Beneath the Skin(58)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE


Norma Jeffries sits in the dank garden despite the cold breeze. She hates Sundays at home, they’re long and empty. Her two sons, Matthew and Simon, have been over for a roast lunch, one with his girlfriend in tow, the other without, but they never stay long enough to fill the void.

‘Isn’t Tavia around today?’ Norma enquired of Harry, as casually as she could muster over lunch. The boys looked at each other with the silent communication they always have which makes her feel ridiculously left out. Like a silly schoolgirl at fifty-five. Yet that only happens when the boys are together. When she’s with Harry or Simon alone, they talk to her and confide about their lives and their worries. They even hug her occasionally and these moments make everything worthwhile. She’s needed. Maybe alone and lonely, but still she’s needed.

Of course there’s her daughter Sophie. She telephoned on Thursday, out of the blue after months of silence. ‘I’ve missed you, Mum,’ she said. Such lovely words to hear. She should’ve accepted them, welcomed them with good grace, said she missed her too. But Norma was immediately defensive, remembering Sophie’s hurtful words the last time they met. ‘I suppose that’s the closest I’ll get to an apology,’ she snapped. Brisk words. Hard-faced words. But at least they’ve broken the ice, Norma thinks as she stubs out her cigarette. And for the first time she can remember, Sophie has made the first move.

Sophie rises from her sweaty bed eventually and wraps herself in the thick towelling robe she left to dry on a radiator days ago. She supposes it was days ago. The last few have merged into a bedfest of loathing: loathing of Sami, of Antonia, but mostly of herself. She’s slept a fair amount of the time and when she hasn’t slept, she’s tried to float above her thoughts with music and songs, or nursery rhymes almost forgotten. But it isn’t easy. She’s contemplated phoning her mum again and saying, ‘You’ll be pleased to know that I did it. Just like you said, I showed Sami the real me and it wasn’t a pretty sight.’ But she knows Norma will reply, ‘I told you so,’ and Sophie doesn’t need telling. ‘Selfish, manipulative, fat, ugly, stupid, stupid, stupid …’ Round and round the houses, like a teddy bear. It’s the stupid that gets to her the most. She’s allowed herself to lose control, to completely lose control and Sami has seen her ‘for what she is’.

It’s Sunday now, she supposes, but she gathers from her silent house that Sami isn’t there, that he hasn’t been there since storming out on Friday night. Yet as she pads down the stairs, she’s hopeful, pathetically optimistic that, by some small miracle, Sami will be in the lounge. That he’ll be sitting in his leather armchair, his feet up on the pouffe and pointing the remote control at the flatscreen television, channel hopping.

The lounge is empty, the broken whisky glass on the carpet accusatory. Sophie slumps down in Sami’s empty chair, picks up the remote and flicks, only stopping at an advert in which an actress assures her in treacle tones that a delicious-looking roast dinner with all the trimmings ‘isn’t just food’. She thinks for only a moment, reaches for the telephone and punches in the number. She isn’t just hungry, she’s starving. She’s bored too, she needs a distraction. Norma answers on the third ring as always if she’s in. ‘Brilliant, you’re not on a shift today, Mum. Please say you’ve cooked a Sunday roast for the boys and have some meat left to make a sandwich for your baby girl?’

It’s cold and lightly raining outside. Sophie doesn’t know why that surprises her, but she trots through the gate to the residents’ car park, climbs in the car and puts on the radio. The journey takes less than ten minutes, yet still she flicks through every channel before finding a tune that she likes. When the song finally ends, she takes a deep breath and puts on her brave face. She’s covered it in thick make-up. Her teeth and hair are brushed and she’s wearing a T-shirt without her boobs on display and black leggings that are actually clean.

‘Hello, Mum!’ she says, bright and breezy at Norma’s front door, as though she visits every week. ‘I’m ravenous. Where’s that sandwich?’

She sits on the pub stool at the tiny breakfast bench like she did as a girl, her legs plenty long enough not to swing these days. ‘Stop kicking the wall, Sophie. It makes marks,’ she recalls her mother saying, over and over when she was a child. She wonders vaguely if the scuff marks are still there, hidden, like she’s hiding the thrust and the race of her heart.

Eating quickly, she bolts down the sandwich. It must be over a day, more even, since she ate anything and she wonders if she’s lost any weight. Every cloud. Then she looks around, taking in her surroundings, noticing for the first time that her childhood home hasn’t changed at all. There’s only Mum these days, Dad long departed to his bachelor pad in Preston. Her hairy brothers outstayed their welcome by a few years, but left home eventually. She supposes her mum must get bored, lonely, even.

‘Another?’ Norma says, her eyes on Sophie’s face, sandwich already prepared.

Sophie nods and takes the plate. The floury bap has been dipped in pork dripping, replacing any lost weight, but she doesn’t care. The food tastes sublime and by the time she’s stuffed full, she feels as though she’s been plugged in and charged, high almost, ready for the next challenge.