Beneath the Skin(50)

As she anticipates, the toilets are behind the cafe, but there’s a queue. One of the three cubicles is out of order. She vaguely wonders if the other women suspect as she waits. Can they tell by the way she holds her handbag tightly under her arm? Or by the loud thrashing of her heart?

Perhaps I’ve got it wrong, she thinks as she pees on the pregnancy testing stick. Perhaps I’ve just wasted a fiver.

She stays in the cubicle far, far too long. ‘Are you all right in there, love?’ someone eventually asks, tapping at the door.

Olivia dabs the tears at the corners of her eyes with toilet roll and takes a deep shaky breath. It’s shock, she thinks, that’s all. Just shock. She’ll get her head round it. Everything will be fine.





CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


The chilled bottle of wine and the empty crystal glass are sitting on the coffee table, staring at Sophie. They’ve been there for a good ten minutes, untouched.

A debate is raging in her head as she studies the dribbles of condensation pooling on the shoulders of the bottle. To drink or not to drink; to call Antonia or to call Sami; to cancel or not to cancel the clinic appointment. Those are the questions.

The answer is usually straightforward, but Sami has put a spanner in the works. Ready for work that morning, he was at the door when he spoke, a parting shot as usual. ‘She asked me to visit her, you know,’ he said, looking at his nails. He was wearing a new shirt and tie, lilac and matching, Sophie noticed. He glanced up and caught her eye. ‘Antonia, that is. She phoned me at work and asked me to pop over.’

‘Really? When?’ She said it casually, with a shrug, but her insides were burning.

‘I don’t know, a week, maybe two weeks ago.’

‘What for?’ Her voice was a little too shrill.

‘She wanted to talk about you, of course. She said she was concerned. Thought that I was putting you under too much pressure to have a baby.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ Sophie asked, quietly, afraid of the answer. She felt winded, dizzy, shocked. What the fuck was going on?

Sami shrugged. His hand was on the door handle. ‘I wasn’t going to mention it, but you said she’d been acting strangely, so that might explain it …’ He hitched up his double cuff and looked at his watch. ‘Look, I’ll be late. I’ll come with you to the clinic this afternoon if you want me to. Give me a ring later, yeah?’

Now she shifts in the armchair and sighs. She’s thought of nothing else since. What the hell is Antonia playing at? It’s so unlike her to interfere. She doesn’t have the confidence, the intelligence, the courage, surely? But only yesterday, she walked away from Sophie’s caress, the first time ever. She was tempted, Sophie knew, and still she left.

She looks down at the pile of soft carpet pushing between her toes. Pulling the rug from under her feet. Shock, alarm, uncertainty, fear. That’s exactly how it feels. She rubs her eyes and tries to focus. Antonia keeps secrets, she’s good at keeping secrets. Surely to God that hasn’t changed?

To make herself busy, she grapples with a clean duvet cover, whips the towels off the banister, scrubs grime from the shower and it helps. Her feverish mind eventually slows. She’s still livid with Antonia and will be giving her a mouthful when she’s worked it all out. But whatever has gone on, Antonia hasn’t told Sami about the infection, the fucking pelvic inflammatory infection she hates to think about. That much is obvious. What bothers her more now she’s calmed down is why Sami mentioned his visit today. Sami, her match, the one man who can give as good as he gets. He never does anything without thinking it through. He has a master plan for life, never mind each day. A typical Sagittarius, she believes, shooting his arrows out high, galloping after them with determination until he gets what he wants.

‘We’d make such beautiful babies.’ The thought clenches at her heart. Sitting down on the loo seat, she lowers her head to her arms and starts to cry.

The Tesco bags are in the red hallway, eggs on top, ready to be emptied. This can’t be happening, Olivia thinks with a sigh. I have no energy to do it. Already. I have no bloody energy.

She looks at her watch. It’s nearly time to collect Hannah from school. She stops for a moment, deciding to bring down the toy till from Hannah’s bedroom and let her beep the barcodes on the shopping when she gets home. It’s Hannah’s favourite game, but one which goes on too long and rarely without incident. The ice cream melted the last time and the yoghurt pots dropped, splat, on to the kitchen floor. Olivia was cross, but that’s no surprise. She’s painfully aware she’s always bloody cross these days.

‘Shit, shit, shit.’ Putting her head in her hands, she wants to scream. The shock has worn off and reality has hit her. Just as life had got back on an even keel, here she is, bloody pregnant again with no prospect of being a person, rather than just a mum, for another decade. She’s an awful mother as it is, she spends most of her life shouting. That person is horrible; she doesn’t want to be her any more.

‘No one said it would be easy,’ her mother opined when Hannah was a baby. ‘Some say it’s the hardest job in the world.’

‘Rachel was easy!’ Olivia wanted to retort, but it seemed too disloyal to say the words out loud. It had taken years for her to conceive again after Rachel was born. She wanted the new baby so very badly, but Hannah didn’t sleep. She was a loud, demanding, clingy baby and moved on to being a loud, demanding and clingy toddler. She never allowed Olivia out of her sight, even at birthday parties or at playgroup. It got to the point where Olivia had no choice but to give up the job she loved.