Beneath the Skin(51)

‘You’re such a talent, Olivia. Bright, witty, opinionated and highly valued. Why on earth would you throw it all away?’ the editor had asked when she told him she was giving up the newspaper permanently.

‘I have an albatross around my neck,’ she almost replied wearily. Yet she felt guilty too; she loved Hannah dearly. She just needed space, time away from her demanding personality, which ironically she’d no longer have.

‘I never knew something so small could be so much trouble,’ she once said to Mike, but he just smiled lovingly at the little angel who slept in his arms. ‘But she’s worth it,’ he said, the inevitable reply.

That’s the trouble with Mike, Olivia now sighs to herself. He’s a great dad, he loves his daughters and he plays with them endlessly when he’s at home, but he gets the good bits, at the beginning and at the end of the day when they’re docile and sleepy. Then weekends are different, there’s no time limits or supermarkets or lunch boxes. What he sees then isn’t a true reflection of the grind of daily life as a stay-at-home mum.

She picks up the Guardian and hurls it on to the kitchen table. ‘I was important once,’ she declares. ‘I was respected, I was valued. My opinions counted. For God’s sake, just look at me now.’

Mike knows he won’t be able to knuckle down to work until he’s spoken to Antonia, to check that she’s OK. ‘I don’t want to talk,’ she said last night. But there are things to be done, surely? Perhaps she’s spoken to the police, perhaps they’re making calls on her behalf and are sorting things out. Nobody close to him has died, so he doesn’t know how these things work, but he doubts it. As far as he’s aware she doesn’t have a family. There’s Sophie, who’s very close. He needs to tell her, or to tell Sami at least. But Olivia was insistent about not telling Sophie, and Olivia is generally right.

He doesn’t like to think about his blarney to Antonia last night. He rarely speaks for so long, at least not unless it involves sport, football preferably. He talked a lot about his sister Harriet and how she died unexpectedly after a routine operation to fix a squint when she was fourteen. She just never woke from the anaesthetic. That’s when the black dog first arrived at his heels. ‘Her little heart gave up. A blessing really. Down’s isn’t easy,’ people said. He heard those words so many times as a boy that he wanted to scream and shout, ‘Fuck your fucking blessings! A blessing for who?’ But his mother always nodded at the platitudes and it’s only as an adult and a father he realises that perhaps it was a blessing for her.

He glimpses his face in the mirror as he washes his hands. Not very tactful, Michael. She needed cheering up and you talked about death. But perhaps there was an exaggerated tale or two which brought a small smile to her lips. ‘God, Michael, you know how to tell them,’ he says to the mirror before going back to his office. At another time and in another life, it would be a funny story to tell. That the first woman who listened to the story of his life fell asleep.

Sami is back in the office. He stretched out the site inspection for as long he could, charming the client and offering to buy him a Friday pub lunch. It’s best to keep busy, he knows, when he has something on his mind. He’s trying hard not to think of the dent in his heart-pride, but it’s like a dent in his car, it niggles and gripes until it’s tapped out and spray-painted, good as new.

‘Dent Master,’ he doodles on the pad.

If only it was that easy, he thinks.

There’s a knock on the door and one of the trainees glides in without waiting for a reply. ‘That report you asked for, Mr Richards,’ she says coyly in a high-pitched Home Counties voice.

He usually grins, enjoying the tease and says, ‘It’s Sami to you, Jemima.’ But today he just thanks her and goes back to his doodle. He knows she’s an attractive girl and not afraid to show her attentiveness, but he can’t summon up any interest just now.

He glances at his watch and wonders if Sophie will call about the clinic appointment. He didn’t tell her the full story of his heated discussion with Antonia at White Gables. The truth was that he told Antonia it was none of her fucking business if Sophie drank too much, that she should look at her own marriage and stop interfering with his. She didn’t push it then, but dropped her head and withdrew into herself, as she so often does. It still makes him feel like a shit. He dislikes himself for it intensely.

Sami rubs his head and groans. He doesn’t want to think about Sophie’s drinking. He likes control, there’s no doubt. He likes to be assertive too. But he hates confrontation. Confrontation never ends well, especially with Sophie.

‘I think you should cut down on the wine,’ he’ll say to Sophie when he’s particularly exasperated with her louche behaviour.

‘Why? I only drink it when you do.’

‘That isn’t true. You drink in the day when I’m not here.’

‘Just a glass before you get home.’

‘Several glasses, Sophie.’

‘So, you spy on me do you, Sami? How terribly charming of you.’

He prefers it when she shouts back, it finishes sooner. Then of course when they’re out, he’s stymied by etiquette. As his mum taught him well, ‘It doesn’t do to wash your dirty linen in public.’ So in company Sophie can drink steadily all night, downing two glasses of wine to everyone else’s single glass. He’s aware of her eyes on the bottle at the start of the night. She waits politely for someone to pour it for her when her glass is empty at first, but by mid-evening she doesn’t care, she’ll pour it herself, calling for the waiter to bring another bottle. Then at the end of the meal she’ll buy cigarettes, even though she gave up years ago. She’ll stagger outside and flirt with somebody, anybody, her guttural laugh wafting in to pound Sami’s ears.