Beneath the Skin Read online

  Rupert nodded. ‘Fair enough.’

  It does help, the talking out loud. It helps Charlie to cope with the intermittent spasms of intense grief and of guilt. Of culpability too. For not noticing David’s overspending on White Gables. For not intuitively knowing that David was in trouble, for not seeing his dear friend had been brought so low.

  ‘David, oh, David. Did we push you too hard?’

  But Charlie is putting things right for David. For his reputation, his good name.

  ‘Got that insurance business sorted, David, so no need to worry about that. Straightened it with the client on the QT, so there won’t be any comeback. Money back with enhanced interest and a promise not to look too closely at the Money Laundering Regulations. An offer he couldn’t refuse.’

  Charlie chuckles as he strolls. He’s said it aloud in his best Godfather imitation, which isn’t terribly good, but David always appreciated it. He’d laugh and slap Charlie on the back. ‘Not bad, Charlie,’ he’d smile. ‘But don’t give up the day job.’

  David loved that film. He liked to quote from it frequently. He was good at remembering lines from films and a talented impressionist too. Don Corleone, Dirty Harry, Indiana Jones and of course Sean Connery’s Bond. Then the Jason Bourne films more recently. Not that Charlie has seen them himself. ‘Shall we go to the cinema to see what this Bourne malarkey is all about?’ he asked Helen a couple of years back. ‘Good God, no,’ she replied.

  Charlie missed the funeral. His desperation to be there mucked up his blood pressure, which then upset his blood sugar and the doctors wouldn’t let him out of the hospital.

  ‘Tell me again,’ he says frequently to Rupert, wanting every little detail of who was there and who said what. ‘Robin Hudson, are you sure it was him? I thought he was in Nigeria. Trevor Foster, really? He’s MP for Plymouth. Simon Dunthorne? Bald? You’re joking. We used to call him Sid.’

  It brings Charlie back to thoughts of school and especially to the death of David’s parents. One didn’t cry at school. David didn’t cry when he heard the news. He stayed in bed and refused to move but he didn’t cry. Yet Charlie can still clearly recall finding him alone at the fives court, sobbing in a corner. Such a beautiful boy, with long tanned limbs and hair so blond it was almost white. David was a new boy then. His parents had recently been posted to Singapore and his aunt had taken his dog to the vet and had her put down.

  ‘Lucky was mine,’ the boy sobbed in Charlie’s arms. ‘My aunt had no right. She was mine.’

  Charlie shakes the water off the umbrella in the porch and sighs. He loved that boy, the boy he held tightly in his arms until the hurt and the anger and the shaking subsided. The boy had grown into a man, a big broad man with many flaws, but he loved him dearly too.

  There’s the inevitable spat between Sophie and Norma. ‘Go away. I don’t need the bloody doctor. I need to be left alone. I’m tired,’ Sophie sulks, turning away in the bed.

  ‘Then you can tell the doctor that,’ her mum replies firmly. ‘As well as about the drinking, the anxiety and the mood swings. You’ve wallowed long enough now. It’s time to make some decisions about the future. Staying in bed all day isn’t going to cure anything.’

  ‘I didn’t think it would last long.’

  ‘What wouldn’t last long?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Sophie mutters. She can hear the quaver in her mother’s voice. This has got to stop, she thinks morosely. I must stop blaming her.

  Sophie pulls up the pillow and squints towards Norma. The room is warm and the teddies stare. She feels as though she’s ten years old. ‘Mum, I really don’t want to go to the doctor’s. Please don’t make me go.’

  Norma sits down on the bed, her face set. ‘You know what to do. You put on a brave face and you go. It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘But I’m not brave, that’s just the problem. People think that I’m courageous and confident, but I’m not.’

  Norma sighs, her face wrinkled and worn. She smooths the duvet cover with her hand.

  ‘I know that, love. Now more than ever.’

  She still wears her wedding ring, Sophie notices. Does she miss him? Does she still yearn for Barry? Her husband, her lover. The man who betrayed her and not just the once? Like Sami, her Sami. Is he missing her now? Or has he shrugged her away from his thoughts as she fears? He hasn’t called, he hasn’t texted. ‘Don’t bother coming back,’ he had said.

  Norma is looking at her. Her green eyes are still bright, but her auburn hair is now streaked with grey. Like mother, like daughter, in so many ways. She reaches out and tightly grasps Sophie’s hand. ‘In life nobody is going to help you unless you help yourself. You’re being self-destructive.’ She gives a small smile. ‘How can I put it? There’s no point expecting CPR if you unplug your life support. That’s what you’re doing now, Sophie. You aren’t helping yourself by lying here and feeling sorry for yourself. And you’ve alienated the people you love. It’s time you got up and started building bridges.’

  Sophie smiles despite her need to cry. ‘You and your bloody metaphors,’ she says.

  ‘So, it’s a return to school next week, now I’m back home, Rupe. Bet you can’t wait to get back into the swing and see all your friends. You’ve been such a good lad. All this hard work.’

  Rupert is sitting at the old dining table, his school books spread out. He’s been there all morning, his fringe tucked behind his ear and his face taut with concentration.

  ‘Yeah, but I’m not like you, Dad. It doesn’t come easily. I’m not that …’ His face colours and he looks down at his writing pad. ‘Academic.’

  ‘Of course you are,’ Charlie starts to say, but something holds him back. There’s a feeling of déjà vu, an echo of conversations gone by. Then there’s that question too, always in his mind, that comes to the fore when he walks. Oh, David, did we push you too hard?

  Rupert sighs, his head still bent. ‘And they push you so hard at school.’

  Charlie flinches at the repetition of the words, then pulls out a chair, sits down and stares at Rupert’s scratchy left-handed scrawl. His initial reaction is to defend the school, his school and his father’s school before him, but Rupert looks close to tears. It isn’t what Charlie expects. ‘I thought you were happy there,’ he says instead.

  Rupert’s fringe falls forward. ‘The sport’s OK, but if you’re not clever, it’s just embarrassing,’ he mutters. He lifts his head for a moment and he glances at his father. ‘Sometimes I just wish I was normal.’

  Charlie sits back, feeling slightly breathless. He wants to ask more questions, but feels that perhaps he should already know the answers. Should have noticed. Should have seen. He opens his mouth to speak but his son pre-empts him.

  ‘It’s OK, Dad.’ Rupert shrugs and picks up his pen. ‘I’m just glad I was here. You know, when you needed me.’

  Rupert tries for a smile and reverts to his school work. Charlie stares through the window at the garden, his finger on his lips, thinking.

  ‘Isn’t it time you went home to your wife?’ Jemima says, kissing the back of Sami’s neck to wake him.

  ‘She isn’t there,’ Sami replies, sluggish with sleep.

  ‘Where’s she gone to?’ Jemima asks, her high voice loaded with interest.

  Sami doesn’t reply, but drags himself from the single bed and picks up his neatly piled clothes from where he left them a couple of hours previously.

  ‘So, where’s she gone, your wife?’ Jemima asks again, sitting cross-legged on the bed as she watches him dress.

  Sami groans inwardly. Fool. The more he tries not to be one, the more he seems to suit it. ‘Her mum isn’t well,’ he fibs, but he catches a glimmer in Jemima’s eye as he fumbles with the buttons of his shirt.

  She lies back and stretches with a satisfied smile on her face. ‘I’ll have to pop by. Didsbury, isn’t it? The townhouses just behind the shops. Might be exciting, making love in your bed.’

  ‘Oh, she’ll probably be back tomorrow,’
he replies, searching for his socks.

  He shakes himself fully awake, he needs to be alert. Like a fool he fell asleep. Like a bloody fool he weakened, weakened because he’s lonely and sad and needs a boost.

  Jemima places her long arms around his neck and kisses his lips with her eyes open. They’re smug and proprietorial, he notices. ‘Stay tonight if you like. Or we could go to yours now, make love and travel to work together in the morning.’

  Sami’s face feels hot. It’s burning with irritation and with anger. At her, at himself. ‘I have sex with you. I only make love to my wife,’ he wants to yell.

  He pulls away and tries for a relaxed smile. Then he looks around to see if he’s left anything. That’s it, he decides. Finito. He doesn’t even like her that much.

  He kept his distance at the office, cordial but cool. Until today, until tonight. There were leaving drinks at the office after work for one of the associates. Jemima ignored him completely. She flirted with all the men and with Andy Maher, the handsome office silver fox, in particular, her laugh a high-pitched tinkle.

  Of course Sami couldn’t stand the competition. He slowly made his way to her side of the room, asserted his presence and invited himself round to her flat.

  Played like a fool, a bloody great fool.

  Her finger now strokes the back of his hand as he opens the door to leave. Her nails, he notices, are long and sharp. ‘Night night, Sami. Tomorrow then,’ she says, her slight lisp struggling with the S.

  Sami isn’t sure what she means, but he doesn’t like the sound of it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Mike contemplates whether the smell of incense is real or imagined as he gazes at the paintings of the Stations of the Cross hung on the small church walls. He’s taken to popping into the Hidden Gem behind the buzz of King Street at lunchtimes. He can’t quite pin down the reason. It isn’t for prayer, the silence or even the thinking time. The reason, he supposes, is that time seems suspended here.

  ‘Don’t go,’ Antonia whispered on the night of the funeral. ‘Don’t go.’ Two small words that changed everything.

  They talked. Or rather Antonia talked and he gazed and watched and listened. He drank in her eyes and her mouth, the exquisite sculpture of her features, until the early hours.

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she murmured, her eyes dark and huge in her soulful face. ‘About the parent thing. Childhood never goes away, does it?’

  Antonia’s account of her upbringing was shocking. It wasn’t so much the episodes of her father’s heavy drinking, not even the violence towards her mother that followed, but the hatred and the spite that went with it.

  ‘He didn’t hit me,’ she said. ‘But I had to watch, to learn my lesson. My mother is black and so she was beaten. He’d ask if I was black too, and I would say, “No, I’m not, of course I’m not, Dad.”’

  She cried then. Large tears tumbling from her chestnutcoloured eyes which she didn’t bother to brush away. ‘I did nothing, Mike. Nothing to help her. It’s like I connived. Is that the right word?’

  He held her in his arms, her face buried in his shoulder, her hair soft against his face.

  ‘You were only a child,’ he soothed, his body on fire. With anger. With lust. ‘Not your fault. Just a child.’

  Mike shakes his head and looks up at the statue of Our Lady of Manchester with her child. Weeks have passed since the funeral and Olivia is carrying his child. In a few months there will be a new life, a life that has to be protected, nurtured and loved. It’s precisely what he wanted for so long. Yet more than anything now, he needs time to stand still, to work it all out.

  ‘It has healed. Beautifully,’ he said later, as he stroked Antonia’s arm, feeling other bumps of scar tissue just under the surface. ‘Why did you do this?’

  She looked at him for a long time before answering. ‘Perhaps because I’m not as flawless as everyone thinks.’

  ‘But none of us are perfect,’ he replied, wretched with desire.

  ‘I know that now,’ she whispered.

  Mike stands, walks to the aisle of the church and genuflects. It’s a mark of respect, nothing more. The black dog has gone, replaced with something else he can’t quite define. A soft lament, perhaps. Something lost which was never his to lose.

  He sees the marble face of Our Lady as he turns away. Just to chat, he explains to her inwardly. A small prayer that I’ll see her. Just to chat. To see if she’s OK. That’s all it would be. I promise.

  ‘Another day another dollar,’ Sami says as he strolls on to a busy building site carrying his hard hat. He’s trying to be upbeat. To talk the talk, to walk the walk and all the other stupid sayings that regularly pop into his head to mask the fact that he’s lonely, pissed off, pining, angry, disappointed and hassled, to name but a few.

  The hassled part is his mother, his bloody mother. He’s stopped calling his dad to avoid her interrupting on the phone, but she seems instinctively to know when something’s amiss.

  Except when I was a kid at school, he thinks, still mildly resentful. When I needed it most.

  Martha has taken to telephoning Sami at home at various times in the evenings. ‘Doesn’t Sophie answer the telephone any more? Could you put her on? I just wanted a little word.’

  Of course she doesn’t want a little, medium or big word with Sophie; she can’t stand her. The fact that his wife and his mother loathe each other has always been best ignored. It’s preferable to float above conflict, otherwise one gets embroiled. Embroiled isn’t good. Embroiled means heavy discussions, angst, emotion and decisions. The sort of shit that’s messing up his head right now.

  ‘What’s happening with the IVF?’ Martha asked last night. He doesn’t want to think about the bloody IVF. He agreed to it for Sophie. For his bloody wife who fucked off when she should’ve been there at the funeral. Who should be at home now. Fending off his mother’s questions, preparing him questionable food and laughing with him. Just being there, keeping him happy.

  ‘Call her! Just call her!’ one inner voice cajoles.

  ‘She was the one who walked out. She’s the one who must beg to come back!’ the other voice shrills.

  He wonders what his dad would do. The latter, naturally. What about Mike? The former, definitely. But at least Mike will listen to Sami’s point of view and talk it through. He decides to give him a call after this job and to arrange a pint before home.

  There are times, like now, that Sami’s self-punishing thoughts touch on what he’s done to Mike, his friend, his good loyal friend. But if words like ‘betrayal’ and ‘disloyalty’ loiter, they’re soon boxed away. ‘What the eye doesn’t see’ has always been the rationale. ‘Only guilty if you’re found out.’ And he’s never been found out; he’s lucky that way.

  Wanting what he can’t have has always been a problem for Sami, but it’s sorted now, he’s over that blip. Besides, things have worked out pretty well. Olivia seems happy, Mike’s ignorant of it all and they have another kid on the way. So there’s no need to let it peck his head like today, no need to go there.

  Sami puts on his hard hat, as ever careful not to mess up his hair. He imagines having not just one but three noisy and demanding kids under his feet and he shudders. Sami likes his space. Rather Mike and Olivia than him any day.

  ‘Guess what?’ Antonia asks.

  She can see Rachel’s reflection in the dressing-table mirror. There’s a frown of concentration on her pretty fresh face and her mouth is slightly ajar as she struggles to twist Antonia’s thick hair into a French plait.

  ‘I’ve got a part-time job in the village.’

  She’s been offered three mornings a week at Alderley Boutique, covering for one of the stylists who’s on maternity leave and she’s thrilled. ‘At a hair salon. Maybe I’ll have to practise on you, Rach!’

  ‘That would be ace. You could dye it for me. Dip dye or red streaks. I’m not sure which.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Your mum would kill me.’

&n
bsp; It’s a teacher training day tomorrow, so Rachel has been allowed a sleep-over at White Gables. Though Antonia’s grief is tainted by occasional thoughts of Misty, she still misses David enormously, often crying in her dreams, waking up with a wet face, so lonely, so lonely. So she’s thrilled to have Rachel’s company. Olivia dropped her off at the top of the drive after school, climbing out of the car, waving and shouting a thank you with a friendly smile. Not a huge bump, Antonia noticed, but Olivia’s belly had a definite curve.

  ‘Anyway, Rach, you have gorgeous hair. Don’t ever mess with such a beautiful colour. It’s dark chestnut, like your dad’s.’

  Antonia averts her eyes from her own face watching back through the mirror. It gives too much away when she mentions him. Perhaps Mike will collect Rachel tomorrow, perhaps he’ll come in for a coffee and chat like they used to. But Antonia knows he won’t. She messed up, she messed up badly the day after the funeral, the day Rachel broke the news about the new baby.

  She was curt. She sent him away. Then she thought about him constantly for the rest of her day with Rachel, angry, disappointed and missing him badly. They didn’t speak when he returned to collect Rachel. He waited for her in the car and then turned it around in the driveway to leave. Antonia stood at the door, waving them away. Then the car stopped and Mike climbed out and walked towards her, his face dark and obscure.

  He stood at the bottom of the steps and looked down at his feet for a moment. Then he lifted his head to look up at her, a red stain of blush in his cheeks. ‘On Friday, on Friday night …’ He sighed, his eyes troubled. ‘I didn’t know about the baby.’

  Antonia already knew. Rachel had told her the whole story with pride. That it was a surprise for them all, but she was the first one to notice. Yet Antonia was piqued. She didn’t know why. She didn’t want a baby, she never had.

  She glanced over Mike’s shoulder. Rachel was in the front seat of the car, watching. ‘Thanks for everything, Mike,’ she said, turning towards the sheer drop of The Edge on the horizon. ‘You were there when I needed somebody and I’m very grateful for all that you’ve done for me.’ Like a formal thank you and goodbye, and from Mike’s face, wholly and heartbreakingly effective.