Beneath the Skin(32)
‘Yes! Get off my case!’ Sophie replied, the usual retort. But Sophie assumed that a cervical smear would be as bad as the dentist, only at the other end of her anatomy. She couldn’t bear the thought of it. She’d been obsessed with an irrational fear of having one ever since she’d spied a photograph of the barbaric instrument of torture they used for the procedure when she was about ten.
The science books were on the top shelf of the bookcase at home, but Sophie was tall and could reach. She’d pile the books on the soft carpet and flick through them cross-legged, her mum actually thinking she was taking an interest in medicine, a short-lived hope that her offspring might one day become a doctor.
Of course Sophie and her cousin were glued to the science books in the hope of finding pictures of bollocks and dicks. Or an account of having it off. Preferably with photographs. Instead it was graphic and biological, more of a horror story than Sophie and her cousin had ever expected. ‘Which is why, which is why …’ Sophie now says to her blurry self.
She climbs back into bed. The sheets feel slightly dank from sweat, from worry. She’s spilt some coffee, a spreading stain on the silky cream throw. Staring at the stain, she examines the spirals of colour that fade from dark brown to beige. Antonia will clean it for her, she thinks, she’ll spray on some newly-advertised-on-the-shopping-channel product then hand-wash it in the sink and the stain will disappear, like magic.
She picks up the cold coffee cup and takes a sip to ease down the paracetamol that’s stuck in her throat. Her colleagues at the estate agents used to joke that it was a good idea to have a large gin and tonic before a smear, to help them relax. Sophie laughed and dismissed the thought at the time and yet when she started the last round of IVF, she drank a couple of large glasses of wine before leaving for the clinic. The doctor immediately smelled the alcohol on her breath and reprimanded her severely, saying she didn’t deserve the procedure if she was going to endanger it. Sophie tried to laugh it off, asking where all the ‘tea and sympathy’ had gone and mocking the doctor for being a member of the ‘grin and bear it brigade’. Yet the doctor’s disapproval helped her be brave, to grit her teeth and let them get on with what they had to do without the prop of alcohol. Last time, at least.
Sophie stops biting her nails and groans out loud, lifts her mobile close to her eyes so she can see, taps in a message to Antonia, Where the fuck are you? I’ve called three times, then inches further down into bed, waiting for a reply, wishing for magic.
Olivia throws the last of her drink down the sink before leaving the house for the school pick-up. It’s a new range of ‘real’ coffee advertised by handsome actors who persuade their female audience with a beautiful, deep and languid voice to have a ‘coffee moment’.
She and Antonia laughed about the advert as they sipped their coffee this morning. ‘Coffee moment! The power of advertising. I can’t believe that I actually went out and bought it. You’d never believe I was highly educated and a feminist at uni to boot. And it tastes vile!’
But Antonia lowered her eyes and looked into her mug. ‘Oh, really? I didn’t go to university,’ she said quietly.
The conversation had flowed until then. Olivia was left feeling she’d somehow humiliated Antonia and to cover up her own embarrassment she invited her to stay for lunch, even though she had a million other things to do. But they got back on track; Antonia insisted on making them her ‘club sandwich special’, which she produced ten minutes later with a flourish, complete with cocktail sticks from God knows where and even a paper napkin.
‘Look at the time! Sorry for imposing for so long,’ Antonia said as she left. But it wasn’t an imposition at all, Olivia thinks, as she strolls in the weak autumn sunshine towards the primary school gates. She’s surprised at how effortless it was to talk to her. Or perhaps to talk at, she muses. She did all the talking, probably too much.
‘Oh, we all need to have a rant from time to time,’ Antonia said when Olivia apologised for going on. ‘Or all the time, in Sophie’s case,’ she added, laughing.
‘Were you two at school together?’ Olivia asked to be polite, not particularly wanting to talk about Sophie.
‘Yes, Sale High, from Year Seven. Sorry, I interrupted. You were saying about your dad.’
And so it went on. Olivia ranting. Ranting that she couldn’t rant to her sister or to her dad because they wouldn’t have a bad word said about Mike. Not that she wanted to rant, because she was lucky to have Mike as a partner, but that sometimes being married to somebody whom everyone else thought perfect was annoying and made her feel bad for wanting to rant because, really, she had nothing to rant about.
Hannah darts out of the green school door waving something in her hand, a look of sheer happiness on her pink shiny face. ‘It’s a party invitation, Mummy! To make a bear! Can I go?’
Olivia lifts Hannah, hugging her tightly, the pleasure of holding her youngest child still as intense as the day she was born. But a thought pinches her chest and the euphoria of unburdening herself fades, just a little. She’d confided in Antonia about the miscarriage and what Mike had said. Perhaps she’d said too much; she doesn’t know her that well, but the flow of words and hurt, concern and confusion were unstoppable.
Of course she didn’t tell Antonia everything. Olivia still has no idea why she didn’t want the last baby, the boy. In her mind she blames the toll of pregnancy and childbirth, the burden of looking after yet another child, but they aren’t the real reasons for her rejection of him. She still can’t put her finger on it, but the awful truth is that she didn’t want their son, she resented each step of the way until she lost him and once he was gone she felt nothing but guilty relief.