Beneath the Skin Page 27

  ‘You OK, Antonia? You look sad.’

  She comes back to Rachel through the mirror. She has a furrow of concern on her smooth forehead, just like her dad. Antonia nods, holding back the sudden urge to cry. She longs to see him and to talk. Most of all to feel his arms around her, tight, safe and solid. But she’s messed things up. Or perhaps, if she chooses to be honest, she’s put things right. Whichever it is, it hurts deeply.

  ‘Sami says hi,’ Mike calls from the hall as he takes off his jacket.

  Olivia wonders if the goosebump feeling will be there forever when Sami’s name is mentioned, or whether it will fade with time. She doubts it, even if the baby isn’t his. She shoplifted once, she and her best friend, when they were still in primary school. She’d stolen a packet of Rolos, her favourite chocolate sweets her mother only allowed as a special treat at weekends. But she was caught red-handed by the shop keeper. ‘I know where you live, young lady,’ he had said, pointing his finger. ‘Now get off home. There won’t be a next time.’ She got off scot-free, but absolutely forbade her friend to speak of it. She never ate Rolos again and from time to time she caught her mum gazing at her, as if she knew.

  ‘That’s nice,’ she replies, her face hidden, busy at the oven door. The constant ‘if the baby is his, if the baby is his’ beating louder in her mind. ‘Is he OK?’

  Mike sits down at the kitchen table and removes his tie. ‘Well, no, not really. Apparently Sophie still hasn’t come home.’

  Olivia suddenly feels febrile. Sophie wasn’t at the funeral, but until that moment it hasn’t occurred to Olivia that Sophie might know about her and Sami.

  ‘Really?’ she says. Is that what the Olivia of old would say in reply? She doesn’t know any more.

  Mike pours a glass of red wine and offers it to her. She shakes her head, aware of a cold bead of sweat on her spine.

  ‘To be honest,’ Mike says after a moment, ‘I feel a bit guilty.’

  Olivia sits down and looks at him questioningly. The hairs on her arms are beginning to settle as reality kicks in. If Sophie knew, Olivia would be stabbed in the heart by now, surely?

  ‘Us on our third child and he hasn’t managed even one,’ Mike continues. ‘He didn’t say anything tonight and of course I didn’t raise it either. But I’m guessing that’s why Sophie has gone.’

  ‘What are you on about?’ Olivia asks, trying to smile. To sound normal and mildly interested.

  ‘Oh.’ Mike holds up his fork, looking slightly embarrassed. ‘Don’t say anything, obviously. I think he regretted ever mentioning it. They tried for a baby and when nothing happened they had tests. And as Sami put it, he’s a Jaffa, seedless.’

  Her heart is thrashing. ‘You mean he can’t have …’ she knows she’s pressing the point, but she has to know.

  ‘Yeah. He’s infertile. Awful isn’t it? Of all the people we know, you’d expect Sami to have at least five kids. If I know Sami, not being able to be a dad will be doing his head in.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Sami’s lilac shirt clings to his chest. He can feel the drench of sweat down his back and under his arms as he strides over the puddles in the road towards his house.

  The text he received half an hour ago is branded in his memory, he doesn’t need to read it twice.

  Looked at your diary and saw you’re on a site visit. Just what we hoped for on a Friday. Sneak off ASAP. Meet you outside your place. PS I’m the one wearing stockings xxx

  He takes a deep breath before lifting the latch of the door to the walled garden of his home. He wants to burst with irritation and anger, but he needs to stay calm, to handle this delicately.

  Jemima is sitting on the wooden garden bench with her legs crossed, her suit skirt hitched high showing the stockings to good effect. A large bottle of champagne and a small bottle of water stand next to an overnight bag.

  She follows his eyes and smiles. ‘Early start to a long weekend, I thought. You’re keen to get here so quickly,’ she trills, much like a bird. A vulture, Sami thinks.

  He wants to tell her to fuck off right there and then. Invading his office is bad enough, but this is his home and he’s nearly broken his neck speeding the fifteen or so miles to get here. But townhouse gardens are not the place for any conversation, let alone a ‘Fuck off, you fucking bunny boiler’ type of altercation.

  Be careful. Take it easy, he repeats inwardly as he tries to release the tension from his face. ‘Actually, I’m out tonight with some mates. But there’s time for a quick coffee, if you like.’

  She follows him into the house and sits down. Her arms are folded and her chin is down, her shoulder to one side, her eyes on him. She’s gone for petulant, he muses as he puts on the kettle. Posh girls think it looks sexy, but it doesn’t, it really doesn’t.

  His tongue burns from gulping down the coffee so quickly, but Jemima sips hers slowly, like a kid avoiding bedtime. His hand is on his knee, moving in time with the tap of his foot.

  Be patient. Take it easy, he mentally repeats. But she loops strands of her wavy hair around her fingers and pouts her lips, her eyes still on his. She seems to have rallied.

  ‘So, yeah,’ Sami says, rubbing his hands. ‘I’m out tonight, for the weekend in fact. Better get organised.’

  ‘OK. I just need the loo before I go.’

  Sami sighs and waits, tentative relief overcoming the anger. He watches the clock, taps his leg and listens for the flush.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Antonia asks at the door of White Gables.

  ‘I’ve come to say sorry. I bet you never expected to hear that. It’s freezing out here. Can I come in?’ Sophie asks with a grin.

  Antonia looks at Sophie for a moment before smiling. ‘Come here,’ she says, pulling Sophie inside. ‘I’ve really missed you, you know. Are you back home with Sami?’

  ‘Maybe later, who knows. I wanted to see you first.’

  Antonia slides over the frothy cappuccino in the ‘Sophie’ cup, liberally sprinkled with ground chocolate, towards her best friend. She hasn’t seen her for several weeks and yet it feels both like a year ago and like yesterday. Sophie seems slightly quiet and she’s lost weight, but she’s still Sophie. She just wonders if she’s still Antonia.

  ‘I have a job!’ Antonia announces, amused by the look of surprise on Sophie’s face.

  She has enjoyed working in the salon. It’s only been a couple of mornings, but already she looks forward to the company of the other girls and the customers, especially the older ladies, one of whom still comes in to have her hair set in rollers. She’s been downgraded to Antonia, much to the other stylist’s relief.

  ‘You don’t get any older on the inside,’ the old lady said that morning, massaging her arthritic hands. ‘I still feel like a girl, but then I catch myself in the mirror and I realise that I’m old.’ She clutched Antonia’s arm and looked at her sharply despite her milky eyes. ‘Perhaps a little wiser, though.’

  Antonia thinks that perhaps she’s a little wiser. But the learning curve is slow and at times she’s very lonely. Not so much being on her own, she’s used to that, but not having someone to talk to intimately, to share her thoughts and discoveries.

  She and David didn’t talk, not deeply at least. They co-existed lovingly, their histories sealed away and preserved and it worked for them. But Antonia feels that her past is seeping out. It’s both thrilling and terrifying.

  ‘Talk to someone,’ Mrs Jones advised. But she had talked to someone. Not just someone. She had talked to Mike. She’d told him things she hadn’t told another soul and he didn’t recoil or turn away. She misses that. She misses him.

  Antonia turns her attention back to Sophie who’s gazing at her with a puzzled frown. Of course Sophie knew Jimmy. She knew about his death and the trial but none of the detail. It’s that detail which consumes Antonia now. She told some of it to Mike, but not everything, some things were too raw, too inexplicable. She omitted to mention that after Jimmy’s violence, be it repeated
ly slapping her mother, punching or kicking her, he’d lead Candy by the hand into their bedroom. Little Chinue would hide and cry and cover her ears, but still she could hear. Her mother’s moans, loud and intense. It was only when she grew older that she realised the moans were not from terror or fear but from pleasure. These memories are surfacing and they trouble her.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit of a come down?’ Sophie’s saying, picking up the postcard from the journalist. ‘You know. Lady of the Manor to sweeping up hair. I bet the girls are chavs too. It’s in the job description. What’s this?’ she asks. She reads from the postcard. ‘Young boxing champions of the past.’

  Sophie settles herself on the sofa and tucks her legs under her bum, her face relaxed. She throws the postcard aside, forgotten already. Antonia smiles, she’s missed Sophie too. ‘Well, being an ex-chav myself, maybe I’m among friends.’

  Sophie narrows her eyes. ‘I’ve only been away for a couple of weeks and you’ve changed.’

  ‘More like a month or more. It’s probably because I buried my husband since the last time I saw you,’ she says, looking pointedly at Sophie. ‘Anyway, so have you.’

  Reaching out her arm, Sophie’s face looks genuinely contrite. ‘I’m sorry about David, Toni. Truly sorry. He really loved you and I loved him for that.’

  Antonia nods, the thought of Misty and David still colouring her grief. She’s mostly shared with Sophie for as long as she can remember, but so much has happened, she doesn’t know where to start. Instead she raises her eyebrows and looks at her fingernails theatrically. ‘Well, your absence threw me into the arms of my new best friend, Helen.’

  ‘Really? Into autistic hairy-chinned types?’ Then rolling her eyes. ‘Come on Toni, it’s obvious to everyone but poor old Charlie that she’s on the spectrum.’

  Though she knows she shouldn’t, Antonia laughs. ‘Medical expert now? You are rotten. And there’s me thinking you’ve changed.’

  Sophie doesn’t reply, but after a moment she smiles, her face lightly flushing. ‘Perhaps I am and I have. I’m on the bloody happy pills, Toni. Can you believe it? Oh yeah, and Norma gave me a good talking to, so I’m being an angel.’ Then she tosses back her head and laughs, her auburn locks shining as they bounce. ‘But there’s no need to panic, I’m sure it won’t last.’

  Sami’s still listening to the flush of the loo when Jemima emerges into the kitchen. He turns his head and he looks. He should have known, he should have fucking known. The relief felt too sweet, he’d let it come too soon. She’s naked, of course, save for the stockings. Her nipples are erect and strangely shiny. Her fanny has been completely shaved since their last encounter. Worst of all there’s that look of entitlement on her pouty face.

  He feels nothing but rage. ‘I actually like fanny hair,’ he wants to shout. ‘My wife, who I adore, has lots of it. And she’s witty and bright. She knows that she’s not perfect and I love her for it. Don’t you dare to come into her home and presume …’

  But instead he leans back, his legs apart, his hands behind his head and smiles. You can smile and smile and still be a villain, he thinks determinedly. It’s a line he remembers from school. It sums up the boy who bullied him the most.

  ‘Hey, Jemima!’ he says. ‘You look great and I’d really like to, but I simply don’t have the time.’ He waits a beat. ‘Or the money.’

  He reaches for his suit jacket and removes the designer wallet Sophie bought him for their wedding anniversary. ‘I realise that I’ve been a bad boy not paying before now. But it’s always a little delicate discussing money, isn’t it? What did the lads at work say, a hundred? So, I must owe you …’

  He briefly glimpses her mouth gape as he thumbs through the notes in his wallet, counting the twenties out loud. ‘Sorry. I’m a bit short. How about you get dressed and I nip to the bank?’

  But by then the house is reverberating from the slam of the toilet door.

  ‘Don’t I have any say?’ Helen says, clearly exasperated. ‘I am his mother. I am entitled to an opinion.’

  His mum is talking as though he isn’t there, as usual, Rupert notes, but he’s inordinately proud of his father. ‘Go, Dad, go!’ he wants to shout.

  ‘In this case no, Helen, you don’t have a say. You agreed to take up a post at New York University without consulting us and so you won’t even be here next term. Rupert isn’t going back to Staffordshire and that’s final. He isn’t happy there and we’ve been too pig-headed to notice. Cheadle Hulme school has a place, so it’s a done deal, as they say.’

  Helen puts down her huge quilted bag stuffed with books. Charlie has caught her unawares, on her way to the university, with little time to spare.

  Dad knew she wouldn’t want to be late for her student seminar, Rupert thinks. Sly old fox.

  ‘I didn’t think that happiness was the point, Charles. What happened to good education and family tradition? Your words, not mine.’

  ‘What’s good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander.’

  Charlie pauses for a minute, his face rather red. Rupert wills him on. ‘Gosling, maybe, Dad?’ he wants to say.

  ‘Besides, I’m not sending him to a state gangland, Helen. Cheadle Hulme is a perfectly good school. Gibson sends his children there, despite spouting his left-wing rubbish whenever he gets the opportunity. I shall be here to see that Rupert is watered and fed, so that’s that.’

  Rupert looks at his father’s truculent face. ‘So there!’ it says. He glances at his mother. He can tell from her blank expression that her mind is already elsewhere, with her students probably, but that’s the way it is.

  Helen shakes herself, examines the watch she keeps on a chain around her neck and picks up her bag. ‘Goodness. Look at the time.’

  ‘Another thing before you go, dear. We feel that Barbara is getting a bit long in the tooth. That perhaps she needs a young assistant she can train up. An attractive au pair, we thought, didn’t we, Rupert?’

  ‘French would be good,’ Rupert nods. ‘For educational needs, of course.’

  Charlie and Rupert laugh. Nice one, Dad, Rupert thinks as his mother nods absently. Whoever says his dad doesn’t have an ace sense of humour is way off.

  Jemima doesn’t bother slamming the front door, she simply walks out with a stony face, clutching her overnight bag to her chest.

  Sami sits at the kitchen table, the cold breeze from the open front door finding its way to his cheeks. He drops his head, a feeling of shame deep in his chest. He was brutal, horribly brutal, something he can’t recall doing before. He doesn’t like how it feels.

  He scratches his chin. He hasn’t shaved for a few days. It makes him look older and less chiselled. He’s aware there are specks of grey in his fledgling beard but he woke up late and couldn’t be bothered shaving. Sophie likes him clean shaved. Perhaps he’s accepting the inevitable, that she isn’t coming home.

  He rests his forehead on his folded arms. His dad called him last night, his dad who never calls. ‘Samuel, now you know I don’t listen to women’s talk,’ he started and Sami knew what was coming. It was an echo of his own thoughts. Sophie was the one for him. He was a fool if he was letting her go. She was bright and charming, if a little rough around the edges. He needed to sort it out before it was too late. Even Martha was missing her. She had no one to complain about. She’d start on him next.

  Sami takes a deep breath, trying to stifle the sob, but it’s impossible. ‘Fat boy, don’t blubber or I’ll give you a slap,’ he remembers.

  He cried too much as a boy, alone in his bed. But not as a man. Not since receiving the news of his dad’s stroke from his sister, the one sister who isn’t a clone of his mum. Ramona told him straight about what had happened to Dad. The man Sami appreciated it, but the fat boy inside fell apart, certain that his father would die. But he had Sophie then. She put her arms around him and she held him, keeping him together, keeping him safe.

  He stays at the kitchen table for a while, playing out scenarios in his
head. He wants Sophie back. More than anything he wants her to come home. It’s pride, he knows, fucking foolish pride that’s holding him back. He reaches for the kitchen roll, then wipes his face and blows his nose. ‘What the fuck,’ he announces to the room.

  Please come home, he texts. Missing you badly. Love you very much.

  He presses send, waits for the swooshing noise and then places his iPhone in the middle of the table. That wasn’t so bad, he thinks, knowing the hard part is waiting for a reply, if ever. He stands up to close the front door, spots the champagne and the bottled water in the hall. He feels a last stab of shame, then opens the fridge door and places them inside.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Sophie sits in the car, breathing deeply and reflecting. Who would have thought it? Sophie Richards saying sorry without being asked, not once but twice. The old Sophie would laugh at the suggestion that saying the S word is therapeutic. ‘A load of right-on church-loving bearded hippy crap.’ Or words to that effect. But there’s no doubt that the sorry feels good, a weight off her shoulders, if not her thighs. So easy too.

  Her heart still races boom, boom in her chest. Without warning or obvious cause most of the time. But at least she has insight from an expert now. ‘It’s deep-seated anxiety, Sophie,’ the therapist said. ‘Think of how long you have bottled it up and allowed it to ferment. But you can beat it if you face it.’ So Sophie breathes deeply, from her diaphragm. Which helps some of the time. Not all, but it keeps the panic at bay. It saves her fingernails from total annihilation.

  The ‘sorry’s were easy, but Sophie understands that she’s lucky. By some miracle her mum and Antonia made it easy. Because they love her, she supposes. The thought makes her want to cry. So many tears. She hopes the tough old Sophie will make a comeback soon.

  She thinks of her morning with Antonia as the beat of her heart starts to slow.