Beneath the Skin(46)
The smile falling, she touches her arm as she waits for a moment, feels the scab, feels the irony. But that’s completely different, she thinks. I hurt no one but myself.
‘Only me!’ she calls as she opens the bathroom door. Condensation has filled the room like smoke. The window and tiles are dripping in gleaming pearls, the floor is slippery, sodden.
‘What happened to the extractor fan? Has it broken?’ she asks. She knows it’s odd. She knows David’s stillness is strange. Yet she opens the windows and continues to talk, her back turned from the inevitable. ‘What a day. Had a good soak? I’ll get some towels. I bet you’re hungry. I’ve got so much to tell you, love.’
PART TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY
It takes a few minutes to call, to steady her thrashing heart, to quell the urgent need to vomit. She’s been here before. Seeing blood, pooling blood, her child’s hands shaking uncontrollably as she phones the police.
‘Ambulance, please. It’s David, my husband …’
Paramedics and police arrive within minutes. Far more people than she expects, bringing in mud on their boots. And so impersonal, moving around her house and talking in low voices as though she isn’t there.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Stafford. There’s nothing we can do for your husband. He’s been dead for some time. Is there someone you can call?’
Antonia longs to call Charlie, of course she does, he’s the closest thing she has to a father, but he and his calm steady presence are not available. So she calls Olivia, although goodness knows why as she hardly knows her really. She realises there’ll be trouble with Sophie once she finds out, but she can’t face how Sophie will somehow make this all about her. ‘This’ being about David, her husband, who is dead.
They arrive soon after, Olivia and Mike, their faces pale and severe. She watches them park their car beside David’s, leaving room for the ambulance and the remaining police vehicle with its lights still strobing into the silent night.
Olivia simply holds her at the open door. She puts her arms around her and grips tightly until the uncontrollable shivering calms down.
‘You’re still soaking wet,’ Olivia says eventually. ‘Let me find you some dry clothes – and a brandy.’
Wet? Yes, she’s wet. She’d forgotten that. She looks down to her chest, expecting to see blood, but it’s water, just water. She’s wet from trying to pull him up. ‘David? Please, David. Open your eyes.’ But he was too limp and too heavy. A dead weight. Really dead?
Olivia dresses her like a doll in the lounge, then leads her to sit down. ‘It’s cold in here. I’ll fetch Mike to make up the fire and I’ll find you a brandy.’ Then Mike comes in, sitting next to her on the sofa, opening his arms and just holding and holding, propping her up, saying nothing but preventing her body from dissolving. No digging, no questions, no probing, for which she’s so grateful.
And then the police, a woman and a man, crouching down to meet her eyes. ‘We know this is a difficult time, Mrs Stafford, but there are questions we have to ask. Do you understand?’
Questions, so many questions, one after another when she can barely breathe. Name, age, length of marriage, family. Work. Car. Today, yesterday. Illness. Broken wall. Broken nose. Texts. Charlie. And then more. The woman with such stony eyes: ‘Antonia? Are you listening? Did David have anything on his mind? The telephone was on the bedroom floor and the casing was badly cracked as though it had been thrown violently. Was that David or you? Do you know who he might have been on the phone to? Was anything worrying him? Did he say anything unusual or behave differently recently?’ Just a breath and then more. ‘Antonia? Are you still with me? Why were the contents of the bathroom cabinet scattered on the floor? Was David searching for something?’ And even as Antonia was trying to work out the puzzle. ‘Is this your diaphragm, Antonia? It was on the floor too, with the box. Did the electric shaver belong to him? Why would he have a razor blade?’
Mike’s brewing up again, for Antonia, for Olivia, for the uniformed faces, coming and going through the open front door. He feels winded and helpless. He can’t imagine how Antonia must be feeling.
The draught prickles his skin as Olivia comes through the kitchen door, closing it quietly behind her. ‘Mike, I don’t feel terribly well,’ she says in a low voice. ‘And I don’t suppose we can expect Lydia to sit with the girls all night. I feel really bad about it, but …’
He studies Olivia’s face; they’ve been glancing at each other all evening in silent communication saying ‘shocking, tragic, unbelievable’, but he hasn’t been looking at her as such. She’s paler than usual and there are violet smudges beneath her eyes.
‘Sorry, love, you’re right. This is just bloody terrible, isn’t it? But it’s hard to know what to do. We can’t leave her alone. I don’t think she has any relatives. What about Sophie? Should we call her?’
‘God, no! If she’s not here now, my guess is that Antonia doesn’t want her.’ Olivia looks around the kitchen for a moment. ‘It seems huge without David in it. Busy with the drinks. Larger than life … You could stay, Mike. Would you mind?’
Mike ruffles his hair. He’s surprised that Sophie isn’t here, he’s amazed at Olivia’s vehement response to his suggestion that they call her and he’s utterly astonished that David, of all people, has killed himself. He feels a sense of guilt. He’d always assumed David didn’t have a care in the world. All things to all men, with a smile on his face, taking life in his large stride. A successful career, a huge house and a beautiful young wife.