Beneath the Skin(49)

The frown clears and he grins. Sophie is inching her soft hand up the inside of his thigh, higher and higher, her touch firm but yielding, just as he likes. ‘So you want me to come, do you?’ he asks, pulling her towards him.

Mike yawns and tries to focus on the room, on the work piled high on his office desk.

‘You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said, have you?’ a voice interrupts.

He looks up at Judith’s round face. She’s actually frowning, which is probably a first. ‘Because I’m not having you call me every five minutes when I’ve got a baby to look after, Mike. One baby will be enough, thank you! Sue and Jane are covering for me, but no one will be as super-efficient and as wonderful as I am. Got that?’

‘Got it.’

‘Then listen!’

Mike nods, dutifully looks at Judith and pretends to listen. He thinks of explaining why he’s late, telling her the shocking news about David. He tells her most things. She’s a good listener and they share the same sense of humour. But effectively gossiping about a friend’s suicide feels wrong.

He tries to keep his eyes focused on Judith’s face, but his mind drifts back to Antonia. It was all so surreal that a fraction of him wants to share the events of the previous evening with someone just for a reality check. But then again, there are visual memories stored in his mind that he won’t confess to another living soul. Not that he’s done anything wrong. He most definitely hasn’t.

As Mike silently looked on last night, Antonia peeled off the plaster carefully and slowly, nipping her bottom lip with her even white teeth, her face entirely focused on the task. He wasn’t sure what he expected to see, but it was simply a cut starting to heal. She gazed at him for a moment, her eyes large and luminous. ‘You’re the first person I’ve told. Ever,’ she whispered. Then she dropped her head and tears spilled from her eyes, running down to the end of her nose where they gathered before dripping down on to her glossy chest. And it was all so fucking erotic that for a moment he couldn’t move. But then he rallied.

‘Tissues,’ he said. ‘Where do I find tissues?’ By the time he returned to the lounge with a toilet roll, Antonia had put her robe back on and was sitting on the sofa, her legs curled up beneath her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, blowing her nose. ‘You must think I’m nuts. I probably am.’

Good God, I’ve lived such a closeted life, was all he could think as the penny dropped that she’d cut herself, but then she smiled, letting him off the hook of a reply.

‘Talk to me,’ she said, closing her eyes. ‘About anything. You have such a lovely soft accent. I don’t want to talk or to think. It’s nice just to listen.’

She fell asleep, eventually. He covered her in a blanket, added logs to the fire, then just watched and waited in the armchair opposite, not knowing what he was supposed to do. The doorbell awoke him eventually. He opened the front door and a gentle-faced, middle-aged family liaison officer was waiting patiently on the top step. ‘Don’t worry. You go home, I’ll be here when she wakes,’ she said and wafted him away.

Life goes on, Olivia thinks, pushing the trolley up and down the aisles of the huge supermarket. It’s a different Tesco from the one she usually shops at, but looks identical inside.

A Tesco is a Tesco, she muses. Whatever is happening to the world outside, tragedy, anxiety, guilt and death, Tesco still heaves with shoppers, everyone oblivious to everyone else.

Mike arrived home by taxi at some point during the night without waking her. When the dawn chorus alerted her to morning, she gazed at his sleeping face for a while before slipping out of the bed. His dark hair was curling slightly and stubble shadowed his chin.

He’d had long hair when they met at university, so dark and handsome. ‘Irish exotic,’ she described him to her sister, thrilled to be the sole object of his affections.

‘Daddy looks like a pirate!’ the girls laughed when they saw an old photograph and they were right. Serious, dark looks which masked the sunny, funny person inside.

She gently kissed his cheek and sighed, remembering those long and terrible weeks when she’d convinced herself that she’d lost that sunny, funny person. Waking him gently at ten, they hugged in silence for a long time. ‘How did it go?’ she eventually asked. ‘Was it awful?’

‘No, it was fine. Antonia fell asleep and the next thing I knew was the arrival of a female police officer. I suppose she’s still in shock. It really is so dreadful. Thank God we have each other, Olivia.’

She thinks of his words as she shakes herself back to the present. While he slept she’d called his office at nine to let them know he’d be late. Judith had come on to the line and she was as lovely as ever, friendly, interested, funny, talking about her maternity leave which starts in two weeks, so excited about becoming a mum.

The forgiven but not forgotten exchanges between her and Mike pierce Olivia yet again. The thought of him and Judith having an affair now seems so preposterous. Oh God, what had she become? What had she been thinking?

She tries to concentrate on the task of her shopping. She doesn’t have a shopping list, which isn’t a good idea when she’s so distracted. But the one thing she has to buy is already in the trolley, waiting furtively beneath the Guardian. She tries to put that thought to one side as she gazes at the green leafy veg. Fruit isn’t a problem, but how to sneak in just one veg a day with a fussy five-year-old child feels beyond her.