Beneath the Skin Page 19

  ‘Fair enough. Come back soon, son. And next time, if any of your sisters knock at the door, don’t let them in!’

  ‘I shouted at Sami. Well, screamed,’ Sophie mumbles eventually from the sofa, her eyes fixed on the television. ‘And threw a glass at his head. I had a good reason, though.’

  Norma knows she’s only been told half a tale, but it doesn’t matter, half a tale is better than none. Sophie has swung from a spirited agitation in the kitchen to a near silent malaise in the lounge. She nods, saying nothing, her eyes on the screen too. I’m wearing my nurse’s hat, she thinks. It’s easier than my mother’s hat and makes me a much nicer person.

  ‘Plus I’ve sort of fallen out with Antonia. I can’t be bothered explaining it all, but you know …’ Sophie trails off.

  Norma nods again, seeing mouths moving, brows furrowing, teeth that need fixing on the television screen, but hearing nothing but the rush of her own thoughts. Sami, handsome, charming and selfish Sami. But Antonia, that’s a surprise. Loyal to a fault. Quiet, timid, too timid, she thinks. Norma was on the PTA and over the years there was gossip about the Farrell family, but nothing concrete, nothing to justify a call to Social Services. Yet still, if she’s honest, she always thought young Antonia’s impassive face masked something, something dark and unhealthy. She felt guilty when it happened. Barry did too. The child was a constant silent presence in their house and they hadn’t noticed anything amiss, not really amiss. ‘Do you know what really happened?’ they asked Sophie when it all came out, but Sophie shrugged, as teenagers do, and they were none the wiser.

  ‘David’s dead,’ Sophie now blurts. ‘He slit his wrists and bled to death in the bath. Which doesn’t help.’

  Norma looks at Sophie then. Someone’s just walked over my grave, she thinks, as she shakes off a shiver. Sophie’s face is wet and her nose is streaming. This isn’t a joke.

  ‘I realise that’s terrible, obviously, I’m not a complete bitch. But it doesn’t stop me from feeling, God, I don’t know. Betrayed? And angry, really angry. Does that make any sense, Mum?’

  Norma leans over, takes Sophie’s hand and squeezes. Her little girl, who only ever had eyes for her daddy. A daddy who barely bothered to hide his night-shift infidelity with men, as well as women, before leaving home for good. Betrayal and anger. To Norma Jeffries it makes perfect sense.

  Sami comes off the motorway, but instead of taking a right off the Parkway towards Didsbury, he indicates left. He drives past the crematorium towards Beech Road, realising with a jolt that he’s not so far from Mike and Olivia’s house.

  Fancy some company? his text said, a text sent impulsively from his dad’s garden.

  Yes please! The flat above the craft shop, Jemima immediately replied. Can’t wait!

  She’s an attractive girl, particularly her long wavy hair which looks incongruous in his poker-straight-hair offices, and they’ve been flirting for some time, but he’s never really thought of taking it any further. But this evening it makes sense. He couldn’t stand being suffocated at Martha’s a moment longer and Sophie hasn’t been in touch, so he’s not ready to go home.

  Blanking out any thoughts of betrayal as usual, he focuses on what he knows is in store. Jemima wants him, he knows that. It evokes memories from the Boot Room.

  ‘There’s no bigger turn-on than someone wanting you. Begging for it! Come on, guys, you know what I mean,’ he would say when the Boot Room boys eye-rolled at the news of yet another conquest.

  ‘Masturbation, in short,’ Pete would drily reply.

  ‘Well, who can blame me,’ he would smile, a finger pointing to his own face.

  He finds the craft shop and presses the intercom. Bounds up the stairs two by two. The flat door is already open and Jemima pulls him in, her fingers unbuttoning his shirt before he has the chance to put down his keys. Masturbation maybe, but the rush of exhilaration’s still there.

  She pushes him back on the bed and then strips off her clothes. No foreplay required then, Sami thinks with a grin. Fine by me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ‘Housewife’ Antonia always wrote on forms when David gave her something to sign and it asked for her occupation. She knows that some women hate the title, but she liked it, same as she liked ‘Antonia, David’s wife’ whenever she was introduced.

  ‘Well, I’m neither now,’ she sighs to the four walls of her plush bedroom, a gaping day before her. The funeral isn’t until next week. Ruth, the family liaison officer, telephoned to explain the delay, but Antonia didn’t really listen. She doesn’t want to think about David in that way. As a body in the bath. As a cadaver on a slab. Spirit gone.

  ‘How are you?’ Ruth asked on the telephone.

  ‘Fine thanks,’ she said, the automatic reply.

  ‘There’s often a delay, Antonia. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘A delay?’ she asked, thinking Ruth was referring to the funeral again.

  ‘Grief. It might come much later. I’m here if you need me.’

  Antonia now looks towards the window and wonders what she usually does on a Monday. She’s never analysed it before, it’s always been automatic. Cleaning and washing, tidying up after the weekend, probably. Tidying up after David, collecting kit and clothes and cups where he’d left them. Seeing Sophie too, perhaps. But of course Sophie dates were on Sophie’s terms at Sophie’s instigation.

  Antonia doesn’t want to think of her right now. She was drunk when Antonia called at her house on Friday. She said some outrageous stuff. Even if Sophie didn’t know about David then, surely she does now. Surely that warrants an acknowledgement, some regard. Some love and sympathy, even if not an apology.

  She sits at her dressing table and brushes her long hair, waiting for her hair straighteners to heat up and beep. ‘Irish-African,’ she had said to Mike and his daughter yesterday. Just like that. She offered the information easily. She saw no disgust in their faces, not even surprise.

  She leans forward, closer to the mirror, and drags her fingers through the thick waves of her hair. She wonders if ‘Hair by Aaron’ is still going strong, whether Aaron would have her back as a stylist. She doubts it. Their last meeting was excruciating. She’s kept the memory hidden for years.

  Strolling along with David in Alderley Edge village, not long after they married. There was Aaron, walking towards them on the high street. He’d been holding hands with his boyfriend and smiling a warm ‘Hello, Gorgeous, long time no see!’ type of smile. But she’d panicked. A sudden clash of her new life and old which she didn’t know how to handle. So she immediately looked away, grasping David’s hand and propelling him across the busy road, her heart beating furiously. ‘You wouldn’t believe she was my best mate once,’ she heard Aaron declare behind her to anyone who might be listening. ‘Look at the posh bitch now. She wouldn’t even give me the dirt under her fingernails!’

  She sits back and raps her manicured fingernails on the glass top of the dressing table for a few moments. She can still hear the words, her father’s ugly words: ‘Black hair. Fucking black hair. Are you black, then?’ Nodding her head, she leans down to turn the hair straighteners off at the plug. Irish-African, she smiles inwardly. Today she’ll leave her hair curly.

  Sophie knows how to cook, everyone knows how to cook. The trick is to open a cook book and read. If you can be bothered. She finds it’s much less grief and effort to phone a friend and ask for a recipe. Today, however, she doesn’t have a friend to phone and is bothered. She wants to cook for Sami, properly cook, to show herself that she can. Without wine. Definitely without any wine. She’s already searched through some recipe books, never before opened. They were bought as birthday, anniversary, Christmas, and any-bloody-excuse-to-drop-a-hint gifts, over the years. By Martha, of course.

  ‘If somebody from your family buys me another bloody cook book I’ll divorce you.’

  ‘Idle threat, Sophie Richards, you’ll never divorce me. I’m just too good looking!’

  She stayed at
her mother’s house last night. It was the first time in eight years and she felt snug against the white wall in her single bed. The teddies watched her from the teddy-shelf and the floral duvet cover was the same as when she last slept there, but smelt fragrant and fresh as though newly washed.

  Norma had left for work by the time she woke. Her head didn’t hurt, but when she turned on her mobile, somewhere in the vicinity of her heart did. There were no texts and no missed calls. She hadn’t expected Sami to get in touch, but she desperately wanted him to.

  She padded around Norma’s house with a mug of tea for a while without wearing her contact lenses which were sitting in two egg cups by the bed. She hadn’t got her glasses with her and rather liked the sensation of blurred edges. Sober blurred edges, she thought to herself, that’s a novelty. But even though she’d found an old pair of her pyjamas in the pine drawers and a candlewick dressing gown on the back of the bathroom door, she was too cold. The central heating wasn’t on, blasting out warmth day and night as it does in her modern townhouse. So she decided to come home ‘just to get warm’ she told herself.

  The first surprise was Sami’s car in the residents’ car park on a Monday morning. The second was Sami, in his leather chair, feet up and channel hopping, when he should have been at work.

  Her reaction as she gazed at him was heart-thrashing and overwhelming shyness. She hadn’t expected to see him and she’d made no effort with her appearance. But she was relieved, happy and incredibly nervous.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, her voice a husky croak.

  ‘Waiting for you.’

  He took his feet off the leather pouffe. ‘We need to talk,’ he said and her heart sunk, even as she noticed that his socks didn’t match.

  Olivia hasn’t had time to think, which is a good thing. On the other hand, she hasn’t had time to do anything else either. She committed to the NCT breast counselling malarkey years ago. Breast Is Best, as the slogan says. It seemed important to Olivia at the time, but everyone is so bloody right-on in Chorlton that every mum breastfeeds their precious offspring.

  ‘It’s a sin to cross the Beech Road border and feed your baby formula milk,’ she laughs with her sister on the telephone. But this means she is very busy with numerous new mums who are struggling to feed their babies with engorged breasts, cracked nipples or even mastitis, and who are racked with middle-class guilt.

  ‘If I had my time again,’ Olivia recently confessed to her sister, ‘I’d go for formula milk or employ a wet nurse! Don’t you dare tell anyone. They’d shoot me.’ Only she is having a ‘time again’ right now, a time again she needs to do something about.

  ‘Daddy! Daddy’s home!’ she hears Hannah shout from the bay window.

  Blusher, she thinks, glancing in the mirror in the downstairs loo, I should’ve used blusher. But Mike is already through the front door, smiling and relaxed.

  Happy, she thinks. Mike is happy.

  ‘You’re early. I haven’t put on the pasta yet. Anything up?’ she asks, trying for a light tone.

  Mike shakes his head. ‘Not at all. Thought I’d pop to White Gables later. Do my ten K around Mottram for a change. Thought it only fair to see you girls properly first.’

  ‘You are good.’ She feels vaguely guilty that she hasn’t yet made the effort to visit Antonia herself. Antonia is nice, she undoubtedly needs support, but Olivia just doesn’t have the time to drive all the way to the sticks at the moment. Or the energy.

  Hannah reaches up to Mike for a hug. ‘Mummy was sick this morning.’ She looks at Olivia with narrowed eyes. ‘You closed the bathroom door, but I saw you.’

  Olivia doesn’t miss a beat as she scoops up Hannah to hide her blushing face. ‘Yes, thank you, with a bug you brought home from school, young lady!’

  She can sense Mike’s eyes on her. ‘Are you OK? I don’t need to go out. I could go running tomorrow.’

  ‘No, I’m fine. Absolutely. You go.’

  Her fixed smile is exhausting.

  It’s dark outside but Sami is still at work, trying to catch up from his late start to the day. There’s a slight quibble at the back of his mind about the interlude with Jemima yesterday, but he hasn’t glanced at his private line even once. His predominant thoughts are of Sophie.

  He didn’t stay long with Jemima. As soon as they were done he was itching to get home. He suddenly felt overwhelmingly apprehensive. He had no idea what to expect. Sophie drunk, Sophie dead, Sophie hurling abuse?

  ‘Take a firm line, man, it’s the only way,’ he repeated to himself as he drove the short journey home.

  The townhouse was silent as he let himself in. The kitchen lights revealed a shambles of empty bottles and crisp packets, dirty dishes and cluttered work surfaces. No discernible difference to how he’d left it two nights before. He looked quickly into the empty lounge and saw the splintered whisky glass on the carpet where it had landed. He felt the heat of the radiators, his heart pounding, only now really focusing on what he might find. He bounded up the stairs and took a deep breath before pushing open the bedroom door. Then he looked. The bedroom was empty. Thank God, thank God.

  The disappointment set in then. He missed Sophie, he wanted to talk to her, to listen to one of her comically spiteful observations about Claudia Winkleman’s fringe, or the lesbian neighbours, her mum or Princess Kate’s eye make-up. He lay down on the jumbled bed to reinstate his resolve, and slept deeply until morning. It was light when he woke and to his surprise he was fully clothed. He squinted at his watch, realised it was Monday, then muttered, ‘Sod it. I’m not going into work today.’ He peeled off his sweaty clothes, showered for a long time, then sat in the lounge, waiting.

  He resorted to turning on the television but didn’t like the invasion of sound, so turned it to mute. He searched the cupboards for chocolate and biscuits, but they were too sweet and too dry, even washed down with a pint glass of Coke. Nothing seemed the same without Sophie. Then finally he heard her key in the latch.

  ‘We need to talk. This drinking has got to stop,’ were his first words. Whatever he expected to do or to say, it wasn’t that.

  ‘I know,’ Sophie replied.

  It was as easy as that.

  Antonia’s been engrossed for some time in the rhythm of kneading dough for some brioche and the sharp rap of the knocker in the silence makes her jump. She rubs her hands together to remove most of the flour and then washes them under the tap in the centre of the island. It seemed decadent when the plans were originally drawn up: two sinks, four taps, all in such close proximity. But the kitchen designer from Knutsford knew his stuff. One sink for washing up, the other for everything else. Like the two ovens and the integrated coffee machine, it all added to the huge cost of the renovation, but David had been firm. ‘Pick the best. Let’s do it properly. We have the money, my darling. Besides, you’re absolutely worth it.’

  She takes a breath, lifting her chin before answering the front door. It’s silent and dark outside. A small thick-set man with red hair and cheeks to match is at the top of the steps. ‘Colin. Colin Green, from the office?’

  ‘Yes, of course, Colin. Hello. Come in.’

  ‘Charlie called me. From the hospital. He asked if you wouldn’t mind me collecting a couple of files. Just work stuff, obviously. I did call, but there was no answer.’

  He’s looking above Antonia’s head, to the side and even at the ground. Anywhere but at her, she notices. ‘I haven’t got the clap,’ she’s tempted to say, which surprises her. It’s such a Sophie comment. ‘The files are in the study, second door on the right. Can I get you a coffee? Or a sandwich to keep you going until supper?’ she asks instead.

  Colin Green demurs without eye contact and scuttles away, emerging an hour or so later with three boxes full of papers, one of which she helps carry to his car. The same Colin Green who all but pinned her to the photocopier with hot breath at the last partners’ social in the office. The tarnish of death, Antonia muses.

  She
remembers it well.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Sami suggested the Lead Station after work because Jemima lives virtually opposite the wine bar. And after all, that’s the point of him sitting here: a quick drink, then to her place for another shag before going on home to Sophie. The trouble is that Jemima seems to have different ideas.

  The last interlude was nice enough. An easy conquest, a bit of astonishingly rapid intercourse and a lot of flattery, just when he needed it. She stripped in front of him without any coyness almost immediately, revealing a great physique. Slim, toned and athletic, like a man, almost, but softened by her hair. Perhaps that’s why he noticed her in the first place. Or perhaps it’s because her coffee cup says ‘Posh Totty’ on it.

  He still isn’t sure why he invited himself over on Sunday. It was frustration at Sophie’s lack of contact, rather than having any particular desire for sex. He wasn’t sure as he raced along the M62 back towards Manchester, but when he arrived at her flat, she had wanted him immediately and the compliments had flowed. ‘So handsome, so fit, so big!’ Followed by a crescendo of repeated ‘Oh, my God!’ Then it was all over remarkably quickly. Before he even caught his breath, she was up and in the bathroom, taps hissing, toilet rumbling. She sat on the side of the bed with her slim naked back towards him, raking her hair up into a tight high ponytail. Then she put on a sports bra and rooted around in a white chest of drawers for ‘matching panties’ in readiness for her ‘cool down run’.

  ‘You can take me out for a drink next time,’ she said in her slightly lispy way, standing over him with her hands on her narrow hips. ‘I’ll send you a text and let you know when I’m free. Or maybe I’ll just pop into your office.’ Which she did at noon today, at the very moment Sami was at a low point, staring at his private line and willing it to ring.

  So here he is on a Wednesday evening, sitting opposite Jemima at the Lead Station wine bar, realising far too late that her voice is really going to get on his pip. She’s talking, she has been talking since they arrived. Sami has no idea what about, but he gathers from the movement of her eyebrows and hands that he’s supposed to be impressed with whatever high-minded opinion she’s espousing. Posh, attractive and intelligent, she wants him to know.