking about his mother’s scent on and off all day yesterday. He doesn’t want to contemplate his visit to Charlie’s house or to recall his behaviour in the pub, but he knows that he drove home like a blockhead, that he eventually stumbled through the front door of White Gables and into the lounge. To his surprise, there was Antonia, asleep on the sofa, so beautiful, icy and still, that he knelt down by her side to listen for her breath. The smell of her perfume, so like Mummy’s perfume, and the soft warmth of her throat. They overwhelmed him.

  ‘So you decided to come.’ Sophie turns away from the door and stomps back into the townhouse. ‘I’m honoured.’

  Antonia follows her into the lounge with a feeling of mild panic rising in her chest. Sophie’s eyelids are swollen and her face looks crumpled. It’s not like her to cry. ‘Has something happened, Soph? Are you OK?’

  ‘No, I’m not OK.’ Sophie roughly pushes a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine off the sofa and thumps heavily into its place. ‘You and Sami.’

  She throws a bunched-up tissue into the wicker basket and then looks up at Antonia for a few seconds, her green eyes sharp. ‘You’re never here when I need you.’

  Antonia lets out the breath she’s holding, sits down on the sofa and rubs Sophie’s knee. ‘Sorry, Soph, it’s been one of those days. Come on, tell me, what’s up?’

  Sophie takes a deep breath. ‘It’s my own bloody fault, isn’t it? I can’t give Sami what he really wants from me and he’ll leave, I know he will.’

  Antonia relaxes and sighs. She doesn’t really know what to say that she hasn’t already said a hundred times before. ‘It isn’t your fault. Chlamydia is a silent infection. Millions of women contract it. You were just unlucky.’ And then there’s the usual, ‘Tell Sami the truth. You’re not being fair. He needs to know.’ Part of her feels that there is no point, that nothing she can say will make any difference once Sophie has made up her mind. Yet on the other hand, she always feels she should try.

  ‘Of course he won’t leave you. He adores you. You have to stop beating yourself up about it and come clean,’ she says today.

  Sophie’s face darkens and she pulls away from Antonia’s touch. ‘Oh, fuck o
ff. You really annoy me at times with your sanctimonious crap. As though you’ve never told a lie, Antonia. Preacher heal thyself and all that.’

  ‘This isn’t about me.’ Antonia stands up. ‘I’m not the one demanding attention twenty-four seven. I’ve had a hard morning so if you’re going to be horrible, I’m not hanging around.’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake sit down and don’t be so bloody sensitive. You’re here now, Sami’s working late and I’m a bundle of nerves.’

  Antonia doesn’t move. Her jaw is clenched.

  ‘Come on, Toni.’ Sophie stands too and puts her warm bare arms around Antonia. She kisses her cheek several times, the way she always does when she’s pushed things too far. ‘Hey, believe it or not, I don’t even want wine.’

  ‘Well, every cloud …’ Antonia relents with a small smile. She sits down, taking up Sophie’s position on the sofa. ‘I’ve had a busy day so you can wait on me for a change. I’ll have a cup of tea and something to eat, please. I’m starving.’

  Helen is back at Charlie’s bedside, still reeling from the shock of her altercation with Antonia, of all people. She supposes that Antonia is beautiful, if you like that sort of thing, but she always finds her hollow and uninteresting. Any conversation is a staccato ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on the girl’s part. Not that she sees much of her outside David’s dinner parties and they don’t count as the silly girl is never at the table, choosing instead to fuss in the kitchen and produce unnaturally perfectly presented food with only a dash of sauce or gravy. Helen infinitely prefers Barbara’s sturdy casseroles, whatever the other guests might say about Antonia’s ‘splendid cuisine’.

  ‘She’s a nice, sweet girl, that’s all,’ Charlie would say. ‘You probably intimidate her.’

  ‘Good God, I hope so!’ Helen would reply.

  Helen’s still holding the mobile tightly in her white-knuckled hand as she reviews her conversation with Antonia, who didn’t seem the least bit intimidated on the telephone. The discussion went along the lines of, ‘I dropped Rupert at the hospital because I thought it would be better for him to be with his father.’

  To which Helen replied, ‘As his mother, Antonia, I think that I’m best placed to judge.’

  And she replied, ‘Well, as his mother, Helen, I think you should put yourself in his shoes occasionally and see how it feels.’

  Charlie puts his hand on hers and nods at the mobile phone. ‘Everything all right, my love?’

  ‘Oh it’s nothing,’ she replies. ‘You’re looking much better than you did at five this morning.’

  ‘Even handsome chaps like me don’t look their best at five in the morning.’

  Helen smiles. It’s good to have Charlie back. He finally woke late in the morning and immediately spotted Rupert. ‘Is that you, Rupert?’ he said. ‘Come and give your old man a hug.’

  She looks over at her son, sitting in the chair next to the hospital bed. His head is down towards some gadget or other, his ears covered with the huge muffler headphones, but there’s an air of calm about him. She’s rarely wrong about anything, but this time she wonders. She had assumed Rupert would wind Charlie up, get in the way and make his condition worse, but father and son seem content together.

  Perhaps, she thinks buoyantly, her spat with Antonia already forgotten, perhaps everything will come together by Christmas and I’ll be on that aeroplane in the New Year.

  David’s memory is starting to coming back, but in snatches. Antonia and Charlie, Charlie and Antonia. Misty too. Her eyes strangely hidden. Her voice low.

  He’s been sitting on a dry-stone wall for a while, gazing over the rugged green fields to the rocky splendour of The Edge high above. People are walking their dogs, appearing miniature on the horizon. He’d once suggested adopting an old Labrador retriever left homeless by a deceased client, but Antonia said, no, sorry, she was allergic to dogs. She’d like a kitten though, he thinks, to keep her company while he’s at work. Or perhaps one of those small dogs they breed especially for owners with allergies. If he hasn’t messed things up completely. If it isn’t too late.

  He tries to block out Charlie’s angry voice, still shrilling in his head. ‘Ethics, David. Ethics! Solicitors are supposed to be honest. Of the highest integrity, David. Ring any bells?’

  He’d longed for a dog as a small boy. ‘Please, Mummy, please,’ he’d frequently begged. They lived in Derbyshire then, in a small medieval village near Chatsworth with a church, a school and a post office that had a cafe serving cream teas to the tourists. That was before Shell Oil International sent them away to their ‘far-flung adventures’, as his mother described them. Even now, he feels a strange uncertainty when his eye catches the familiar yellow Shell sign, and he remembers how his father refused to buy petrol from any other garage even if it meant driving miles out of his way. ‘Really, darling?’ his mother would breathe through her ruby-red lips. David loved and loathed the ‘far-flung adventures’ in equal measures.

  Charlie’s voice is still piercing. ‘Spent it on the house? You won’t have a house, David. You won’t have a job, for God’s sake. You’ll be prosecuted, imprisoned, disgraced.’

  The cows come up close to David, used to him now, their beautiful eyes deep and unreadable. Eyes like saucers, he thinks.

  ‘Please, Mummy, please. Let me have a dog!’

  His mother would point to her inappropriate-for-Derbyshire heels. ‘How could I possibly walk a dog with those cobbles outside?’ and she’d laugh.

  But of course she’d eventually relented. His father had arrived home early from work one day with a feeble black-and-white Border collie puppy in a cardboard box. ‘The runt. She’s got a twisted leg,’ he explained, his voice gruff. ‘The farmer’s wife refused to drown it, so now she’s yours. All yours. Look after her properly, son.’

  The afternoon darkens. David eventually registers the cold, wipes the tears from his face, says goodbye to the cows and continues to walk.

  The perfume, of course. Last night is now in focus. His mind is clear. He stumbled into White Gables and there was his wife, asleep on the sofa, beautiful, icy and still. He knelt down beside her, felt her breath, inhaled the aroma and softly kissed her neck. Her reaction was immediate.

  ‘Get off. You disgust me,’ she cried. Eyes cold with loathing as she hit him. ‘Don’t touch me. Never again. Do you hear?’

  And of course Misty at the bar. Her voice low, her eyes hidden from his. He repulsed even her.

  He pulls up his collar, wraps his arms around himself and walks on. His mind is blank, there’s no point straining it any more. It’s started to shower. A car passes occasionally. Then a tractor.

  ‘Look after her properly, son,’ his father said.

  Sophie carries the mug of tea in one hand and a slice of toast in the other. The mug is overfull and milky drink spills on to the carpet. Colour has returned to her cheeks and she’s grinning. Only Sophie can transform so easily, Antonia thinks.

  ‘A plate would be nice,’ she says, looking at the sad slice of toasted white bread. ‘Have you pâté or something to go with that?’

  Sophie narrows her eyes. ‘Pâté? Listen to you!’ she declares. ‘No one would know you came from a grotty council estate in Northern Moor with benefit cheats and drug dealers as neighbours.’

  ‘Not everyone was like that, Soph. You read rubbish too often. Mr Bennett next door was nice, remember? Just an old man.’

  ‘He had a rusty oven in his front garden, Toni.’

  ‘Probably because no one offered him a lift to the tip. Anyway, it wasn’t so far from your house in Northenden.’

  ‘Ahem, a private house in the posh part of Northenden. Good job I was there to drag you out.’

  ‘For which I’m eternally grateful,’ she replies laughing.

  ‘Then promise me you’ll stay and keep me company until Sami comes home.’

  Antonia looks at Sophie, but doesn’t reply. Even when they joke about old times, there’s always that tiny underlying message of ‘Nev
er forget you owe me,’ or sometimes even, ‘I can expose you if I want to.’ But as she sits there on Sophie’s garish sofa, she realises that she doesn’t care any more. There isn’t much to expose. Does it really matter if she was christened with another name and told a few white lies along the way? Doesn’t everyone do that somehow in their lives, either to themselves or to others?

  ‘I’ll go when I’m ready to, Sophie,’ she replies evenly, gazing at the look of surprise on Sophie’s face. I want to get home to David, she thinks. She feels empowered by the events of the day. She didn’t jump the moment Sophie asked her to this morning. She decided it was best for Rupert to be with Charlie at the hospital and did something about it. She even argued with Helen. For once she’s stood up and been counted, and now she wants to go home to her husband, to explain about her dream last night, to apologise for her harsh words and to say, ‘Talk to me, tell me who you are, what you feel, how you are. Let’s be a couple, let’s communicate.’ She takes a deep breath and smiles; it feels like a challenge and she can’t wait.

  David continues to walk towards home, one foot in front of the other, not noticing the rain or the countryside, his mind fitful.

  Antonia must already know what he’s done. That explains it, he thinks. She knows about the money. Not just borrowing, but theft.

  It makes sense of her words last night. Her anger, her hatred. ‘You disgust me,’ she said. She never really loved him and now he’s let her down. He’s made her unhappy, disappointed. In the worst possible way. And there is Sami Richards in the wings, with his arms open wide.

  Life without Antonia. The thought is unbearable.

  ‘Look after her properly, son.’

  He’s tried. He’s tried so hard to give her everything.

  But as ever, he’s a failure.

  The rain has become heavy. David tries to quicken his pace but the drum of his heart is loud in his ears, beating faster and faster, slowing him down. He suddenly understands that if he doesn’t rest, he’ll faint, so he sits where he stops, on a muddy verge with the rain teeming down.