Beneath the Skin(67)

‘Then don’t, love. You don’t have to do anything.’

‘For fuck’s sake!’ Sami hisses under his breath. He’s sitting at his desk thinking about a woman. Again. For a moment he visualises his father limping into the garden. ‘Bloody women! God, make me better, please. Get me back to work!’ There’s an iota of empathy for a moment, but Sami likes women and this particular woman is his wife.

He doodles on the pad, killing time until some building plans arrive. He likes to be methodical, to complete one task before moving on to the next.

He counted the wine bottles this morning and checked the level of the one in the fridge. Sophie doesn’t appear to be drinking. Maybe she’s improved her hiding technique over the last few days, but there’s no doubt that she’s retreated into herself. She isn’t talking. There’s no general chit-chat, sarcastic comments or shouting. Yet on the other hand, she isn’t being unfriendly either. He doesn’t think she knows about Jemima, but her behaviour is decidedly odd. He puts his pen down and sighs. The truth is that he doesn’t know how to handle it. Sophie has always been Sophie. Sophie being something other than Sophie isn’t a problem he’s encountered before.

There’s a banging noise and some laughter through his open office door. It interrupts Sami’s doodling, his neat sketches of three-dimensional boxes increasing in size. It’s unusual to hear the buzz of the office. He’s objected to the suggestion of open plan many times, valuing his private line and his privacy. But he’s having a hot-under-the-collar moment, a rare feeling he doesn’t like. Jemima has strolled into his office three times today. Each time she closed the door behind her, her face proprietorial. Then she perched her neat bum on his desk ‘for a chat’. Too cosy, too comfortable, too near. It makes him feel trapped.

‘No need for that. I’m on the pill, I won’t get pregnant,’ she said the last time they met, as he carefully rolled on a too-tight condom. No need? Don’t I bloody know it, he thought. But he always uses condoms with casual conquests, he always has, he doesn’t want an STD. He could catch warts or chlamydia, get discharge or worse. The thought brings him out in goosebumps.

‘This has just arrived for you, Mr Richards.’ The sweaty office junior inches into the office, handing Sami a large beige cylinder. Sami nods his thanks. Now he can get on with the task in hand, put the women aside.

‘Should I close the door, Mr Richards?’

‘No, that’s fine,’ Sami says with a grimace. ‘Definitely leave it open.’

Olivia’s small hands are shaking as she punches the number into the telephone. Actually shaking. It’s ridiculous, the whole thing is ridiculous.

‘Can I make an appointment to see the doctor, please?’

She’s met with the usual bored inquisition from the surgery’s receptionist. For whom? Date of birth? Postcode? Usual doctor? Hold the line while I complain to my colleague about some random biddy who didn’t say thanks. ‘Probably because she’s traumatised, deaf or dying,’ Olivia wants to yell, but manages to hold her tongue.

‘Dr Culcheth on the twenty-sixth at four pm?’ Finally.

Olivia thinks of today’s date. ‘That’s in three weeks!’ she says far too loudly.

‘Well, you didn’t say it was an emergency. Is it an emergency?’

Is it an emergency? Olivia has no idea. She was on the pill. She took it late once, maybe twice. In her head, though, it’s definitely an emergency.

‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

‘Then you should have called before ten.’

‘What if the fucking emergency occurs after ten?’ Olivia wants to ask. But she’s using her reasonable voice. It takes up the rest of Olivia’s yearly supply. She says, ‘please’ and ‘I would be so grateful’ and ‘that’s so kind of you to make an exception’.

‘Just this once, Mrs Turner. A doctor will call you back later today or tomorrow to arrange an appointment.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ She doesn’t say it out loud, at least she doesn’t think so.

She clock-watches for the first hour, not listening to You and Yours on the radio, not emptying the dishwasher or sweeping the floor. Then she gives up doing nothing, leaves the oppressive house and walks up the cul-de-sac towards the shops. Hannah has a party at the weekend. Olivia needs to buy a gift for a child who has everything. Inevitably, as fate would have it, the callback from the surgery comes as she stands at the counter of the sparse and expensive local toy shop in the precinct.

It isn’t a doctor she knows. He hasn’t read her notes. He sounds very young. His first question is, ‘Have you done a pregnancy test?’

Olivia manages to resist the inevitable ‘What the fuck do you think?’ but the conversation goes badly anyway. There are dates she can’t give. Details she doesn’t want to share with the other lunchtime precinct shoppers. When was her last period? How long has she known? Has she spoken to her husband? And other pointless questions. Olivia finds herself shouting outside the cluttered fruit stall and by then she knows that she’s lost the argument.

‘I don’t think you’re ready to see me yet, Mrs Turner,’ the doctor says smoothly. ‘You need time to talk to your husband, to reflect. Let’s make an appointment for a week’s time. Then we can have a calm and reasonable chat.’