Beneath the Skin Read online

  He takes his feet off the desk and leans on the table, careful not to crease his tie. ‘Why am I anxious?’ he scribbles on the writing pad with the fibre-tip pen he bought to match his watch.

  Reclining again, he swings in his chair, the pen to his mouth. Perhaps it’s the huge project at Trafford and the commission he’ll lose if it doesn’t go through. Or maybe it’s Sophie, his mother and the IVF. Or even the suit he forgot to collect from the cleaners. But he knows it’s Friday, last Friday, when he should’ve been in the pub. The memory catches his breath and makes his skin tingle. It just isn’t like him to care so much.

  He crumples the paper into a ball and lobs it into the waste-paper bin, expecting to score as usual. It hits the edge and lands softly on the carpet. He stands, bends to pick it up and looks at it thoughtfully in his palm before dropping it directly into the bin. Then he stoops to look at himself in the mirror hung next to his surveying qualification certificates. Replacing one of the certificates, it’s really too low for Sami’s height. Everyone in the office laughs at this token of vanity, but he doesn’t care. ‘Have to keep up the standards,’ he always says to anyone who comments. ‘You should try it.’ But the reality is that standards don’t come into it, he’s one handsome bastard and the mirror is there for him to strut and to preen, to confirm what he already knows. But today his reflection doesn’t look quite right. It’s as though his slight emotional imbalance is reflected in his striking face.

  ‘No, really, piss off,’ he says again before collecting his jacket and keys and then checking one last time that the words ‘site meeting’ are clearly legible in his diary for anyone who might look.

  David feels breathless as he studies the backlog of letters that have accumulated on his office desk. He has work to do. Proper everyday work. Searches to make, title deeds to check, leases to read, contracts to exchange. But he has been preoccupied for days. Paralysed, almost.

  ‘Routine commercial conveyancing isn’t rocket science, David,’ one of the other partners frequently goads. But that isn’t entirely true. Conveyancing has its challenges, it can go pear-shaped, just like everything else in the law. And if a date is missed, a search omitted? Well, he’s only human. One or two mistakes are easy to make.

  His secretary has attached the letters to the front of their respective files with a yellow paper clip, in order of importance. ‘I don’t think there’s anything imminent. Well, no exchanges this week, anyway,’ she said earlier.

  Yet every file he opens seems to sneer at him, to laugh and to say, ‘I could be another mistake, David. Dig beneath the surface and you’ll find me waiting for you.’

  The sudden noise of the telephone makes him start. Everything makes him start. It’s all he can do not to retch.

  ‘Hi, David, it’s Colin. A problem with one of my files seems to have come up. Can I have a word about it? How about in ten, fifteen minutes?’

  He rests his head in his arms. God knows why the other partners have put him in charge of indemnity and claims, the majority seem to be on his own files. Perhaps that’s why, he thinks wryly, they’re so used to his cock-ups, they decided he may as well have the hassle of everyone else’s as well.

  ‘That’s what insurance is for, David,’ Charlie says whenever David confesses to another small mistake over a glass of wine at the end of the day. ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s only money. We all make mistakes, even me.’

  Of course Charlie has never made a mistake. At least not one David is aware of. He wishes that he could be like Charlie, intelligent and able, ploughing through the work with simple ease. Yet if he’s honest, he knows Charlie’s success comes from hard graft as well as ability and that he’s stupid and lazy in comparison. Every hole he finds himself in is his own bloody fault. Forgetting to diarise important dates, cutting corners, occasionally being less than honest. David knows it, and he despises himself for it.

  But at least his initial desperate need to confess to Charlie has abated slightly and is on the back burner again. He and the Glenfiddich accessed the client accounts on the computer the other night. They found a commercial property transaction with a substantial amount of money waiting in the account, one that wouldn’t be completed for months, and then put the temporary solution into play, transferring the money from that account to the insurance account and then paying the outstanding indemnity premium with a click of a mouse. Indemnity insurance paid, claims will now be covered, immediate problem rectified.

  David picks up another file, feels the battering of his heart and tries to breathe. He can’t bear to contemplate what will happen regarding claims arising before today or how he’ll repay the funds he has borrowed from Peter to pay Paul. That’s something he needs to discuss with Charlie. The trouble is that Charlie doesn’t seem to be in the mood for listening.

  Antonia’s stomach rumbles for its lunch as she pulls off her green buckled wellies on the steps. Her mum called three times before nine this morning, so she escaped to the garden with her secateurs. Snip, snip, snip. She’s been savage with her pruning, savagery that usually works.

  She steps back for a moment in her socks, lifting her head and taking in her home’s clean white facade. Bless David. She never asked for a house like this, but as he often says, he’d promised it from their very first date. She can still picture it clearly.

  It was a Sunday. He’d arrived ten minutes early in a low sports car. She couldn’t have told you the make, but it was small, shiny and sleek, and rather than soundless as she expected, it was loud, booming with noise, much like the man who drove it.

  ‘Hope you like poussin,’ he’d said at the traffic lights. Then after a moment, putting his hand on hers, ‘Only chicken. We’re having a picnic. The hamper’s in the boot. Is that OK?’

  She’d nodded, feeling foolish. She hadn’t dressed for a picnic. Not knowing what to expect, she’d worn a pale pink shift dress and high heels.

  David had driven towards Derbyshire, chatting all the way, then turned off the main road at some gates, parking up, jumping out to open her door and holding out his hand.

  ‘Welcome to Lyme Hall!’ He’d deliberately said it as though it was his and she’d laughed, pleased he was so easy to be with despite her faux pas with the heels.

  Spreading out a blanket on a manicured lawn at the front of the house, David had opened the basket. Not just tiny chickens, but glossy pork pies, Scotch eggs, stuffed peppers and champagne.

  ‘Please take a seat,’ he’d said, gesturing to the ground. For a moment she’d frozen. The shoes were sharp-heeled, the dress fitted. Then, thinking what Sophie would do, she’d slightly hitched up her dress and slipped off her shoes. ‘This is lovely,’ she’d said.

  ‘And so are you,’ he’d replied.

  Much later, topping up her wine, he’d grinned at her. ‘I’ve done nothing but talk. Now it’s your turn. Tell me about you.’

  The mild panic was there as always, but he hadn’t told her anything really. He was a solicitor, he lived somewhere in Cheshire, he played football on a Sunday, but nothing personal, somehow. She found she liked it; she liked that he talked incessantly, but didn’t say anything profound.

  ‘Well …’ she’d begun, but as though sensing her hesitation, he’d put up his hand.

  ‘No, don’t tell me anything. You’re perfect just as you are.’

  But after all the arguments with her last boyfriend, she hadn’t wanted to appear odd, wanted to get it out of the way. ‘I run a hair salon, share a flat with two friends. My dad died way back, but I still have my mum. She’s a bit fragile so she’s in a care home.’ She’d smiled, embarrassed. ‘No brothers or sisters, so there’s pretty much just me.’

  David had gazed at her, but after a few moments the intensity in his eyes was replaced with a smile. ‘Me too. Parents died long ago. See? I knew you were perfect.’ He’d leaned back and stretched out his legs. ‘Told you last night you were the woman I’d marry.’ Turning to the grand facade of Lyme Hall, he’d nodded. ‘Did I ment
ion I’m going to buy you one of these?’

  Antonia now smiles and shakes her head at the memory. It had been the first time she’d visited a National Trust property and David had watched her face as she’d gazed wide-eyed and open-mouthed at its magnificence and splendour. Though considerably smaller, it’s what his clients and visitors say of White Gables all the time: ‘The renovation is magnificent. Must have cost a fortune.’ She can see that and she’s proud, but it’s the garden which pleases her. She feels she’s had more of an input. Not planting, necessarily, though she did all the bedding plants herself, but nurturing. She nurtures the plants, the beds and the bushes and they respond in kind.

  ‘Antonia, darling, you do have green fingers!’ Naomi the neighbour shouts from over the fence, her voice startling Antonia as she stands on the doorstep. She feels suddenly shy.

  ‘Perhaps I do,’ she replies with a guilty clutch of conceit as she blushes in acknowledgement.

  It relaxes her usually; the garden, the fresh air, the birds and the hills reaching up to the steep ridge of The Edge. But today she’s agitated and even gardening hasn’t settled her. She goes inside, takes off her waxed jacket in the hall and strokes her arm. The cut has started to scab and it’s itchy. It always is when the healing process is underway. Like a little reminder.

  ‘The Chablis has been staring at me again,’ Sophie joked the other day.

  ‘Then don’t have it in the house,’ Antonia replied sternly.

  But she understood completely. A tempting treat at the tip of one’s fingertips. It’s just a question of how long each of them can resist.

  ‘That’s a nasty cut,’ David had commented, not so long ago. ‘How did you do that?’

  They were in bed and a shaft of light slanting through the shutters lit her naked body.

  ‘Gardening. Those hawthorns can be vicious,’ she’d replied brightly, turning towards him and pulling him into an embrace. But she’d caught his troubled look, that frown of love he has when he doesn’t know she’s looking. She must be more careful.

  The answerphone light in the kitchen is flashing. She sighs and stares for a moment, then walks briskly to the telephone, quickly presses play, turns her back and busies herself loudly at the sink as though that will swamp the sound of the inevitable.

  ‘Hi, it’s Zara Singh again. The journalist? I think we got cut off. I’d really appreciate it if you could call me back?’ The rise in tone makes it sound like a question. And then she hears Candy’s hesitant voice, for the fourth time today. ‘Hello, Chinue, love. It’s Mum. Are you there?’

  Olivia pushes the washing-machine door to, programmes a light wash and then leans against it, staring out of the utility room window which, she notes with a sigh, needs cleaning both inside and out. She knows she’s been moody and uncommunicative with the girls again today and feels vaguely guilty, but the truth is she can’t help herself.

  She looks at her hands, which still have a slight tremor. Her jaw is aching from clenching her teeth. She’s seething. She seethed silently all night and all day and the churning hasn’t abated, not even a drop.

  ‘The bastard, the absolute bastard.’ The sheer anger and frustration brings tears to her eyes while his words repeat in a galling loop in her head. She marches into the kitchen and puts on the kettle before collapsing on to a chair. ‘Fuck you, Mike,’ she says out loud.

  She considers phoning her sister, regaling her with last night’s conversation word for word. But she knows what her sister will say. ‘Come on, Olivia. He’s only human. Everything’s fine now you know he’s not having an affair with his tarty secretary or anyone else. I told you so.’

  Her sister likes Mike. Everybody likes bloody Mike. But not everyone agreed to bear him another child. She really didn’t want a third child but she did it for him. She went through yet another amniocentesis to check for Down’s Syndrome and then experienced the worst of her pregnancies with horrendous sickness and overwhelming tiredness while having to care for two other young demanding children. It was she who gave birth to a dead baby; it was she who felt the pain and the fear, the impotence, the failure.

  ‘Fuck you, Mike!’ she declares again. And then, ‘God, what a cow’ as she leans down to pick up a piece of ceramic she’s missed from the floor. She looks at Hannah’s empty seat and feels another wave of emotion. Hannah is only five, accidents are bound to happen and it’s only a broken cereal bowl. How she wishes she hadn’t shouted quite so loudly and for quite so long. Hannah cried so much at school that the teacher had to peel her away from Olivia’s arms. Then she walked away swiftly, down the long corridor, past all the happy pictures and paintings and books, fearful that the teacher would call her back and suggest she take Hannah home.

  Olivia sighs loudly. An awful mother and murderous to boot. Focusing on Hannah, her anger recedes for a spell. She’ll make it up to her after school, she thinks, her mind racing with ideas. She’ll make her a cake or buy her a treat and say sorry. She’ll try to be patient, she’ll try to be kind.

  Lifting her head, she glances at the clock to check the time, but her eyes catch the wedding portrait of her and Mike hanging against the dark red wallpaper in the hall, still not replaced from when they moved in nine years ago. That couple was happy, she thinks, look how they laughed.

  Stepping forward, she studies the photograph. She hasn’t looked at it, really looked at it, for a long time and yet she walks past it maybe twelve times a day. Perhaps that’s what’s happened to their marriage, she thinks, perhaps they’ve grown so used to each other that they just walk past without seeing.

  She gazes at Mike’s striking face in the photograph. She can see no resemblance between him and the man who said those hurtful words about the miscarriage to her last night, even though they look much the same. The person in the photograph was fun, he was open and loving, a man who wore his heart on his sleeve. Not a man given to irrational deep thought.

  Olivia shakes her head as the anger resurfaces. The bastard implied she was somehow responsible for the miscarriage, for the death of their son. She still can’t believe it; it was an unforgivable thing to say, but an even worse thing to actually believe.

  Antonia looks at her watch and continues her pacing from the lofty hallway, around the staircase to the lounge. She feels guilty. Hot and guilty. She’s aware that it’s a terrible betrayal, but she can’t help herself. She’s spent half an hour reapplying her make-up and has changed her clothes twice. It’s ridiculous, she knows, but she’s nervous, more nervous than she ever expected. She catches her face in the hall mirror and somebody else stares back with long, straight, dark hair looking polished, calm and relaxed.

  It’s not as though I don’t know him, she thinks. It’s me who instigated it and now I must see it through with no regrets.

  She glances at her watch one more time, the white-gold strap bright against her honey-coloured skin. He’ll be here any minute and it wouldn’t do to be waiting at the door. She walks into the silent lounge and puts on an Adele CD for company. Standing for a moment, she listens, but even Adele’s intoxicating voice doesn’t seem right, so she turns it off and plumps up the sofa cushions yet again.

  The doorbell is shrill in the silence. Antonia stands up, touches her hair and then takes a deep breath. Then she walks to the front door, straightens her shoulders and opens it.

  ‘Hello, Sami,’ she says.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Olivia is running late as she leaves her untidy house to collect Hannah from school. The afternoon has flown by as it always does and she feels hot as she searches for her keys, but the cold air swipes her cheeks at the door, so she turns back to fetch her coat. It’s only then that she stops to study the wedding photograph again. She doesn’t look at the man this time, but at the girl. She has pale hair and pastel eyes but a bright, confident smile. She holds a single bunch of yellow roses and her dress is traditional but plain. There are no feathers or frills in her hair. This isn’t a girl who needs chocolates or flowers to tell he
r she is loved. This isn’t a girl who craves flattery or attention to give her self-worth. This is a girl who’s said ‘for better or for worse’ and who means it.

  ‘Here’s the post for signing, Mike,’ Judith says as she neatens a letter escaping from the tidy rectangle of her long day’s endeavours.

  Mike looks up at her and nods, then drops his head again, continuing to punch numbers into a calculator, which spews out digits on a tiny receipt. She turns away towards the filing cabinet, feeling contemplative. The filing is up to date, but she hovers for a moment, busying herself by opening cabinet drawers, tidying the hanging baskets and closing them again. Mike hasn’t said much to her at all today. He looks tired and unhappy, and she wonders how the flowers fared last night. Pretty badly, by the looks of it, she concludes.

  She casts a final glance at Mike and notes that his frown line seems more pronounced than usual. It is, she reflects, the one slight imperfection in an otherwise perfect face.

  She has her hand on the handle when he abruptly speaks. ‘Who’s the father of your baby, Jude?’ he asks.

  Judith turns, blurting out a laugh of surprise. It’s the first time in all the years she’s known him that he’s asked such a personal question. ‘Bloody hell, Mike. Am I dreaming or did you really ask me that?’

  He drops his intense gaze and picks up a pen. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘None of my business.’

  Judith studies his slightly flushed face. There’s something vulnerable about him, she thinks, like a little lost boy who needs a big cuddle from the wicked witch or the snow queen, to be led by the hand into the land of temptation … he just doesn’t know it.

  She toys with the idea of teasing him, perhaps asking if he realises his question is tantamount to sexual harassment, or something similar, but he looked so sincere when he posed the question that a straight answer seems only fair.

  ‘No, that’s fine,’ she says, pulling out the client chair and sitting heavily, grateful to be off her feet for a minute or two. ‘Actually, no one in particular, as it happens. Just someone who was tall and pleasant for an evening or two. With hair and good shoes. And, of course, with straight white teeth.’ She smiles. ‘Some things you can’t compromise on.’