Beneath the Skin Page 30

  ‘Antonia. Decision made,’ she says out loud. ‘After the veg.’

  She runs the kitchen tap, dislodging the soil from the vegetables with her fingertips as random thoughts flow through her mind. A dead body. What would you do? How do you know it was dead, even? Arranging a funeral, a wake. Where do you begin? Money, death certificates, probate. Loss of your husband, the person you love. Loneliness, grief, guilt. Living in the same house. Using the bathroom, the bath? It must be overwhelming.

  Perhaps she’ll find out the answers from Antonia this afternoon. Not that she’ll ask, naturally. But maybe the information will be offered. The conversation had flowed all those weeks ago when Antonia stayed for lunch. It’ll do so again, she’s sure. They’re friends after all.

  The veg duly prepared and covered in cold water, Olivia picks up her padded jacket and heads for the front door. She’s about to close it as the telephone rings.

  ‘Oh, hi Siân. Yes, aqua’s on today as far as I know. Chorlton baths this week, Withington next.’ She pauses, listens, umms and aahs. ‘I was in two minds actually, but if you’re going, I’ll definitely come too. We haven’t caught up for ages.’

  Forgetting the guilt, she pulls the door to. It’ll make no difference if she visits Antonia tomorrow.

  ‘Shattered Dreams!’ the South Manchester Reporter headline from the mid-seventies declares from the photocopy in Antonia’s hand. Since returning from Withington she’s studied the black-and-white photograph endlessly. David never betrayed her, thank God. There’s relief and joy mixed with the sadness, but the visit has unsettled her too. Not just the tragedy of a man living with a hidden hole in his heart, or the way Misty seemed to see inside her head, but the memory of the guy in the pub, drinking his life away.

  Although it’s stuck to his head with sweat, the thickset young boxer in the snap has light hair, maybe ginger, she thinks. The boxing gloves are at the fore of the photograph, partly covering the face which is slightly blurred and distorted by the gum shield. It’s difficult to tell if it’s truly her dad.

  ‘That’s Jimmy!’ Candy immediately declared on Sunday in her bedroom, delight brightening her face and diverting her from the television screen.

  Despite her desire to cut to the chase as she showed Candy the newspaper article, Antonia bided her time. She let her mum chat and reminisce about old times. But her memories emerged like patchwork. Candy talked of people and places and events which didn’t appear to be connected and meant nothing to Antonia.

  A middle-aged woman with ruddy cheeks tapped at the open door. She was carrying a mop made of strips of blue cloth and a bucket. ‘Sorry to interrupt, love. Do you mind if I do your loo now, Candy?’

  ‘Rose, look it’s Jimmy!’

  Rose put down her carry box of rags and disinfectants and leaned over. ‘Good looker, eh Candy! You said he was a boxer.’ Her eyes scanned the article. ‘What a terrible shame. I remember you saying. His legs got broke and the rest. Worse than in the ring. Still, it didn’t stop you and Jimmy having this smashing lass here.’

  Antonia listened to the exchange and smiled. The polite fixed smile of a daughter who didn’t know as much about her mother as the care home cleaner. Because she never asked, because she never really listened. Like David, like David.

  She turned to her mother and picked up her chubby hand. ‘Why did it happen, Mum? Why did they beat him up?’

  But Candy leaned forward and balled up her body. She wept and rocked and keened and it took some time for Antonia to hear her words and to understand what she was saying.

  ‘It was my fault. I shouldn’t have told him. It was only name calling. I should have been used to it. But he was so angry when I told him. He wanted to shut up their dirty racist mouths. He did it for me. Because he loved me, he adored me. It was all my fault.’

  Antonia props the photocopy against a framed photograph of her and David from their wedding day and sighs. As much as she’s tried, she can’t reconcile the young boxing champion in the picture with the father she remembers. She and Sophie burned the photographs, not just of Jimmy, but of the whole family, on her seventeenth birthday.

  ‘Life begins now. Don’t ever look back,’ Sophie said, her eyes glinting from the flames of their bonfire like emeralds. ‘Now, think of a new name, but make sure it’s one you like. You’ll have it for a long, long time.’

  The ‘For Sale’ sign on the country road feels ominous as Mike approaches in his car. He’s shocked to see that Antonia is selling White Gables. Rachel hasn’t mentioned it and why should she? But still, it feels like a reprimand, an illustration of the distance between them.

  He indicates right and waits for the traffic to clear. He can see Antonia’s frost-covered car parked in its usual space at the front of the house. His heart thuds in his chest. The words ‘rose-tinted glasses’ are still repeating in his head. Despite the pile of reports on his desk, he’s left the office without saying anything to anyone. He’s driven fifteen miles to White Gables, the impulse to know whether Judith is right inexorable.

  Mike knocks at the door and then waits. He rings the doorbell and then waits again, feeling foolish. Antonia has already made it clear how she feels. Why would she answer the door to someone she’s politely but firmly pushed away? He sighs, vaguely wondering if she’s watching him from an upstairs window. The humiliation is probably for the best as he’s no idea what he would say. Turning up at this time unannounced is ludicrous. He’s in cuckoo land. He has to get a grip and move on.

  He turns back towards the car, lifts his keys to unlock it and there she is.

  Antonia is strolling down the driveway towards him. Her wavy hair is shining and bouncing in the breeze. She’s wearing a cream belted jacket with a fur-lined hood and her beautiful smile. ‘Hello stranger,’ she says when she reaches him and he finds himself smiling too. An inane grin, much like Sami’s at lunch.

  Antonia feels as though she’s gabbling, filling in the lost weeks as though time is in short supply. She tells Mike comical tales about the salon girls and their customers, her Withington visit that morning, her meetings with Charlie and the decisions made about finances and the future. Her happy reunion with Sophie too.

  She shows Mike the Reporter newspaper cutting about Jimmy, the sales particulars for the house and her tip jar half full of pound coins. Then she asks him if he wouldn’t mind unscrewing the U-bend under the sink as it’s stuck and changing a light bulb in the hall before he goes. Or, if he prefers, holding the ladders for her while he’s here.

  ‘I’m going on, aren’t I?’ she says, still smiling, still inordinately pleased to see him.

  ‘No, not at all. It’s lovely to listen. It’s no problem to do the chores. I’ve always fancied being Oddjob. Though sadly I don’t have the hat.’

  He gazes with a frown for a minute, then looks down to the sales particulars he’s still holding. ‘This is your home. It’s where you’ve felt safe …’

  She’s thought about this a lot. Like the crutch of Sophie, there’s a fine line between safety and claustrophobia. ‘I know, and it’s a strange thing to say, but it’s also been my prison,’ she says, knowing she wouldn’t admit it to anyone but him. Then she laughs to ease the sudden tension, lifting her arms to the room. ‘A very nice prison, I have to admit.’

  Mike nods thoughtfully but says nothing. She’s aware he hasn’t taken his eyes off her since they sat down at each end of the sofa in the kitchen, but he’s quiet. He’s gone from very smiley to serious. Or so it seems. He’s saying so little that it’s difficult to judge.

  ‘Why have you come, Mike?’ she eventually asks breathlessly, looking down at her china cup, wondering if perhaps she’s done something wrong.

  He closes his eyes for a moment and then smiles with a small shrug. ‘I’m not really sure. I can’t stay long.’ Then, looking at her again, so intently, ‘I’ve thought about you so much, wondered how you were.’

  He clears his throat and leans towards her. His eyes search her face. Then h
e asks a question, as though it’s popped out. ‘Why did your mum—’ he starts. ‘Why then? Why the final straw that particular night? I know it’s none of my business, but …’ His eyes are still on hers, his face clouded. ‘I wish I’d been there to protect you. I wish I could protect you now.’

  ‘But you can’t,’ she whispers.

  ‘I know. That’s the problem.’

  Olivia winds down the car window to let in some fresh air or at least let out the hot. Cold winter has started to set in, the afternoons dimming into early evening. But Olivia is having a ‘hot pregnancy’, as she puts it. She’s already pulled her car into a lay-by to take off her thick jacket and fling it on the back seat next to her swimsuit and towel. She’s now going through the repetitious cycle of putting on the blower to clear the condensation from the window screen, then opening the window because she’s boiling and then closing it because there’s a chilly wind, which causes the window to steam up yet again.

  Cycles and circles, she muses, thinking how most things come right in the end.

  She feels the heat rise yet again. ‘Hm, seems you’re my very own hot water bottle,’ she says aloud to her bump. Perhaps she should’ve gone swimming after all, but she got caught behind a funeral cortege on the way to the baths. When she overtook the first hearse, the widow turned her head. Her face was so composed, yet vulnerable and sad, and for a moment she thought the woman was Antonia. So she immediately turned the car, the pangs of conscience about not having visited her overcoming her desire to hang out with friends.

  She notices the road sign for the sharp bend ahead and drives on carefully, never quite sure when to indicate right. Waiting for the traffic to pass, she catches her glowing face in the car mirror. It’s definitely fat. A fat face for a boy! Olivia Turner, who’s never had a fat face in her life, has one now.

  She smiles wryly at the thought of all the insulation she’ll have to lose once the baby is born but the smile dissolves as she focuses on the drive of White Gables. The hesitant dusk is lit by the open front door where Antonia stands, waving. And there is Mike, Mike her husband who’s so busy at work he barely has time for lunch. He’s striding towards his car, his jacket over his shoulder and he’s wearing no tie.

  Her indicator winks, but she doesn’t move. She stares, transfixed, as Mike opens the back door of his car and throws in his jacket. He climbs in and swings it round without difficulty as though he does it every day. Then he indicates left and drives straight past Olivia. Blind to the car, blind to her, at ten to four in the afternoon.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Helen has taken to wafting her colleague, Ted Edwards, away with a ‘Maybe catch up with you later’ type of waft. She’s noticed that he always appears in the staff refectory moments after her with an unconvincing, ‘Oh, fancy you being here, Helen! I’ll keep you company, shall I?’

  He’s become rather too tactile as well. ‘These chairs are very heavy, don’t you think, Helen?’ he says regularly. She doesn’t appreciate being manhandled, even if it is with the pretence of pulling out the chair and pushing her back in.

  Helen has always been a person to call a spade a spade, a saying she doesn’t particularly get, but she understands the gist. But she’s aware that Ted is, to some extent, her benefactor vis-à-vis NY (as he calls it), so she has to try for diplomacy. Unfortunately diplomacy is not her strong point, as Charlie often points out.

  ‘Forty-three days until blast off!’ Ted declared only that morning as they passed each other in the foyer.

  ‘I thought we were travelling by aeroplane, not by rocket,’ Helen replied.

  As she sits down at the refectory table, she muses that it was a witty riposte. She would normally telephone Charlie for a chuckle, but Charlie and Rupert have formed a father and son club she clearly isn’t invited to and she finds it rather rankles. But with Ted, the problem isn’t so much his day-counting (which is a little odd), but his hand which he places too regularly around her shoulder. Not just his hand, but his thumb too, which he moves in a circular motion on her upper arm.

  He’s here again today, appearing at her table just as she’s about to take a bite of camembert with cranberry on rye, her absolute favourite.

  Tact, she reminds herself as her heart sinks. Remember, diplomacy and tact. She might even try some ‘grey’, as Charlie says.

  ‘Hello, Ted,’ she says. ‘I was just ruminating on how much I’m going to miss Charles, my dearest husband Charles, when we’re away in NY.’

  Ted pushes his spectacles up his nose and then settles himself opposite Helen with his All-Bran. ‘A snack for the bowels,’ he explained yesterday.

  ‘Oh, but of course,’ he replies now, smiling. ‘Which is precisely why I’ll personally see to it that you don’t get too lonely, my dear.’

  She’s never noticed the abundance of hair which protrudes from his nostrils before now. Indeed, in all the years they’ve worked together she’s never really examined his face or any other part of his anatomy. He’s a work colleague, a married work colleague, why would she?

  She looks at Ted now and sees a grey face and matching hair. But alarmingly, she also sees a self-satisfied look. ‘Nudge, nudge, wink, wink,’ the look says. She knows what that expression means. She first heard it in a comedy sketch as a young girl and, on one summer’s day at a picnic, when David was acting it out with much laughter, he was kind enough to explain it to her.

  Helen puts down her sandwich with a sigh. Calling a spade a spade is clearly the only option after all. ‘Why did you nominate me for the secondment, Ted?’ she asks.

  ‘Well we’ve always had a rapport, don’t you think? And I’ve always considered you to be an extremely handsome woman.’

  Said just like that, in the staff refectory, of all places. It’s so absurd that Helen wants to laugh. But beauty is only skin deep, she thinks. Which, of course, it is. How many times has she said that? It’s something she’s uttered with scorn about Antonia many a time. Yet it’s insulting, she now discovers. It’s insulting to be judged on something physical and God-given, rather than something earned. Very much so.

  Oh, Charlie, I’ve missed the grey again, she thinks. I’d like to join your club.

  Helen scrapes back the chair (a struggle without Ted’s assistance). ‘How perfectly insulting,’ she declares. ‘NY can do without me, thank you. You can blast off on your own!’

  She stomps out as noisily as she can, the camembert and cranberry on rye left sadly behind. It’s all a little thespian, which to her surprise, Helen finds she enjoys.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  It’s five o’clock, Mike is back at his office desk and signing the post, no wiser about how he really feels about anything in his life than he was three hours previously.

  A purple Post-it note is protruding from his diary. Don’t panic, Judith has scrawled. Only a hundred and seventy-three days until I’m back! Seriously, though, call me if you need to talk. Remember what’s important. Appreciate what you have, xxx

  He rakes his hands through his hair, tempted to call Jude there and then. He’s confused. He doesn’t know what’s important any more. He doesn’t love Olivia or his girls any less but at that moment he wants Antonia more. The need is constant and excruciating. He has to stop the wanting and the desire, but he has no idea how to begin.

  He reaches for the telephone to call Judith but an incoming call from reception beats him to it. ‘Mike, two police officers are in reception for you. Shall I send them up?’

  Mike hears voices, sees lights. The flashing lights of the police car. The Christmas lights twinkling on the way. The strip lights above the hospital bed.

  ‘Sorry, sir, we did try to contact you at the scene, but your mobile was off and your office people weren’t sure where you were,’ a police officer says.

  Olivia is on a hospital bed, warm just for him, but dead. Her face is pale and empty. Her hair is hidden by bandages. Her chest moves in time with a machine, but her spirit, her essence has gone.

>   ‘The trauma team did all they could. We’d like to call someone you’re close to, to be here with you. Mike? Can you give us a name and a number, Mike?’

  He sits by the bed and numb time passes. Should he touch, should he talk? Like someone in a coma?

  He turns to the door. Macclesfield hospital. Why have they brought her here? Turns his head back to Olivia and stares. Can it really be her?

  The police come in and out of the room. A man and a woman. Good cop and bad. They give him information he doesn’t want. Ask him questions he can’t answer.

  Olivia wasn’t wearing her seat belt, they tell him. The head injuries were inevitable. The lorry driver is traumatised, there was nothing he could do to avoid it, his brakes hopeless on the ice. It was confirmed by several witnesses, they say. She seemed to drive straight at him as though he wasn’t there.

  The woman officer stares, cocks her head on one side. ‘The witnesses say Olivia was visibly distressed,’ she says. ‘Were there any problems? Any reasons why she might be so upset? Do you know where she was going? There were flowers in the car.’

  He doesn’t know how to answer, he can’t focus, can’t think. But there’s a voice behind him. It’s shaky. ‘No. There were no problems,’ it says. ‘People with problems don’t buy flowers, for God’s sake.’

  Mike turns to the voice. Then he’s standing and sobbing, Sami holding him steady with firm and strong arms.

  After a few moments he pulls away. Above the rush of noise in his ears, there’s an unmistakable sound, the distant cry of a baby. Someone has given birth, the start of new life. But why would he care? His Olivia is dead.

  A new person comes in, wearing a white coat. A doctor, he supposes. ‘A terrible accident,’ she says. She has kind pale eyes, like his Olivia’s. ‘I’m so very sorry, Mr Turner. But you’ll need to contact your wife’s family. So they can come to say goodbye before we …’ Her words trail off. The baby still cries.