Beneath the Skin(74)

‘So you two have met, then?’ he asks with a grin.

There’s a flicker of emotion from the girl’s eyes. ‘Zo?,’ he says. ‘This is my daughter, Sophie. I hope that you’ve been looking after her.’

Zo?’s mouth opens for a moment before she recovers herself with a shrug and says that she had better be going.

‘She reminds me of you,’ Barry says when she’s gone.

They sit in silence for a while, listening to a muffled drumbeat from the adjoining flat.

‘Are you going to talk to me now that you’re here, Sophie? You could have phoned and given me some warning.’

‘I thought you were on nights.’

‘I was the last time we spoke. But that was a long time ago, Soph.’

Sophie looks at her father and sighs. It was a mistake to turn up unannounced. She feels deflated and tired. ‘I thought you’d be pleased to see me,’ she says, not able to keep the pique from her voice.

Sophie despises her own neediness. She badly wants a drink. An alcoholic drink. It took a great deal of effort not to shove the girl away from the fridge earlier and drink straight from the wine bottle she glimpsed next to the milk.

As though reading her mind Barry stands and opens the fridge door. ‘Course I’m pleased to see you,’ he says absently. ‘Are you hungry?’ He passes the wine bottle to Sophie. ‘You crack that open and I’ll make us an omelette.’

Olivia is sapped. She’s fed up with putting on a face that isn’t hers. She’s tired of fighting the constant nausea and the brutal rounds of ugly thoughts in her head.

Bad, bad mother, she thinks as she lies on the soft double bed in the dark. Hannah was clingy after her bath. She cried and demanded another story. She wanted milk, she wanted Daddy, even Rachel. She wanted anything other than to close her eyes and bloody well sleep.

I want to bang my head against the wall. I want to scream! Olivia thought, but instead she asked Rachel if she wouldn’t mind reading Hannah another story and Rachel nodded, her silent eyes still reproachful.

‘I’m sorry about shouting in the car,’ Olivia had said when they arrived home.

‘Don’t worry about it, I’m getting used to it,’ Rachel replied. And there it was again. Bad, bad mother. Bad person, bad wife.

Olivia yearns to fall into an empty sleep as the pillow cradles her head. But her mind isn’t that kind. It’s still playing out the imaginary conversation she’ll have with the doctor when she sees him next week.

‘I’ve had time to think. I want a termination.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m at the end of my tether. I don’t feel I could cope if I had another miscarriage.’

Olivia rocks her head. She doesn’t look like a woman who can’t cope, and besides, she’s never sought help or medication for depression or stress. It’s really a non-starter.

‘I don’t want a baby. I want a life,’ her mind tries. That sounds much better because it’s the truth, or at least part of it, but it’s hardly grounds for an abortion.

‘Have you discussed this with your husband, Mrs Turner?’

And Olivia will have to reply, ‘No.’

Then doctor will say, ‘Can I ask why you haven’t told him?’

Ah, there’s the rub. She turns and presses her face firmly into the pillow as her mind reasons and pokes.

‘It might not be his,’ her mind soothes.

‘But if it is, there’d be no mistake,’ it needles her in reply.

God knows what happened. God knows what insanity made her change her mind about Sami.

‘What on earth do all these women see in him, Mike?’ she used to ask.

‘Good looking, confident, well off?’ he’d reply.

‘But he’s so conceited and shallow. There’s nothing beneath his pretty face. He really irritates me.’

‘I think he’s got that message, Olivia!’

She looked anywhere but at Sami during the funeral service. She hung back with Rachel in the church, fearful of catching his eye, terrified that by some strange instinct he would look at her and know. Know that she’s carrying his child. But after the church, when they congregated at White Gables, there was no escape. No escape from his hot gaze across the kitchen. No escape as he approached her with a smile. Tall, lithe and sexual. She’d been greedy and abandoned and she hated him for it.

‘Can I see you, Olivia?’ he said. ‘I really miss you. Come on, one more time. It was great, wasn’t it?’

She wonders what her face looked like as she said the words in reply. Did it betray her terror, her loathing, her regret? She touched his arm and tried to smile. To be the Olivia she used to be. ‘Please don’t, Sami,’ she whispered. ‘Please leave it there and let’s stay friends.’





CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO


Mike bends down to tie the laces on his trainers. The old house is silent, unusually so.

‘The girls are still out for the count,’ he whispers to Olivia as she stirs. ‘Go back to sleep. I’m off for a run. I’ll wake you when I get back.’

The morning is misty and cold, a slight drizzle in the air. Mike stretches for a minute, then lifts his hood and starts to run past the other Victorian homes in his cul-de-sac and then on to the main street with its assortment of small cafes, drink houses and take-outs. It’s strange, not having the black dog with him. A void, in a way. Perhaps that is why he needed to fill it, he thinks.