Beneath the Skin Read online

  Rupert interrupts quickly. ‘Don’t. Dad, that was years ago, years ago.’ Then after a moment. ‘Look, I don’t know what happened the other day, but you were ill, you are ill. And David wasn’t angry with you, I’m sure of it. He came here to see you, he visited the morning you came in, when you were asleep. Mum told me.’ He trails off, realising too late that he’s mentioned something Helen thought best not to tell Charlie.

  The clock ticks. Then Charlie sits up, blows his nose and nods. Rupert breathes again.

  ‘He was a good man, Rupert. A good man. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.’

  ‘I think I might go to church today,’ Mike mumbles, crouching at the cereal cupboard, searching for something that doesn’t involve bran, chocolate or charms.

  ‘I thought you might,’ Olivia replies.

  He glances up at her face. Her voice sounds impassive, but he wonders if she minds. Olivia was fiercely atheist at uni, but mellowed as their relationship got more serious, eventually agreeing to the Catholic wedding Mike wanted (for his parents, of course). ‘Just because I love you so much, Michael Turner.’

  ‘Can I come too?’ Rachel asks from the kitchen table.

  ‘You don’t have to.’ Olivia’s words come out sharply, but Rachel doesn’t seem to notice. ‘I know,’ she replies lightly, before leaving the room to get dressed.

  Mike gives up on the cereal quest and puts a crust of bread in the toaster. Then he sits opposite Olivia. ‘I just feel grateful, that’s all,’ he wants to say, but he doesn’t really understand it himself, so he says nothing.

  ‘Is the church usually this full, Dad?’ Rachel later whispers, pushed up next to Mike along a dark wooden pew.

  Mike nods. St John’s is heaving as usual on a Sunday and there’s that familiar smell. Of candles, he supposes. How has he forgotten? Wishing he’d removed his jacket before sitting down, he shifts in his seat. He’s burning up, his collar feels tight and his throat is clogged. Olivia would chortle if she knew. ‘The symptoms of Catholic guilt,’ she would say and smile.

  He leans towards Rachel. ‘Wish you’d gone to the party with Hannah?’

  ‘With a load of babies. No thanks. Besides, this is quite—’

  ‘Long and boring?’ He laughs quietly. ‘Remind me to bring you on Good Friday.’

  He feels for his mobile. He knows it’s bad form to send a message in church, but he’s ruminated on texting Antonia since the start of the service and doesn’t want to back out of the idea. The words and the prayers have come automatically, like he’s never been away. But he suddenly realises he isn’t the one who’s in need. Which, he likes to think, is what the teaching of Jesus is surely all about.

  ‘I thought I’d text Antonia. See if she’s up to a visit,’ he whispers to Rachel. ‘Is that OK with you?’

  The sandwiches are already prepared and waiting. Their crusts are removed, they’re cut into triangles and covered in cling film by the time Mike and Rachel arrive at White Gables. Antonia ushers them into the kitchen, feeling nervous. It’s the first human contact she’s had for more than twenty-four hours. Over the years she’s spent many days in the large house on her own, but not at night, not without David’s huge presence. Yet bizarrely, last night she didn’t feel alone. She dreamed pleasant dreams and felt David was near. It was in the morning when she awoke so very early and without a purpose. That’s when the desolation and the emptiness really dawned.

  They all look at the sandwiches. ‘Sorry,’ she says with a shy smile. ‘It seems rather desperate to have it all ready, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Mike replies, looking at Rachel with a grin. ‘The truth is we’re starving. I dragged my poor little girl to church.’

  ‘Hey. Not so little, Dad.’

  ‘That’s child cruelty. I should know!’ Antonia declares. ‘St Hilda’s in Northenden. Every Sunday and Holy Day, come rain or shine.’ She looks at them both looking at her, their faces open and inquisitive. ‘My mother is Irish too. Well, African-Irish, actually. Oh, go ahead, sit down and tuck in. Drinks! What can I get you both to drink?’

  ‘I’m really very sorry about your sad news.’ A nurse stops Helen in the hospital corridor. She’s oriental and exceedingly pretty, but Helen doubts that Charlie will notice, even if he’s well. ‘Was he a close friend, Mrs Proctor?’

  She replies in Charlie’s words, ‘The best friend anyone could have.’ Though Helen wonders. It seems to her that Charlie always did the giving with David. Isn’t friendship supposed to be reciprocal? She’d challenged Charlie on the subject a few times over the years, especially when David let them down, which was far too often. ‘I do love you, Helen, very much,’ Charlie would reply, ‘but you are utterly incapable of seeing the grey area.’

  Friendship or not, there’ll be a massive hole in their lives with David gone, Helen muses as she readies herself at the ward door to see Charlie. She feels unsettled as she stands there. A hole that will need filling, she thinks. She’s ill-equipped for the job. Charlie knows that, surely? Besides, she already has a job of her own, an occupation which comes very close in importance to her love for him.

  She shelves her agitation and pushes open the door, the smell of illness assailing her nostrils. Glancing at Rupert, she expects his face to be blank or bored, moody even, but it’s pink and blotchy and his eyelids are swollen. She’s always thought of Rupert as having been a little changeling baby, planted in error in the Proctor household. That baby grew into a small boy who adored her, an emotion she’s never been able to reciprocate, even though she tries. She watches him for a moment as he leans forward, his eyes on his father’s as he listens intently to something Charlie is saying. The expression, the one with silver linings, has always puzzled her. Most idioms do. But as she looks from father to son, she finds herself thinking it anyway.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Norma Jeffries sits in the dank garden despite the cold breeze. She hates Sundays at home, they’re long and empty. Her two sons, Matthew and Simon, have been over for a roast lunch, one with his girlfriend in tow, the other without, but they never stay long enough to fill the void.

  ‘Isn’t Tavia around today?’ Norma enquired of Harry, as casually as she could muster over lunch. The boys looked at each other with the silent communication they always have which makes her feel ridiculously left out. Like a silly schoolgirl at fifty-five. Yet that only happens when the boys are together. When she’s with Harry or Simon alone, they talk to her and confide about their lives and their worries. They even hug her occasionally and these moments make everything worthwhile. She’s needed. Maybe alone and lonely, but still she’s needed.

  Of course there’s her daughter Sophie. She telephoned on Thursday, out of the blue after months of silence. ‘I’ve missed you, Mum,’ she said. Such lovely words to hear. She should’ve accepted them, welcomed them with good grace, said she missed her too. But Norma was immediately defensive, remembering Sophie’s hurtful words the last time they met. ‘I suppose that’s the closest I’ll get to an apology,’ she snapped. Brisk words. Hard-faced words. But at least they’ve broken the ice, Norma thinks as she stubs out her cigarette. And for the first time she can remember, Sophie has made the first move.

  Sophie rises from her sweaty bed eventually and wraps herself in the thick towelling robe she left to dry on a radiator days ago. She supposes it was days ago. The last few have merged into a bedfest of loathing: loathing of Sami, of Antonia, but mostly of herself. She’s slept a fair amount of the time and when she hasn’t slept, she’s tried to float above her thoughts with music and songs, or nursery rhymes almost forgotten. But it isn’t easy. She’s contemplated phoning her mum again and saying, ‘You’ll be pleased to know that I did it. Just like you said, I showed Sami the real me and it wasn’t a pretty sight.’ But she knows Norma will reply, ‘I told you so,’ and Sophie doesn’t need telling. ‘Selfish, manipulative, fat, ugly, stupid, stupid, stupid …’ Round and round the houses, like a teddy bear. It’s the stupid that
gets to her the most. She’s allowed herself to lose control, to completely lose control and Sami has seen her ‘for what she is’.

  It’s Sunday now, she supposes, but she gathers from her silent house that Sami isn’t there, that he hasn’t been there since storming out on Friday night. Yet as she pads down the stairs, she’s hopeful, pathetically optimistic that, by some small miracle, Sami will be in the lounge. That he’ll be sitting in his leather armchair, his feet up on the pouffe and pointing the remote control at the flatscreen television, channel hopping.

  The lounge is empty, the broken whisky glass on the carpet accusatory. Sophie slumps down in Sami’s empty chair, picks up the remote and flicks, only stopping at an advert in which an actress assures her in treacle tones that a delicious-looking roast dinner with all the trimmings ‘isn’t just food’. She thinks for only a moment, reaches for the telephone and punches in the number. She isn’t just hungry, she’s starving. She’s bored too, she needs a distraction. Norma answers on the third ring as always if she’s in. ‘Brilliant, you’re not on a shift today, Mum. Please say you’ve cooked a Sunday roast for the boys and have some meat left to make a sandwich for your baby girl?’

  It’s cold and lightly raining outside. Sophie doesn’t know why that surprises her, but she trots through the gate to the residents’ car park, climbs in the car and puts on the radio. The journey takes less than ten minutes, yet still she flicks through every channel before finding a tune that she likes. When the song finally ends, she takes a deep breath and puts on her brave face. She’s covered it in thick make-up. Her teeth and hair are brushed and she’s wearing a T-shirt without her boobs on display and black leggings that are actually clean.

  ‘Hello, Mum!’ she says, bright and breezy at Norma’s front door, as though she visits every week. ‘I’m ravenous. Where’s that sandwich?’

  She sits on the pub stool at the tiny breakfast bench like she did as a girl, her legs plenty long enough not to swing these days. ‘Stop kicking the wall, Sophie. It makes marks,’ she recalls her mother saying, over and over when she was a child. She wonders vaguely if the scuff marks are still there, hidden, like she’s hiding the thrust and the race of her heart.

  Eating quickly, she bolts down the sandwich. It must be over a day, more even, since she ate anything and she wonders if she’s lost any weight. Every cloud. Then she looks around, taking in her surroundings, noticing for the first time that her childhood home hasn’t changed at all. There’s only Mum these days, Dad long departed to his bachelor pad in Preston. Her hairy brothers outstayed their welcome by a few years, but left home eventually. She supposes her mum must get bored, lonely, even.

  ‘Another?’ Norma says, her eyes on Sophie’s face, sandwich already prepared.

  Sophie nods and takes the plate. The floury bap has been dipped in pork dripping, replacing any lost weight, but she doesn’t care. The food tastes sublime and by the time she’s stuffed full, she feels as though she’s been plugged in and charged, high almost, ready for the next challenge.

  Norma pours a second mug of tea – ‘Tea so strong you could stand your spoon in it,’ as Grandma used to say – and then adds half a spoonful of sugar. She pulls up the other bar stool and sits, looking far too top-heavy. Weebles wobble but they don’t fall over, Sophie thinks, just managing not to say it.

  ‘Now, Sophie,’ Norma says, eyes still on her child. ‘Time to tell me what’s wrong.’

  Claustrophobic is the only way Sami can describe it as he picks at the Sunday newspapers. He’s had two nights under Martha’s roof in Yorkshire, two days of being overfed and too many hours of not-so-subtle inquisition.

  ‘It’s Friday night, Samuel,’ Martha said when he turned up unexpectedly. ‘You always go to the pub. Why aren’t you there?’

  ‘One of the guys. Well, he’s dead. Long story, Mum.’

  ‘Why aren’t you at home, then?’

  ‘Sophie’s away for a long weekend.’

  He looked at the face his mum always pulls when it comes to Sophie. A face of disbelief and distaste, combined.

  ‘What’ve you done to your head, Samuel?’

  ‘Got bumped with a squash racquet.’

  The same face from Martha but her eyebrows at a slightly less incredulous angle.

  ‘You look too thin. Is she feeding you?’

  He was unbelievably angry as he accelerated from home towards the motorway on Friday evening. He pulled over in a petrol station, sent a few texts to people, which he immediately regretted, then drove on to his parents’ house in Yorkshire. But as the evening drew on, his anger abated just a little and then by the morning he was willing Sophie to text or to call.

  Sami now looks up to the mantlepiece clock his dad winds every evening and sighs. He doesn’t want to know why, he doesn’t want to go into it or dwell on it, but he understands that Sophie is putting herself under pressure. As usual she’s snapped, exploded, burst. It’s what she always does, eventually. But she’s never thrown a glass at him before. That’s worrying. Worse, he’s left her alone and she’s probably still boozing. Perhaps he should telephone, but he’s firmly decided that she must call first.

  He goes back to the newspapers. He wanted to leave immediately after the full English breakfast Martha put under his nose first thing this morning, but his dad’s silent eyes implored. ‘It’s raining heavily,’ they said. ‘There’s no escape to the garden! Please don’t go.’

  Sami had hesitated. He was itching to get into his car, back into the driving seat to sort out his head. But then two of his sisters appeared at the front door, kids in tow, and he was struck by the noise they all made. Happy noise, it may have been, but even he might have been tempted into gardening if he still lived there. So he stayed for lunch. Moral support for his dad.

  Sophie hasn’t texted or called. Throughout yesterday and again this morning he’s fingered the Elastoplast on his forehead, a reminder of resolve. But Martha has fussed, unbearably so. ‘There’s a spare inhaler in the cabinet if you get chesty, my boy. What do you fancy for your tea? I’ll wash your shirt and trousers while you’re here. I’m baking a chocolate cake. With fudge, just as you like it. You just relax and let your Momma spoil you.’

  He’s so stuffed, he can’t move, like the fat little boy who used to lie on this very sofa and be fed food ‘to cheer you up, my boy’. It was food as a cure for unhappiness. Temporary sweet comfort from bullying. As though making him fatter would help. And here is Martha, still watching him with little glances, just like she did back then.

  He turns the page of The Times Sunday supplement and sighs again. Claustrophobic’s the word. He’ll talk to Sophie, he’ll even forgive and forget. He touches his plaster. But she has to make the first move.

  Still perched at the breakfast bar, Norma waits for Sophie’s reply. Her daughter is pacing now, opening a drawer and examining kitchen utensils randomly, before moving on to select another drawer or cupboard.

  Norma understands that she and Sophie are a little too alike, too ready to impose an opinion, too fond of being right about everything. She tried to let Sophie win their frequent stand-offs as she was growing up on the basis that she was the adult and Sophie the child. But it was difficult to do, not only because Sophie drove her to distraction at times, but because Norma fundamentally believed in strict parenting. Unfortunately, Barry didn’t particularly agree. He was ambivalent on the point. It all depended on how he felt at any given time. Which made him the good cop, Norma the bad.

  She’s never worked out how Barry’s ‘seeing the bigger picture’ works when both parties are adults, which is why she and Sophie don’t speak for months at a time. Unfortunately the strict parent part is still there, as important to Norma as ever. It’s a desire, she always reasons, to help your child, to stamp out the bad bits, make room for the good. But as she watches Sophie’s distracted look and as she examines her heavily made-up face, she understands that something is seriously amiss and it distresses her. She should have noticed, she should
have known. She’s been a nurse for over thirty years. She’s seen that look before.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Sophie answers eventually, stooping to examine the wall under the breakfast bar. ‘I feel great, actually. Buzzing. I might go out for a drive. Stop at a pub for a drink.’

  ‘OK, love,’ Norma carefully replies. ‘Fancy watching some TV first?’

  ‘Put that blessed thing away,’ Martha grumbles, glaring at Sami’s iPhone. ‘If you can’t sit still, do something useful, like helping your dad.’

  Sami strolls outside to the cold drizzly garden and proffers a hot drink to his father before putting his hands in his pockets. ‘Just here for moral support, Dad.’ He points at his shoes with a grin. ‘Not got the gear for gardening.’

  They chat idly about the cricket, Sami resting on a garden bench, his father digging, turning over the rose-bed soil methodically. He’s a man of few words, though more words for Sami than he has for ‘all those bloody women’ in his large home.

  Sami feels the vibration from his iPhone and the immediate acceleration of his pulse. He waits patiently for his dad to finish a story about his Uncle Josiah’s farm in Antigua, one which he’s heard many times before. Then pulls it out of his pocket, turning away from his dad, a combination of anxiety and excitement in his chest. He looks at the screen. It’s an iMessage, but not from Sophie. Bloody Sophie. ‘Sod her then,’ he mutters, frustrated and angry.

  ‘What’s up, Samuel? Want to tell me about it?’

  Sami looks at his dad, his lovely lopsided dad who deplores all the women in his life.

  ‘Nothing to tell, Dad. I’m going to get off now. I’ll catch you soon.’

  His dad straightens slowly, lifts his maroon cricket hat to scratch his shiny head, then nods.