Beneath the Skin(10)
He eventually turns with an awkward smile before sitting at his desk.
‘Turns out that I’m a rotten husband and a rubbish dad, Jude.’ His face is slightly flushed. ‘And there I was, thinking I was perfect!’
Judith smiles and wags a finger. ‘That’s because I’m always telling you you’re perfect. I didn’t think you were listening.’
‘You’ve got it in one. I don’t listen, apparently.’ He puts his head in his hands for a moment and then rubs his eyes. ‘But the truth is they’re right. I haven’t been looking or listening. I’ve taken my eye off the ball.’
‘Trust you to use a football analogy, Mike,’ she laughs. ‘Is there anything I can do to help? Go into goal? Keep score?’
She sits down in the chair opposite him. There’s plenty she’d like to do to help, she thinks affectionately as she strokes her ever-increasing bump, but that would certainly get in the way.
Mike Turner has been at the top of the secretaries’ ‘I wouldn’t kick him out of bed’ list for years. Christmas after Christmas various young hopefuls have tried to snog him at the office party, without success. Judith is certain that he’s completely oblivious to these advances and to his charm. It’s the way his hair is always scruffy from raking his hands through it, she decides, it makes him look both trendy and vulnerable at the same time. Those cheekbones too, a real man with cheekbones! And of course his thoughtful Irish eyes.
‘I must make more of an effort, not just with Olivia but with the girls too.’ He looks at Judith and grins. ‘I would ask you for suggestions, but something tells me that would be cheating.’
‘And so it would,’ she replies, scooping up an armful of files from his muddled desk. Shame, she thinks as she leaves the room. Mike Turner isn’t and will never be the sort of man who would go in for cheating.
Sami strides in late to the site meeting, looking sharp in his new navy suit.
‘You’ve got a smile on your face,’ the quantity surveyor comments. ‘You are one jammy bastard, Richards. Who’s the lucky woman this time?’
Sami puts down his briefcase and places the hard hat on his head, careful not to unsettle his hair. ‘Who, me?’ he grins. ‘Well, since you ask. The wife. Really, Jack, the wife!’
‘You’re joking. I’m lucky if my wife cracks a smile, let alone …’
Sami pulls up the leg of his trousers at the knee, crouches down and spreads out the plans on the dusty concrete floor as he recalls an extremely pleasurable start to the day. Sophie was dead to the world when the alarm woke him at seven. But that’s nothing new. She jacked in her job at the estate agents months ago (‘too early, too boring!’) and he suspects she sleeps in all morning during the week when he isn’t there to cajole her into the land of the living. He’d done his press-ups, showered and finished the box of no-added-sugar muesli, and was just about to unlatch the walled garden door of his townhouse when Sophie called his name. He turned his head in surprise and there she was on their doorstep, naked save for fluffy slippers and the chunky glasses she wears first thing in the morning before her ‘battle’ with contact lenses.
‘You haven’t given me a kiss, darlink,’ she called in her best Marlene Dietrich accent. He laughed. Her face looked crumpled and sleepy, her hair like a crow’s nest, but her body was beautiful; rounded, plump and still tanned from their Antiguan summer.
‘I haven’t cleaned my teeth, so …’ Sophie mumbled as she knelt on the floor of the hallway, the front door still ajar. She slipped one hand in the fly of his suit trousers and unbuckled his belt with the other. ‘So I’ll give you a different kiss goodbye.’
‘That was a very nice treat,’ he said afterwards. He stood at the lounge door for a moment and eyed Sophie thoughtfully. She’d put on the dressing gown he tries regularly to throw out and was lying on the sofa, the Daily Mail propped on her knees. ‘Was there a particular reason why you were kind enough to …’
‘I just like to keep you on your toes,’ she replied, her face still hidden by the newspaper. ‘Besides, you’ve been—’
‘What?’ Sami asked, his heart sinking just a little as he thought of the time. He knew that any heavy conversation about babies would make him very late for work.
Sophie narrowed her eyes as she lowered the paper. ‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly, turning her head towards him. ‘You seem happy.’
‘I am happy. No, I’m absolutely delighted that we’re going through with the IVF again. I know how hard it is for you with all the drugs, the hospital visits and stuff, but you know I’ll be there. I’ll be with you every step of the way, I promise.’ He glanced at his Montblanc watch, which still gave him the rush of pleasure it had given him six months previously when he’d finally given in to temptation and bought it for himself. ‘And I think it’s going to work this time, I don’t know why, but I feel sure.’
Sophie turned back to the newspaper and the horoscopes. ‘OK, you can bugger off to work now. Your usefulness is at an end.’
Sami now brushes the dust off his trousers as he straightens back up. Time to focus on work. ‘Shall we start, Jack? Time is money and all that. Is the client coming or not?’
‘What have you got that I haven’t, Richards?’ the quantity surveyor replies as he removes a pen from behind his ear and jots down some figures on his clipboard. ‘On second thoughts, don’t answer that,’ he says with a dry laugh, ‘we’re not paid by the hour.’