Beneath the Skin Page 21

  ‘Then don’t, love. You don’t have to do anything.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’ Sami hisses under his breath. He’s sitting at his desk thinking about a woman. Again. For a moment he visualises his father limping into the garden. ‘Bloody women! God, make me better, please. Get me back to work!’ There’s an iota of empathy for a moment, but Sami likes women and this particular woman is his wife.

  He doodles on the pad, killing time until some building plans arrive. He likes to be methodical, to complete one task before moving on to the next.

  He counted the wine bottles this morning and checked the level of the one in the fridge. Sophie doesn’t appear to be drinking. Maybe she’s improved her hiding technique over the last few days, but there’s no doubt that she’s retreated into herself. She isn’t talking. There’s no general chit-chat, sarcastic comments or shouting. Yet on the other hand, she isn’t being unfriendly either. He doesn’t think she knows about Jemima, but her behaviour is decidedly odd. He puts his pen down and sighs. The truth is that he doesn’t know how to handle it. Sophie has always been Sophie. Sophie being something other than Sophie isn’t a problem he’s encountered before.

  There’s a banging noise and some laughter through his open office door. It interrupts Sami’s doodling, his neat sketches of three-dimensional boxes increasing in size. It’s unusual to hear the buzz of the office. He’s objected to the suggestion of open plan many times, valuing his private line and his privacy. But he’s having a hot-under-the-collar moment, a rare feeling he doesn’t like. Jemima has strolled into his office three times today. Each time she closed the door behind her, her face proprietorial. Then she perched her neat bum on his desk ‘for a chat’. Too cosy, too comfortable, too near. It makes him feel trapped.

  ‘No need for that. I’m on the pill, I won’t get pregnant,’ she said the last time they met, as he carefully rolled on a too-tight condom. No need? Don’t I bloody know it, he thought. But he always uses condoms with casual conquests, he always has, he doesn’t want an STD. He could catch warts or chlamydia, get discharge or worse. The thought brings him out in goosebumps.

  ‘This has just arrived for you, Mr Richards.’ The sweaty office junior inches into the office, handing Sami a large beige cylinder. Sami nods his thanks. Now he can get on with the task in hand, put the women aside.

  ‘Should I close the door, Mr Richards?’

  ‘No, that’s fine,’ Sami says with a grimace. ‘Definitely leave it open.’

  Olivia’s small hands are shaking as she punches the number into the telephone. Actually shaking. It’s ridiculous, the whole thing is ridiculous.

  ‘Can I make an appointment to see the doctor, please?’

  She’s met with the usual bored inquisition from the surgery’s receptionist. For whom? Date of birth? Postcode? Usual doctor? Hold the line while I complain to my colleague about some random biddy who didn’t say thanks. ‘Probably because she’s traumatised, deaf or dying,’ Olivia wants to yell, but manages to hold her tongue.

  ‘Dr Culcheth on the twenty-sixth at four pm?’ Finally.

  Olivia thinks of today’s date. ‘That’s in three weeks!’ she says far too loudly.

  ‘Well, you didn’t say it was an emergency. Is it an emergency?’

  Is it an emergency? Olivia has no idea. She was on the pill. She took it late once, maybe twice. In her head, though, it’s definitely an emergency.

  ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

  ‘Then you should have called before ten.’

  ‘What if the fucking emergency occurs after ten?’ Olivia wants to ask. But she’s using her reasonable voice. It takes up the rest of Olivia’s yearly supply. She says, ‘please’ and ‘I would be so grateful’ and ‘that’s so kind of you to make an exception’.

  ‘Just this once, Mrs Turner. A doctor will call you back later today or tomorrow to arrange an appointment.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ She doesn’t say it out loud, at least she doesn’t think so.

  She clock-watches for the first hour, not listening to You and Yours on the radio, not emptying the dishwasher or sweeping the floor. Then she gives up doing nothing, leaves the oppressive house and walks up the cul-de-sac towards the shops. Hannah has a party at the weekend. Olivia needs to buy a gift for a child who has everything. Inevitably, as fate would have it, the callback from the surgery comes as she stands at the counter of the sparse and expensive local toy shop in the precinct.

  It isn’t a doctor she knows. He hasn’t read her notes. He sounds very young. His first question is, ‘Have you done a pregnancy test?’

  Olivia manages to resist the inevitable ‘What the fuck do you think?’ but the conversation goes badly anyway. There are dates she can’t give. Details she doesn’t want to share with the other lunchtime precinct shoppers. When was her last period? How long has she known? Has she spoken to her husband? And other pointless questions. Olivia finds herself shouting outside the cluttered fruit stall and by then she knows that she’s lost the argument.

  ‘I don’t think you’re ready to see me yet, Mrs Turner,’ the doctor says smoothly. ‘You need time to talk to your husband, to reflect. Let’s make an appointment for a week’s time. Then we can have a calm and reasonable chat.’

  Olivia throws her mobile into her handbag and stamps her foot, much like Hannah in a tizz. ‘Unctuous bastard,’ she shouts. A couple of elderly Chorlton-born-and-bred shoppers release their tartan trolleys and stare at her with open mouths.

  ‘Sorry, ladies. Call centres! Makes you lose the will to live,’ Olivia explains. The shoppers nod sagely and move on.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Sophie is still asleep upstairs, at least Sami thinks so. She’s been so quiet over the last week that it’s difficult to judge. She’s been right next to him in their bed all night, available to speak to and to touch. Yet his mind has been swamped with dreams and thoughts of her as though she isn’t there. He misses the Sophie he knows. He wants her back.

  It’s Friday today. Black Friday. The day of David’s funeral. He hasn’t thought about David much. When he does, it still feels unbelievable, like a bad joke or a lie. He wonders if the penny will ever drop. If he’ll ever feel it.

  Opening the wooden kitchen cupboard, he removes his favourite bowl and pours out the muesli. He likes his morning routine: muesli for breakfast, sugar free with skimmed milk. But today it looks dry and uninspiring.

  He leans on the worktop, his mind propelled back to his night-time reminiscences of eight and a half years ago. He was at his pad in town, pacing. He was expectant, excited. His breath and aftershave were fresh, the cushions were plumped, wine uncorked on the side unit, the lights on dim. A new conquest was at the tip of his fingertips. The best feeling ever.

  His doorbell trilled into the soft music. But when he’d opened the door, there was Sophie.

  ‘Antonia isn’t coming, so you’ve got me instead,’ she’d announced, pushing past him and into the lounge. Her sharp eyes surveyed the room, her hand on her hip. ‘Nice place, Sami,’ she laughed. ‘But fur throws. Really?’

  He was extremely irritated. He’d barely noticed her at the club. She wasn’t his style, not the more conventionally pretty type of woman he liked. But he could hardly throw her out and so she stayed. She sashayed around his flat, opening cupboards, gazing at pictures and stroking a finger along the spines of his books. Then she helped herself to the wine and drank greedily, her scarlet lips wet and glossy. Sami found himself watching her every move with fascination until he couldn’t bear it any longer.

  ‘I think you’ll find there’s more to see in the bedroom.’ He grinned.

  ‘I’m sure there is. Leave the wine in a cooler next time, Sami. Bye,’ she smiled and then she left.

  Sami opens the fridge and studies its contents. It’s colder than it needs to be, but Sophie always did like her wine very chilled. There’s milk, butter, yoghurt, a sausage of chorizo and some out-of-date ham. Then at the bottom, the phials of hormone drugs and
unopened syringes. The remains of his last failure. He pulls back the foil on the Greek yoghurt and sniffs, then spoons it generously on top of his muesli, adding a dollop of honey from a jar in the cupboard. It’s as close to comfort eating as Sami gets these days.

  Sophie fended him off just with kisses. For weeks. He thought he might burst and he resorted to pleading, which made Sophie laugh. Until a summer’s evening at a pub in the Lakes.

  ‘You can have me now,’ she said, draining the glass of wine.

  ‘But we’re miles away from home, in the middle of the countryside.’

  ‘So?’

  They made love in a field, in the shadow of an oak tree. The breeze caressed their naked skin which was dappled by soft sunlight peeping through the leaves. It was the most exhilarating moment of his life. Then afterwards Sophie sat up, the evening air cool on her pale pink nipples and he picked out the dry grass from her hair.

  ‘Will you move in with me, Soph?’ he asked.

  She looked at him for a moment, her green eyes bright in the pale retreating sun and for a pulse of a second he thought she was going to say no.

  ‘You’ll have to catch me first.’

  Her russet hair flew behind her like a kite as she ran. He knew then that there was no turning back as he pulled on his boxer shorts and hurtled after her.

  Sophie waits for the click of the front door before opening her eyes. They’re wet. She who never cries is crying all the time. Without reason, without warning.

  Sami popped his head around the bedroom door before he left. ‘I’ll be back at twelve to collect you for the funeral. Think it would be best if you wore black, Soph. Love you.’

  She can still smell his aftershave. The ‘love you’ catches her breath.

  Her mother didn’t say ‘I told you so’ as she’d thought, when Sophie confessed about lying to Sami. Instead, she took Sophie into her warm fleshy arms, kissed her hair and said, ‘Oh, love.’ Sophie cried and cried; she couldn’t stop.

  ‘I never told Sami about the chlamydia and stuff. I mean, why would I? Why would anyone?’ she sobbed to her mum.

  ‘You were very poorly, Sophie. And brave. Nobody else would have put up with the pain for that long,’ Norma replied, still holding her close.

  ‘Stupid, you mean. I knew something was wrong. I was just a coward.’

  As Sophie wiped her stinging face with shaking hands she pictured the doctor’s frowning face from all those years ago. ‘You have PID, Pelvic Inflammatory Disease. A very severe case of it,’ he diagnosed, after she was admitted to hospital in horrendous pain. ‘You really shouldn’t have left it so long, young lady.’

  But it didn’t matter then, she was poorly and she recovered, life moved on.

  ‘You could tell him now, love. Sami must know that you don’t go for IVF unless there’s a major problem,’ Norma said, pulling gently away.

  Sophie looked at her mum, an older reflection of herself. Her eyes were wet too. It was time to be honest. ‘I told Sami that he was the problem, Mum. Low sperm, no sperm, whatever. I took Antonia to all the consultations so he wouldn’t know the truth. When I told him that he was to blame, he just looked appalled but accepted it. He never mentioned it again.’

  ‘So, Antonia knows …’

  Sophie nodded.

  ‘Ah,’ Norma replied.

  Antonia brushes her floury hands on her apron. She’s been up since five, glad of something to do. Filo pastry from scratch isn’t what most sane people will do on the morning of their husband’s funeral, she knows, but she finds it therapeutic. It takes her mind off the terror of a funeral. The faces, the eyes and the inquisitiveness. The pity, especially. Still fresh from her dad’s burial, even after all these years.

  Last night she asked Mike how many people she needed to cater for, but he looked apologetic. He said he had no idea. But then he grinned, saying he’d be more than happy to pop out to Netto for some decent nibbles if the need arose.

  Mike’s friendship and his humour keeps her afloat. So it isn’t so bad. Then all the scary stuff like the undertakers, the police and the coroner have been taken out of her hands by David’s partners under the direction of Charlie, still seething in his hospital bed. She only really has Helen to impress.

  She cuts the butter into thin slices and dots them carefully on to the dough. What she couldn’t ask Mike was whether it was considered to be a faux pas to attend the funeral of someone who’d committed suicide. She can see it could be embarrassing for people who aren’t close friends. Or for people who judge. But then she understands that a funeral is meant to celebrate someone’s life and to pay respects to a person they admired or loved, however they died.

  That’s precisely why so few mourners attended her father’s funeral, she thinks, as she tools the pastry. Sophie was there, though. Sophie was there to hold her hand.

  Sophie has been standing still under the shower for a long time, thinking. The water is hot, almost scalding her skin. She can still smell Sami. It’s the soap, perhaps. He’ll be back soon to collect her. She has to think straight, to decide.

  ‘Antonia doesn’t know everything,’ she eventually said to her mum.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She doesn’t know …’ She trailed off and started to cry again then. She hadn’t let Norma see her tears since she was very, very small and look at her now.

  ‘She doesn’t know that I got fed up of waiting for Sami to propose. He seemed to be losing interest.’

  Norma shook her head, her eyes still bright with tears. ‘Oh, Sophie, I doubt it.’ She paused for a moment and then nodded. ‘Let me guess. You told him you were pregnant?’

  ‘Yes. Then of course I had to “lose” the baby. He was devastated, Mum. I think he’d told his family. Martha, anyway. She’s hated me since.’

  Sophie could almost see the cogs of her mother’s mind, working it all out. The pregnancy and then the miscarriage, a lie that had snowballed. ‘So, if you confessed to Sami now about the PID or if he finds out you were always infertile …’

  ‘He’d see me for what I am.’

  The central heating’s still blasting out its heat in Sophie’s bedroom, but the air feels cold against her hot and damp skin. She sits on the end of her bed, her hair in a towel, struggling to put the contact lenses in her eyes without looking in the mirror. She’s fearful of what she might see. What her face might reveal.

  It had been going so well, the time with her mum. Sophie had confessed it all, the lies and the deceit and Norma didn’t judge or flinch. She didn’t shout or say, ‘I told you so.’ She gave Sophie just what she needed, a tight hug of love. But after pulling away, she took Sophie firmly by the shoulders and looked her in the eye. ‘I don’t think you’re well, love. You’ve been under so much stress for so long. I really think now is the time to go to the doctor and ask for some help.’

  A punch to her stomach couldn’t have been worse. It was the thing she really feared; the suggestion of some kind of mental weakness or instability. She stood and loomed over her mother, her mind and her body consumed with sudden uncontrollable hurt and rage. ‘You labelled me as a teenage slag and now I’m a fucking nut case? I should have known you wouldn’t understand.’

  Sophie has screamed those words, or similar, countless times to her mother over the years. But never before had she slapped her mother’s face before stalking out of the house.

  Antonia yawns as she studies her handwritten list. She’s slept fitfully over the past week, waking up in the early hours but feeling too lonely to get up. Her mind has wandered, roaming from funeral food to the messages left by the insistent journalist, from hazy childhood to Sophie and to David, but not staying in one place for long. She expected to feel more. More grief, regret and guilt. Especially guilt. It’s buried, she supposes, with everything else.

  The Ridings called during the week. It was the manager herself, Mrs L Jones. Antonia held her breath as Mrs Jones introduced herself, wondering if she had a breaking point and if it was near. ‘Can
dy would like to come to the funeral,’ Mrs Jones said. ‘I have no objection.’

  ‘My mother has no idea whose funeral it is, you fool,’ Antonia wanted to say. But the manager continued to speak in a syrupy voice that she had never heard before. ‘It must be a terrible thing to lose your husband, Mrs Stafford. I’m very sorry. I hope having your mum there will give you some comfort.’

  Antonia wanted to cry at that moment, but only for a moment, as anxiety set in. No one knew her mother here. No one knew about her history and her illness. The way she looked, the way she acted. Except Sophie.

  ‘Of course a carer will come too, drive her over, keep her company and bring her back. You’ll have other things to worry about,’ the manager continued. ‘I hope in some small way that helps.’

  There’s good in everyone, Antonia now thinks. Candy’s wise words. Perhaps she’s right.

  There is a tremor in her hand as she scrutinises her list of finger foods yet again. She feels slightly nauseous. Like the dinner parties of old, she wants to impress. She knows Sophie will laugh at her for doing the catering herself. That she’ll sneer and say no one appreciates a ‘bloody martyr’. But what Sophie doesn’t understand is that some things in life are a labour of love. Antonia didn’t enjoy the dinner parties, not one bit. They were for David. Today is for David too.

  ‘What are you doing, Sophie?’

  Sami’s frame fills the bedroom door. He’s home earlier than Sophie expects. She has stuffed some clothes into a holdall, but she’s found it difficult to concentrate on the task. Her mind only goes so far down her mental list of things to pack, toothbrush, knickers, glasses, before it bounces back to the beginning.

  ‘What does it look like?’ Sophie replies, but not in a challenging way. She just doesn’t have the energy to explain, even if she tried to understand it herself.

  ‘The funeral starts in an hour, Sophie.’

  ‘I know. I’m not going.’ She stares at the holdall. It looks deflated. There must be more she should pack. But her mind feels like jelly.