Beneath the Skin(47)
A lucky man, he thinks. I thought David was a lucky man.
‘Of course I don’t mind. David was a mate.’ Is that the right word? he wonders. A Friday night regular, dinner host, easy company and generous. The only person to call him Mikey. But it seems Mike hardly knew him at all. ‘Of course I’ll stay. It’s the least I can do. You go home, love. I’ll see you later.’
‘Will you come to the clinic?’ Sophie asks from the depths of the pillow.
It’s late but Sami’s still awake, his hands behind his head, staring into the dark. He isn’t ready to close his eyes and anyway there’s no point, sleep is so far away, dismissed by the tight ache in his chest. He’s trying to work out whether it’s his heart or just his pride that’s dented. ‘You have no heart,’ Sophie once said to him, but that isn’t true – he can be just as emotional as the next man if he lets himself. But he doesn’t want to be emotional, that’s the point, that’s why he’s so bloody frustrated.
Sami likes to be in charge, he knows it and everyone else does, too. ‘You’re a bloody control freak, you know that, don’t you?’ The criticism has been hurled at him too many times to remember. It always rankles, especially with his mum and his sisters when they know how he suffered as a kid, but he saw the humorous side with Mike in the Boot Room days. ‘Ground control to Captain Sami’ when he was pushing things too far. ‘Sami Richards and his famous controlling power strikes again’ when he notched up yet another conquest.
‘Women like to be told,’ Sami would inform an incredulous Mike and Pete.
‘Don’t tell Olivia. She’d cut off your balls,’ Mike would reply with a grin.
They all laughed, but Sami’s success rate with women was legendary. ‘It works, I tell you. Be assertive and they go weak at the knees every time.’
‘Bet your new shiny flat in town doesn’t hurt,’ Pete would retort.
‘Nor this bloody beautiful face,’ Sami would laugh, pointing to himself.
He turns his head towards Sophie on the pillow. ‘I thought Antonia was going with you. It’s only blood and urine, isn’t it?’
He doesn’t want to think about Antonia. He texted and called her mobile several times to clear the air, but she didn’t pick up. So he resorted to leaving a message on her home answerphone this morning. ‘It’s Sami. Look, I’m sorry. Can we talk? I’ll come over to yours.’
Sophie grunts. He assumes that’s a ‘yes’ and turns back to his contemplation of old conquests. The sting of rejection is still there, but it helps to dwell on the bedpost notches. Maybe the dent is just in his pride …
‘I’m off now,’ they would say in the morning. Shelina, Joanna, Hilary, whoever. Their club clothes crumpled, their cheeks flushed with hope.
‘Yeah. See ya.’
‘Last night was really nice, Sami. I had fun.’
‘Me, too.’
‘Have a good day.’
‘Yeah. You, too.’
‘Oh, I’ll just jot down my mobile number.’
‘Yeah. Great. See ya.’
And that was that. Except once or twice when the offer of coffee at his place at the end of the evening was declined. That would be the start of a compulsive mission to hunt them, to catch them and to wear them down with telephone calls and flattery until they finally succumbed. He always succeeded. Almost always.
Antonia is huddled on the floor in front of the sofa with her arms around her knees when Mike comes back into the lounge, so he sits down next to her. He places the tray in front of them, lifts the teapot lid, stirs and then pours the strong tea into the cups. He wants to say that he feels like a fraud. Olivia suggested the teapot, the tray and the sugar before she left. He wants to say something light-hearted like, ‘I’ve become my granny. I’ll be wearing a cardigan next,’ because that’s what is usually expected of him in this house, a quip, some harmless wit. He wants to say, ‘I’m so dreadfully sorry. I feel guilty, somehow. I should have known. I should have noticed. I should have helped.’ Instead he says, ‘I didn’t think about sugar earlier, but I brought the sugar bowl in case.’
Antonia turns her gaze from the fire. ‘David took sugar,’ she replies with a small smile.
Mike nods, stuck for words, fighting the impulse to find a soft joke to smooth the edges of the silence. But he knows how unique grief can be. Some people want to talk about it and some people find it easier to withdraw. He withdrew after the miscarriage; it suited him, but looking back he realises it was selfish. It wasn’t just his grief, he should have shared. He has no idea which camp Antonia falls into and he knows her hardly at all, but he senses a solitariness about her and wishes he could help.
She’s still looking at him, her eyes not quite focusing. There’s a rigidity about her, but she seems calm, she hasn’t yet shed a tear.
‘The razor blade was mine, you know,’ she says quietly.
Mike nods, not sure if he’s heard properly and, if he has, what point she’s making. He vaguely understands that some women shave and that some women wax, armpits, legs and other places. He shifts slightly, wishing Olivia had stayed, wondering where the conversation is going.
She looks back at the open fire and the reflection of the flames dances on her solemn face. ‘He must have found it in the bathroom cabinet,’ she says slowly, as though speaking to herself. ‘It was hidden with an old diaphragm I just kept for the box. He’d had a vasectomy, why would he look in there?’ She gazes at Mike again. Her expression is blank, but her eyes seem huge. ‘He didn’t leave a note. I wonder what he was thinking. I wonder what went through his head.’