Beneath the Skin Page 23

  ‘Of course it meant something. Like his death meant something. It’s me, isn’t it? I’m cold and hard and unable to love.’

  Mike stands too. He takes Antonia in his arms and holds her tightly. He wants to say that her words are ridiculous. He wants to tell her that she’s beautiful and very, very lovable. To say the words out loud, but some instinct holds him back.

  ‘Look, David’s mother died when he was young, right?’ he says instead, his head thoughtful but his body instinctively alert to hers.

  Antonia pulls away slightly and searches his face with troubled eyes. ‘So, what are you saying? That she was some sort of mother substitute?’

  ‘Well, perhaps.’

  She frowns and wipes the tears from her nose with the back of her hand. Then she looks at him straight. ‘Like you’re a father figure to me?’

  Mike releases his arms and steps away. ‘Well, I’m not that old!’ His laugh sounds empty and his heart feels a stab. ‘But yes, in a way, I suppose so.’

  The girl with the hair helps herself to juice from the fridge in the small kitchen annex. She sips it slowly from a pint glass and glares at Sophie without offering her any. Half an hour or maybe more passes before she detaches her spaced-out gaze from Sophie’s face, fetches some jeans and her mobile. Then another half before Barry turns up with a wry smile. He doesn’t look much different, Sophie observes. A youthful tanned face with thick greying hair. Still slim and fit. She can see why men, women and too-young girls still fancy him despite his being in his mid-fifties.

  ‘So you two have met, then?’ he asks with a grin.

  There’s a flicker of emotion from the girl’s eyes. ‘Zoë,’ he says. ‘This is my daughter, Sophie. I hope that you’ve been looking after her.’

  Zoë’s mouth opens for a moment before she recovers herself with a shrug and says that she had better be going.

  ‘She reminds me of you,’ Barry says when she’s gone.

  They sit in silence for a while, listening to a muffled drumbeat from the adjoining flat.

  ‘Are you going to talk to me now that you’re here, Sophie? You could have phoned and given me some warning.’

  ‘I thought you were on nights.’

  ‘I was the last time we spoke. But that was a long time ago, Soph.’

  Sophie looks at her father and sighs. It was a mistake to turn up unannounced. She feels deflated and tired. ‘I thought you’d be pleased to see me,’ she says, not able to keep the pique from her voice.

  Sophie despises her own neediness. She badly wants a drink. An alcoholic drink. It took a great deal of effort not to shove the girl away from the fridge earlier and drink straight from the wine bottle she glimpsed next to the milk.

  As though reading her mind Barry stands and opens the fridge door. ‘Course I’m pleased to see you,’ he says absently. ‘Are you hungry?’ He passes the wine bottle to Sophie. ‘You crack that open and I’ll make us an omelette.’

  Olivia is sapped. She’s fed up with putting on a face that isn’t hers. She’s tired of fighting the constant nausea and the brutal rounds of ugly thoughts in her head.

  Bad, bad mother, she thinks as she lies on the soft double bed in the dark. Hannah was clingy after her bath. She cried and demanded another story. She wanted milk, she wanted Daddy, even Rachel. She wanted anything other than to close her eyes and bloody well sleep.

  I want to bang my head against the wall. I want to scream! Olivia thought, but instead she asked Rachel if she wouldn’t mind reading Hannah another story and Rachel nodded, her silent eyes still reproachful.

  ‘I’m sorry about shouting in the car,’ Olivia had said when they arrived home.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, I’m getting used to it,’ Rachel replied. And there it was again. Bad, bad mother. Bad person, bad wife.

  Olivia yearns to fall into an empty sleep as the pillow cradles her head. But her mind isn’t that kind. It’s still playing out the imaginary conversation she’ll have with the doctor when she sees him next week.

  ‘I’ve had time to think. I want a termination.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m at the end of my tether. I don’t feel I could cope if I had another miscarriage.’

  Olivia rocks her head. She doesn’t look like a woman who can’t cope, and besides, she’s never sought help or medication for depression or stress. It’s really a non-starter.

  ‘I don’t want a baby. I want a life,’ her mind tries. That sounds much better because it’s the truth, or at least part of it, but it’s hardly grounds for an abortion.

  ‘Have you discussed this with your husband, Mrs Turner?’

  And Olivia will have to reply, ‘No.’

  Then doctor will say, ‘Can I ask why you haven’t told him?’

  Ah, there’s the rub. She turns and presses her face firmly into the pillow as her mind reasons and pokes.

  ‘It might not be his,’ her mind soothes.

  ‘But if it is, there’d be no mistake,’ it needles her in reply.

  God knows what happened. God knows what insanity made her change her mind about Sami.

  ‘What on earth do all these women see in him, Mike?’ she used to ask.

  ‘Good looking, confident, well off?’ he’d reply.

  ‘But he’s so conceited and shallow. There’s nothing beneath his pretty face. He really irritates me.’

  ‘I think he’s got that message, Olivia!’

  She looked anywhere but at Sami during the funeral service. She hung back with Rachel in the church, fearful of catching his eye, terrified that by some strange instinct he would look at her and know. Know that she’s carrying his child. But after the church, when they congregated at White Gables, there was no escape. No escape from his hot gaze across the kitchen. No escape as he approached her with a smile. Tall, lithe and sexual. She’d been greedy and abandoned and she hated him for it.

  ‘Can I see you, Olivia?’ he said. ‘I really miss you. Come on, one more time. It was great, wasn’t it?’

  She wonders what her face looked like as she said the words in reply. Did it betray her terror, her loathing, her regret? She touched his arm and tried to smile. To be the Olivia she used to be. ‘Please don’t, Sami,’ she whispered. ‘Please leave it there and let’s stay friends.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Mike bends down to tie the laces on his trainers. The old house is silent, unusually so.

  ‘The girls are still out for the count,’ he whispers to Olivia as she stirs. ‘Go back to sleep. I’m off for a run. I’ll wake you when I get back.’

  The morning is misty and cold, a slight drizzle in the air. Mike stretches for a minute, then lifts his hood and starts to run past the other Victorian homes in his cul-de-sac and then on to the main street with its assortment of small cafes, drink houses and take-outs. It’s strange, not having the black dog with him. A void, in a way. Perhaps that is why he needed to fill it, he thinks.

  The notion that he was father-like was a blow, an unexpected blow. It wasn’t an unfair suggestion, even if he is only eight years or so older than Antonia. It’s what he intended, absolutely. Yet it hurt. Dreadfully. He drank the glass of wine quickly and made his excuses. Said he’d call for a taxi. ‘What, already?’ she said, her eyes looking forlorn. Then she recovered herself. ‘I’ll drive you. Of course. But before you go, I just wanted to show you …’

  He feels his heart pumping in his chest with the effort of running. His pace is faster than usual. He wants to run down by the Mersey river to the water park, to sit on a bench and watch the birds at the lake.

  She knelt in front of Mike’s chair and unbuttoned the sleeve of her crisp white blouse. Then she rolled the sleeve up, layer by layer in neat folds until her slim arm was fully exposed. Her eyes were glued to his, expectant. ‘It’s healed,’ he observed, conscious of her body, her exquisite face. ‘I know!’ she replied, beaming. Pleased. Like a child.

  He was angry then. ‘What the fuck,’ he wanted to say. ‘What the f
uck do you want from me? Do you really not know what you’re doing to me?’

  She sat back and looked hurt. ‘You’re cross with me. I thought you’d be pleased that I haven’t …’ Her small voice trailed off.

  ‘I am. It’s great. It’s just—’

  ‘What have I done wrong?’ she asked, her eyes still on his.

  He wanted to stand, to escape, but if he stood at that moment it would be all too apparent what was wrong.

  ‘Nothing at all. Really. You probably want some peace,’ he replied.

  She leaned forward again, her body between his thighs, her hand reaching up to his face.

  ‘Your hair.’ She smiled, running smooth fingers through it. ‘It’s going curly.’

  ‘Perhaps you should trim it—’ he started to reply. But by then the weight of her upper body was firm on his groin. He could smell her skin, feel her breath. Then her lips, her soft lips.

  Lifting his hands to her face, he kissed her, deeply kissed, momentarily lost and unable to stop. Then summoning all that remained of his self-control, he pulled away, lifted her smooth hands from around his neck and held them firmly in his. ‘I’m sorry, that was wrong of me. You’re full of grief and confusion and unanswered questions and I’m …’

  The drizzle has turned to rain. Mike’s legs feel heavy. He’s had far too little sleep. But his head is determined as he runs against the flow of the river.

  ‘Coffee for you,’ Barry says.

  Sophie opens her eyes and sees her dad clearly. She stretches out a leg from beneath the blanket. Her whole body aches. The wine sent her straight off last night. A good thing, she notes looking down. She’s considerably longer than Barry’s black leather sofa.

  He holds out the steaming drink. He met her wine glass for glass during the evening. Yet he looks fresh and alert, scrubbed and dressed in his nurse’s uniform for work.

  ‘You’ll be gone when I’m back?’

  Sophie sits up, pulls out the hair trapped behind her back and takes the mug. ‘Is that a question or a command?’

  Barry grins. ‘Come on, Soph. You’re all grown up now. You wouldn’t want to spoil your old dad’s love life.’

  Sophie blinks, finally registering what’s wrong. She fell asleep wearing her contact lenses. She’s awoken with sight, which feels particularly ironic today.

  ‘Why did you marry Mum?’ she asks, looking carefully at his handsome face.

  ‘We went over this last night.’

  ‘OK. Then why did you betray her? It wasn’t as though it was just the once.’

  He turns his head towards a photograph of Sophie as a child. She’s squeezed between her two smaller brothers, wearing the pink National Health glasses she hated. He shrugs. ‘It’s complicated. I never really analysed it.’

  ‘Liar.’

  He turns away, picks up a canvas bag and some keys. ‘It was lovely to see you, Soph. Pull the door to when you leave. And call me in advance next time.’

  Barry plays with the keys for a moment, his back to her. ‘I always felt inadequate and blamed her. I needed the endorsement. Pathetic really, and self-perpetuating.’ He turns and nods with a small smile, then blows Sophie a kiss and leaves.

  It’s so hard to judge. It isn’t like the old days when Antonia didn’t care. ‘Take it from me,’ Sophie always said. ‘If you want to do it, they definitely want to.’ She slept around, as did Sophie, if bushes and bus stops and bedsits counted as sleeping. Antonia liked the kissing mostly, the foreplay sometimes, but the intercourse rarely.

  It was fine with David. He was always gentle and there were times when she almost came. At least she thought so. But David never seemed to notice. ‘Say please,’ he whispered. ‘Tell me you want me.’ So she said the words and David would orgasm and laugh joyously. He was happy, delighted, which made her happy too.

  The mistake, long ago when they were teenagers, was to confide in Sophie. They were lying on Sophie’s bed at her mum’s house. They’d been with some boys drinking pear cider in Wythenshawe Park and she was tipsy, too tipsy.

  ‘I don’t really like it that much,’ Antonia had confessed. ‘It doesn’t hurt or anything, but I don’t feel … Well, nothing happens.’

  Sophie propped herself up and examined her face with a grin.

  ‘You need to practise. Haven’t you tried doing it yourself? With your fingers. Everyone else does.’ Her green eyes were mischievous and mocking. She slipped a hand down between Antonia’s thighs, into her panties and touched. Soft but firm. ‘Like this? And this? Use spit if you’re dry.’

  ‘Stop!’ Antonia declared. But it was too late. Like static electricity she’d felt it and Sophie had seen. Sophie knew.

  Antonia flips on to her belly on the king-sized bed, her body goosebumped, although she’s so hot. The closest she ever came to feeling that frisson was with the razor blade. Her Friday night treat. Until the night of David’s death. As inappropriate as it was, she had felt it then. Desire. Lust. Growing and swelling inside her. Mike had held her when she cried and she’d felt it then, like a spreading blaze. She wanted him to fuck her, to take her and fuck her. But it was only a craving, a thought, a feeling. She would never act on it. David was dead. Olivia was her friend.

  There have been moments when she’s caught a flash, a dark glint of connection in Mike’s eyes when he’s looked at her. But it’s happened so fleetingly that she doesn’t know, she isn’t sure. He’s always brought Rachel with him too. Which is fine, she is lovely. Mike is just caring and kind, like a brother, like a father. Isn’t he? Then there’s Olivia. Nice Mumsy Olivia. Olivia her friend who she wouldn’t betray. Until yesterday, at the wake. When she passed Sami and Olivia in the kitchen. When she clearly heard their conversation.

  Olivia isn’t asleep. She was awake when Mike climbed into bed late last night. His breath became deep and slow the moment his head touched the pillow. The innocent sleep, she thought, as she continued to stare at images through her closed eyelids. ‘Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care.’

  She wonders if she’s slept at all. The same pictures are still here this morning. That of Sami naked. Sami smiling. Sami declaring his love. But she feels cold and dispassionate. She doesn’t recognise the woman in the images. The woman who’s so gluttonous and uninhibited, the woman who fucked her husband’s close friend in her marital bed for weeks. Moments of madness? On another planet? Frailty? Yes frailty, she thinks. That woman has succumbed to flattery and she despises her for it.

  Olivia writes the newspaper article behind her closed eyes. ‘Counsel for the defence argued that the respondent was at a low point in her life. She’d recently miscarried a baby. Her husband had become remote. She suspected him of having an affair. She felt unattractive and ignored. She no longer worked and felt she’d lost her identity. It was therefore inevitable that, subjected to a sustained onslaught of compliments and flattery, she would revert to the frailty of all womankind.’

  Though hardly justification for what she’s done, it’s true. Yet if she’s honest, it wasn’t just a silly woman’s frailty, it was also deliberate and vengeful. Like that Old Testament God. If Mike was having an affair with Judith, then why shouldn’t she? Who better than one of his closest friends? Poetic justice, she thought at the time. Which was wrong. Wrong on any level, she knows.

  Divine retribution and wrath. That woman tempted fate and must now face the consequences.

  Sami is in the tiny walled garden of his townhouse, listening to the discordant peal of St James’s church bells. A wedding, he assumes. A couple’s happy day, a thought that he quickly dismisses.

  The perimeter of the garden is lined with high red-brick beds filled with plants he can’t name. They’re bowed, losing their leaves or their colour, looking to Sami as though they’re dying a slow death.

  He rakes up the fallen leaves in his hands wearing Sophie’s Marigolds, then snips off the protruding bare branches with secateurs, carefully picking up the spiky twigs and putting them in a black bin liner. Pr
uning makes him feel like his dad. ‘Preparing for life after death,’ as he puts it. Sami thinks he’ll call him later and have a chat. ‘Hey, Dad. Guess what I’ve been doing. How’s the leg?’

  He knows his dad’s been lucky, really. A relatively small stroke, affecting just his left side. And only seven months ago, so still room for improvement. But his personality has changed from the gregarious successful barrister he was to a moody recluse stuck at home with too many women. Or maybe he’s just depressed. Sami has never been depressed. Miserable as a boy, granted, but never depressed. He vaguely understands that it can happen with illness and stress, when life goes awry. But he misses the old dad very much. As a child he would go to him in his study, even when it was forbidden, to escape the smother of Martha’s love. He’d sit there in silence, reading a comic or playing with a toy, while his dad read his brief for court the next day. Nothing was ever said, but Sami felt his father understood how difficult it was to sever the tie of Martha’s intense maternal love. To grow from fat boy to man, when he really wanted to be a mummy’s boy forever.

  It could so easily have been Dad in that coffin, he thinks as he crouches down. He scoops up a fistful of soil, letting it slip back to the ground through his fingers.

  Thank God David didn’t have children. Losing a father must be unbearable, even when you’re supposed to be a man. Sami has thought a lot about David since the funeral, more than he imagined he would. It’s the end of an era. There’ll be no more dinner parties at White Gables. Friday in the pub will never be the same. There’ll be no more banter between them. No more soft jibes.

  ‘They didn’t mean anything,’ he says out loud to the garden. ‘They were just a bit of fun.’

  Yet the jibes bother him now. ‘You’re putting weight on, Dave. You’re losing your touch. You’d better keep an eye on Antonia. She’s a stunner. Your hair’s getting thin. Naughty boy, Dave. A taste for redheads, eh? You wouldn’t want Antonia to find out.’

  He remembers his last conversation with David. Only in retrospect does he realise it must have been on the afternoon of his death, perhaps even his final call. The thought makes him uncomfortable, a chill on his spine.