Beneath the Skin Page 24

  It was a telephone call out of the blue. ‘What the fuck are you doing with Antonia?’ David demanded.

  ‘Nothing,’ he replied, caught on the hop at work, surprised at David’s unexpected call and his anger.

  ‘I’ve just listened to your fucking answerphone message, Sami. The one you left for Antonia today. What have you got to be sorry about? You’ve been here, haven’t you? In my house. With my wife. You’ve been—’

  But Sami cut the tirade off. He’d tried to speak to Antonia and to apologise for upsetting her over their Sophie meeting at White Gables several times. He’d followed it up with the answerphone message. But the whole thing with Sophie’s drinking and with babies was difficult. Personal. Embarrassing. Humiliating. He hadn’t felt able to talk about it to Antonia, so he wasn’t going to explain it to David of all people.

  ‘She asked me to go to your fucking house, David. It was Antonia who started it. Stop giving me grief and speak to her,’ he replied before ending the call.

  Sami hadn’t been kind to Antonia when she’d tried to talk to him about Sophie’s drinking at White Gables. ‘Look at your own marriage, stop interfering in mine,’ he’d snapped. He’d assumed David’s angry call was because he’d upset her. But, thinking about it now, he feels David was suggesting something more about the visit. He might even have said, ‘You’ve been screwing my wife.’ But of course that’s ridiculous; Sami likes Antonia very much, he’s always felt a protective and brotherly love for her, not least for the connection of their skin colour. But he’d never dream of propositioning her, not even as a joke. He wouldn’t put her in that position, she’d be embarrassed and shocked.

  Sami shrugs off the memory of the conversation. They weren’t particularly nice words to end on, but they had no bearing on David’s suicide, surely? It’s the thought of the occasional sniping that bothers him more. He knows he could have tempered that.

  He stands and looks up to the sky. The drizzle wets his face. ‘The quips didn’t mean anything. You gave as good as you got, didn’t you, David?’ he asks. He feels abandoned and lonely and unbearably sad. ‘I’m sorry, man,’ he adds. ‘I’ll miss you. I bloody will.’

  The geese are milling about on the banks of the lake at the water park. They’re vocal, angry and loud. Or so it seems to Mike. But who can tell? He wonders if he’s ever been able to read situations, or whether it’s a recent failure. Olivia, Rachel and Judith. Even Sami. He asked Sami what happened to Sophie, where was she, when she didn’t appear at the funeral or at the wake.

  ‘Things are difficult at the moment,’ Sami replied. ‘We’ve tried for a baby for a while and I think it’s getting to her.’

  Mike nodded, thinking, these things happen, it takes time, poor Sophie.

  But then Sami said, ‘We’ve had the tests and stuff. It seems I’m a Jaffa, you know, seedless.’ Sami laughed, trying for humour, but it didn’t spread to his face.

  ‘God, sorry to hear that, mate,’ Mike replied, trying not to show his surprise that Sami had any problems, let alone that type of problem.

  The surface of the lake ripples as the rain becomes heavier. Mike knows he should move from the wooden bench. His shorts are soaked and they cling to him, but his eyes are transfixed by a lone swan gliding silently through the water.

  He squints through the rain as he stands. Aren’t swans meant to swim in pairs? Don’t they mate for life? He remains rooted to the spot, his eyes scouring the mere for another swan. He needs to know. Really know. The kiss with Antonia was unmistakable. It was too sensuous, too intense and too long to be anything other than mutual desire.

  Mike starts to run. He can feel the water from his hoodie streaming down the back of his legs. He shakes the rain from his hair and increases his pace, searching for the swan as he heads for home.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  ‘Come on Daddy, keep up!’ Hannah calls.

  The local park is crisp and cold, the wind sharp against their faces. Hannah runs ahead and wades through rusty-coloured leaves in her pink-spotted wellington boots. Rachel hangs by Mike’s side, looking down as she kicks the autumn carpet. ‘Everything all right?’ Mike asks, putting a hand around her shoulder and kissing the top of her head.

  Rachel nods and then sprints away towards Hannah. She has something on her mind, Mike guesses. But she’s like him in many ways. She’s not ready to talk. ‘I wish she wouldn’t do that,’ Olivia occasionally comments. ‘She needs to be more vocal. People will think she’s a pushover.’ ‘But she isn’t a pushover. And that’s what counts,’ Mike replies. But he understands Olivia’s frustration. Olivia is assertive, strong and opinionated. Not in a bad way. It was one of the things that attracted him back at university. The paradox between how she looks and how she behaves. She’s blonde, fine featured and petite, but she’s the first to wade into the fray, to stand up and be counted for something she believes in. He admires her enormously for it.

  Strength, not weakness, he sighs inwardly. As simple as that. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

  ‘Daddy’s sorry. It’s only a bump,’ Mike says as he rubs Hannah’s knee. She’s still crying, though from the scrunch of her pretty face it looks like an effort to squeeze out any more tears. He can see Rachel in his periphery vision, desperate to laugh. And it was funny. Rachel and Hannah were on one side of the see-saw and he was on the other. He bumped them about and Hannah squealed with pleasure. Until she let go of the handle and fell off.

  The highs and lows of life, he thinks as he wipes Hannah’s face with a hanky. Just a breath in between.

  ‘Will some sweets help, do you think?’ he asks, offering up the miracle cure.

  ‘It will have to be a lot of sweets, Daddy,’ Hannah replies sagely as Rachel clenches her fist in a silent ‘result!’

  Hannah rushes ahead in the direction of sugar. Her cheeks are flushed with excitement. But Rachel hangs back again and takes Mike’s hand. ‘Dad …’ she begins, her face looking uncertain.

  ‘Yup?’

  Rachel takes a deep breath. ‘Is Mum pregnant again?’

  Mike stops walking immediately and calls Hannah back from her race to the corner shop. ‘No. I don’t think so. What makes you say that?’

  Her face flushes and her eyes flicker. ‘Oh, it’s just … She’s like she was last time. She’s biting my head off over nothing. She doesn’t look normal and she’s being sick.’ Rachel looks down at her feet, then kicks away a ruptured tennis ball. ‘Sorry, Dad. Have I said the wrong thing?’

  Mike shakes his head. He takes Rachel’s hand again and holds it firmly. ‘No, of course not.’

  He feels winded and foolish, but he tries for a smile. ‘OK, sweet shop. I’ve got a fiver in my pocket. What damage can you girls do to it?’

  ‘Sorry, Mum,’ Sophie says with shivery teeth.

  Sophie stands at Norma’s front door rubbing her arms from the cold. She’s wearing no make-up and her hair looks in need of a good wash, but her eyes are clear. She looks like Sophie this time.

  Norma holds out her arms. It’s strange, she thinks, it’s strange how you mull over things and ruminate, waiting for a ‘sorry’ to come, a moment when, inwardly at least, you can crow and gloat and say ‘finally!’ But when it comes and you hear the word aloud, you only want to say sorry, too.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, too, love. Come in and get warm. I’ll call work and say I won’t be in this afternoon.’

  Norma hasn’t baked a cake in months, but she’s making one now, the chocolate roulade her kids always love. Sophie watches from the kitchen table, mostly silent but talking occasionally about Barry. She tells Norma that he has a young moody girlfriend, that he wasn’t pleased to see her, that he didn’t even ask why Sophie was there. That he only thinks of himself.

  The crowing and the gloating should be even sweeter, but it isn’t.

  ‘Have you decided what to do? About Antonia. About Sami?’ Norma eventually asks.

  Sophie puts her hands to her face and shakes her head. Her nails are b
adly bitten, the tips of her fingers red and raw. ‘No. I don’t know what to do. Everything feels hopeless.’

  ‘That isn’t true, love. Believe it or not, I do understand.’

  ‘Do you, Mum? I’ve messed up so badly.’

  Norma sighs. She’s messed up, too. When Sophie was only just nineteen she was brought by ambulance to the hospital with severe abdominal pains. She had chlamydia, untreated chlamydia, possibly for years. Her daughter’s pelvis was inflamed with a severe infection. Ironically, it was the same hospital where Norma worked. She was an experienced, respected nurse and was working on the geriatric ward when Sophie arrived. An experienced and respected nurse who’d seen nothing amiss with her only daughter, even though they lived under the same roof.

  ‘You think I’m a slag, don’t you?’ Sophie accused her with angry eyes when Norma appeared at her hospital bed, breathing heavily from running and from fright. But Norma didn’t reply. She was fighting the urge not to shout. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Am I such an ogre? Do you hate me so much? I would have helped you, of course I would!’ So she backed away, saying nothing, the words, ‘You’re her mother. A bad mother. You should have known, you should have known,’ resounding through her head.

  ‘How about sleeping on it?’ she says now, placing a hand on Sophie’s pale cheek. ‘The sheets are clean, we have cake and I’ve even put on the central heating.’

  Sophie smiles. Only a little, but it’s still a smile and smiles are hard when there seems to be no way out. ‘Thanks, Mum,’ she says.

  Sami has finally finished tidying the house. He hasn’t cleaned or dusted, particularly, as he doesn’t notice the dirt. But he hates untidiness. Sophie is untidy, very untidy. But he doesn’t hate her. Well, not any more. The day of David’s funeral was fuelled by anger and hurt. She had no regard for his feelings, for the obvious humiliation, the knowing looks, the prying questions and the whispers her absence at the funeral would cause. For Sami that’s the worst: humiliation and shame. Even now he occasionally recalls the taunting and teasing at school. ‘Fat boy, wheezy boy, blobby. Mummy’s little pig.’ That little boy still sits with him occasionally. He wishes he’d go away forever.

  Sami slouches in his favourite chair, idly switching channels between The Great Escape and Sky Sports. He keeps glancing at the sofa, the sofa that’s empty save for the fur throw still left as Sophie left it.

  ‘Don’t bother to come back!’ Oh God.

  Of course they’d rowed before. There had been many times when one or the other of them stomped out and slammed the door. But he’d never said those words before. Suppose she takes him at his word and doesn’t come back? What then? He flicks to another channel. Miss Congeniality 2. Sandra Bullock. Now she is fit.

  Mike phoned earlier, from his Sunday walk with his kids, said he was watching them play on the swings. ‘Everything OK, mate?’ he asked. Sami regrets saying anything to him about Sophie, about tests. It was a moment of self-pity and pathetic really. Which makes him think of Olivia. She politely but firmly turned him down again at the wake and on reflection he’s glad. Even as he spoke to her, he knew he was trying to rekindle their affair for all the wrong reasons. He was pissed off with Sophie.

  Sami rubs his head and sighs deeply. What the fuck was he doing? He never really loved Olivia, he realises that now. It was the challenge, the chase, the desire for that bloody, bloody ego boost. The need to erase the fat boy. It’s Sophie he wants, he knows that now, now that she’s fucking gone.

  He leans to one side and pulls his iPhone from the back pocket of his jeans. He was determined not to look at it all day when he woke. Yet here it is in his pocket, his skin alert to its vibration, just in case she texts or calls. He peers at the screen. His screensaver photograph of the new version of an expensive sports car is there, but no message from his wife. ‘For fuck’s sake!’ he declares, lobs the mobile on to the sofa where Sophie should be, then picks up the remote control and watches the football results.

  ‘So, is everything OK, Dad? With you and Mum?’ Rachel asks as they drive down the M56 towards Alderley Edge and White Gables.

  ‘Absolutely!’ Mike replies. ‘Mum was going to tell me today, but you guessed first, clever girl. Another little Turner. It’s great news, isn’t it?’

  The expression ‘Be careful what you wish for’ pops into his head.

  As he drives, he thinks back to this morning. His initial urge to storm home from the park and confront Olivia wasn’t possible. The girls were focused on sweets, selecting them with great excitement and care from the corner shop. Then there was the walking home at a leisurely pace so that Olivia wouldn’t know quite how many Mike had allowed them to buy. But it gave him time to reflect. He had no doubt Rachel was right; he’d seen all the symptoms himself, but not registered them. Olivia was pregnant. He swung from feelings of angry irritation that she had kept the news from him, to an examination of how he felt about the prospect of being a father again. Of course there was no question about keeping the baby, but was it something he still wanted?

  ‘Olivia, are you pregnant?’ he asked after lunch as they cleared up the dishes. He’d thought of a multitude of ways to ask as he strolled home with the girls, but when it came down to it, there was only one way. Just to ask.

  She flushed immediately, two bright patches of colour in her wan face. ‘How do you know?’ she breathed quietly.

  He shrugged, standing away from her, conscious that this was not how it was supposed to be. ‘You look pregnant, you’ve been acting pregnant,’ he said slowly. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  She didn’t speak for a moment, but her pale eyes flickered and then she sighed. ‘I’ve only just realised myself. We’ve been so busy, what with one thing or another. I was just giving myself a day or two to get used to the idea. I’m sorry.’

  He pulled her towards him then, the tea towel stuck between them. Any anger or irritation faded away. He could see the weary look in her eyes and he realised another baby wasn’t what she wanted. ‘Look,’ he said, kissing her forehead. ‘It’s wonderful news. Another beautiful child. We simply need a little time to adjust.’

  The sun catches the windscreen as Mike accelerates into the driveway of White Gables, momentarily blinding him. He hopes Antonia has remembered that they’re visiting today. He doesn’t want to turn up unannounced. But she opens the door before they knock, the aroma of croissants escaping, her face lucent and so very lovely. ‘Hello, you two,’ she beams. ‘Hope you’re both hungry, I’ve been baking. Come on in!’

  ‘Mum’s going to have another baby but we don’t know when,’ Rachel blurts out before they’ve stepped inside.

  There’s a pulse of silence before Antonia replies. ‘That’s wonderful news,’ she says, giving Rachel a hug. ‘You’ll be a big sister again!’ Then, ‘Congratulations, Mike,’ she adds.

  She kisses him on the cheek, but doesn’t meet his eyes. Instead she turns away, her back slim, elegant and remote. ‘Now, what are we girls going to do this afternoon?’ she asks Rachel. ‘Shall we give Dad a call later when we’re finished?’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Antonia drives towards Stoke, still feeling unsettled from her nightmare this morning. She’s had similar or the same for several days, waking in the early hours and crying uncontrollably until she nods off again. In the dream she climbs the limestone stairs and knocks on the bathroom door, but she knows David’s just sleeping, nodding off in the bath. She approaches quietly, reaching out a hand to gently wake him, but just before she touches, he lurches upright, his eyes bloodshot and angry. That’s when she wakes with a sickly jerk, shocked and fearful, taking too many moments to remember where she is; to remember he’s dead.

  Her visit to The Ridings is on a whim, Antonia tells herself, a rather long diversion from her planned trip to Waitrose. Even as she drives into the small car park, she isn’t sure if she’ll actually get out of the car, or struggle with a hurried five-point turn to retreat. But by the time she places her finger on th
e front door buzzer, she’s praying that Mrs Jones, The Ridings manager, will be there. She doesn’t want her resolve to fade.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Stafford. We don’t usually see you in the week,’ Mrs Jones starts to say with her practised smile. Then she pauses and Antonia notices a flash of embarrassment in her eyes. She’s just remembered about David, she thinks. She wishes people would forget.

  The taint of death. Again. She recently tried to read the novel Heart of Darkness, but struggled to get even halfway. She abandoned it for Sylvia. She always comes back to her. Chooses which poem to relish next by its title. ‘Death & Co’ it was last night, read over and over until she thought she understood.

  Antonia stands at the office door of the care home, both hands clutching her handbag to keep them still. ‘I’ve come to speak to you, actually, if that’s OK.’

  Antonia has decided to have a project for every day, no matter how small. It was letter writing on Monday, on the embossed notepaper she and David were bought as a wedding gift.

  Just a note to thank you for your kind condolences.

  She wrote them in her best handwriting, careful to check the spelling and hoping for the best with the grammar. She doesn’t know if a thank you letter is the done thing, but it felt right. Then on Tuesday she took the long walk from White Gables to the village post office and the newsagents. There she scrutinised the postcards offering work, the ones randomly displayed in their dusty windows. She hopes for a shop job, but it doesn’t really matter, anything will do if there are people. ‘I long for workmates! People to talk to, to laugh with,’ she would confide to Mike, knowing that he’d understand, but she hasn’t seen Mike for days.

  Of course her visit to The Ridings isn’t on a whim. It’s something which has pestered her since having coffee with Olivia all those weeks ago. ‘They fuck you up.’ More so since David’s death. She didn’t know him, her husband of five years, not really. The speeches at the funeral, the stories and banter at the wake and of course the Misty revelation were proof of that. What of her own flesh and blood? ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad.’ She’s grown up now, it’s time to find out.