Beneath the Skin(24)
‘Aren’t we all?’
Sophie follows Antonia’s eyes and shrugs. ‘I couldn’t be bothered with tidying. But I did buy Kettle Crisps. Oh, and wine. I’ve started, join me. Of course he knows I’ll simmer down. No doubt he thinks I’ll be nicely caramelised by the time he gets home. More like anaesthetised.’ She looks thoughtful for a moment, then smiles. ‘But it’s the book club, so Sami can’t possibly complain about wine, sweet wine. At least that’s a result.’
Antonia stoops to the coffee table, collects some dirty mugs and heads for the kitchen. ‘Shall I open the crisps?’ she asks.
‘And why has he told her now?’ Sophie continues, following Antonia into the kitchen. ‘He didn’t before. Understandably. He hates failure. I mean, what does one say to one’s mother who has so many kids that she obviously couldn’t say no?’
‘Sophie! That’s not—’
‘He’s told her because he doesn’t want me to back out. Of course that’s a joke; it shows just how little he sees. If he understood anything at all, he’d know that the last thing his mother wants is the tie of a grandchild, she’ll never get rid of me then.’ Sophie puts her hands on her hips and frowns.
‘I’m sure Martha—’
‘Oh God. The fat old cow’ll put her oar in every step of the way. What if she wants to come to appointments and pretend to hold my hand when Sami’s at work? Suppose she asks the doctor questions?’
Antonia puts a hand either side of Sophie’s shoulders and holds her firmly. ‘Sophie, calm down. Everything’s fine. Really. And there’s the doorbell. I hope you’ve read the book this time.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Antonia drops David off outside the Royal Oak as usual, but after waving her off, he walks away from the pub, past Aladdin’s, the deli and Cartridge World towards the huge Victorian houses on Parsonage Road, most of which have been converted into flats.
David had lived in Withington as a student at Manchester Poly and he still feels a tremendous affection for it, for its buzz, its strange mix of young and old, its pubs and late drinking clubs. The best kebab take-out in South Manchester too, still going strong at midnight over twenty years on.
He’d got a place at the polytechnic through clearing to read law at pretty much the last moment and had to search for digs. It had been a lonely search. School and the Proctors had been his family until then, but suddenly he was eighteen, he had three duff A levels and the trustees who’d carefully nurtured his parents’ wealth just handed it over to him, job done. Still officially under his aunt’s roof in Matlock, he’d gone a little wild at first, buying a silver soft-top MG and spending the summer visiting school mates dotted around the country, dishing the dosh. But Charlie intervened when David crashed the MG on a lonely Derbyshire lane. He’d taken to the narrow tree-lined lanes when he was bored at his aunt’s, ‘to test the motor to its limit’, and on one of those days of boredom, ‘a bend appeared in the road which hadn’t been there before’, as he laughingly told Charlie.
David walked away from the collision without a scratch, but the car was written off. Charlie was livid, as never before or since. ‘You could’ve died or been crippled, you fool. Didn’t you learn anything from your parents’ death?’ he’d shouted down the telephone. ‘Stop being a failure, David. Bloody well grow up and get on a law course somewhere, for God’s sake.’
David was surprised at Charlie’s reaction, even more so at the uncalled-for mention of his mother and father and ultimately quite offended. ‘It was black ice, not speeding, actually,’ he’d replied. But he loved Charlie enough to phone around the polytechnics until he secured a place through economy with the truth and his usual lavish charm.
His aunt had reluctantly offered to come and look at some digs in Withington he found through the Manchester student union. He’d said no to her offer, but as he stepped off the bus, he felt a little Dutch courage was in order before meeting the three postgrad foreign language students he’d be sharing with and there, immediately in front of him, was the Royal Oak with its multi-flowered window boxes and friendly white facade.
‘What’s up, lad. Somebody died?’ the huge, curly-haired and sweaty barman had asked with a grin as he pulled a pint of the local beer. ‘I’m Seamus, by the way. The landlord of this establishment. Welcome to Withington.’
David had looked around him. The pub strangely reminded him of his house study at school with its tatty but aesthetic furniture, its low beams, nooks and crannies. For a moment he’d stood still, listening to the hum of conversation around him. Then he’d sniffed the air, felt the warmth, breathed in the feeling of comfort. ‘On the hunt for digs, Seamus,’ he’d replied. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got a spare room upstairs?’
He pulls up the collar of his coat as he continues to walk past the bay windows of the old houses along Parsonage Road, peering into people’s lives. White Gables is an old house too, but it was gutted for the renovation, completely stripped of its past and so it feels like new. New for him and Antonia, a couple happily without a past. Yet here he is again, walking in his own footsteps.
As he strolls, he thinks about Antonia. She looked beautiful tonight, all dressed up for the book club at Sophie’s. He wanted to chat with her over dinner or in the car. Not about all the work crap consuming his thoughts, but about anything and nothing, just to connect. But she seemed far away, distracted. Once, in a rare moment when they touched upon the past, he’d tried to explain how lonely it was being an orphan. How he was better with noise, in a crowd. ‘I suppose I’m sort of an orphan too, so I do understand the loneliness,’ she had replied, holding his hand to her cheek. ‘But I quite like it.’