Beneath the Skin(78)

Strength, not weakness, he sighs inwardly. As simple as that. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

‘Daddy’s sorry. It’s only a bump,’ Mike says as he rubs Hannah’s knee. She’s still crying, though from the scrunch of her pretty face it looks like an effort to squeeze out any more tears. He can see Rachel in his periphery vision, desperate to laugh. And it was funny. Rachel and Hannah were on one side of the see-saw and he was on the other. He bumped them about and Hannah squealed with pleasure. Until she let go of the handle and fell off.

The highs and lows of life, he thinks as he wipes Hannah’s face with a hanky. Just a breath in between.

‘Will some sweets help, do you think?’ he asks, offering up the miracle cure.

‘It will have to be a lot of sweets, Daddy,’ Hannah replies sagely as Rachel clenches her fist in a silent ‘result!’

Hannah rushes ahead in the direction of sugar. Her cheeks are flushed with excitement. But Rachel hangs back again and takes Mike’s hand. ‘Dad …’ she begins, her face looking uncertain.

‘Yup?’

Rachel takes a deep breath. ‘Is Mum pregnant again?’

Mike stops walking immediately and calls Hannah back from her race to the corner shop. ‘No. I don’t think so. What makes you say that?’

Her face flushes and her eyes flicker. ‘Oh, it’s just … She’s like she was last time. She’s biting my head off over nothing. She doesn’t look normal and she’s being sick.’ Rachel looks down at her feet, then kicks away a ruptured tennis ball. ‘Sorry, Dad. Have I said the wrong thing?’

Mike shakes his head. He takes Rachel’s hand again and holds it firmly. ‘No, of course not.’

He feels winded and foolish, but he tries for a smile. ‘OK, sweet shop. I’ve got a fiver in my pocket. What damage can you girls do to it?’

‘Sorry, Mum,’ Sophie says with shivery teeth.

Sophie stands at Norma’s front door rubbing her arms from the cold. She’s wearing no make-up and her hair looks in need of a good wash, but her eyes are clear. She looks like Sophie this time.

Norma holds out her arms. It’s strange, she thinks, it’s strange how you mull over things and ruminate, waiting for a ‘sorry’ to come, a moment when, inwardly at least, you can crow and gloat and say ‘finally!’ But when it comes and you hear the word aloud, you only want to say sorry, too.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, too, love. Come in and get warm. I’ll call work and say I won’t be in this afternoon.’

Norma hasn’t baked a cake in months, but she’s making one now, the chocolate roulade her kids always love. Sophie watches from the kitchen table, mostly silent but talking occasionally about Barry. She tells Norma that he has a young moody girlfriend, that he wasn’t pleased to see her, that he didn’t even ask why Sophie was there. That he only thinks of himself.

The crowing and the gloating should be even sweeter, but it isn’t.

‘Have you decided what to do? About Antonia. About Sami?’ Norma eventually asks.

Sophie puts her hands to her face and shakes her head. Her nails are badly bitten, the tips of her fingers red and raw. ‘No. I don’t know what to do. Everything feels hopeless.’

‘That isn’t true, love. Believe it or not, I do understand.’

‘Do you, Mum? I’ve messed up so badly.’

Norma sighs. She’s messed up, too. When Sophie was only just nineteen she was brought by ambulance to the hospital with severe abdominal pains. She had chlamydia, untreated chlamydia, possibly for years. Her daughter’s pelvis was inflamed with a severe infection. Ironically, it was the same hospital where Norma worked. She was an experienced, respected nurse and was working on the geriatric ward when Sophie arrived. An experienced and respected nurse who’d seen nothing amiss with her only daughter, even though they lived under the same roof.

‘You think I’m a slag, don’t you?’ Sophie accused her with angry eyes when Norma appeared at her hospital bed, breathing heavily from running and from fright. But Norma didn’t reply. She was fighting the urge not to shout. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Am I such an ogre? Do you hate me so much? I would have helped you, of course I would!’ So she backed away, saying nothing, the words, ‘You’re her mother. A bad mother. You should have known, you should have known,’ resounding through her head.

‘How about sleeping on it?’ she says now, placing a hand on Sophie’s pale cheek. ‘The sheets are clean, we have cake and I’ve even put on the central heating.’

Sophie smiles. Only a little, but it’s still a smile and smiles are hard when there seems to be no way out. ‘Thanks, Mum,’ she says.

Sami has finally finished tidying the house. He hasn’t cleaned or dusted, particularly, as he doesn’t notice the dirt. But he hates untidiness. Sophie is untidy, very untidy. But he doesn’t hate her. Well, not any more. The day of David’s funeral was fuelled by anger and hurt. She had no regard for his feelings, for the obvious humiliation, the knowing looks, the prying questions and the whispers her absence at the funeral would cause. For Sami that’s the worst: humiliation and shame. Even now he occasionally recalls the taunting and teasing at school. ‘Fat boy, wheezy boy, blobby. Mummy’s little pig.’ That little boy still sits with him occasionally. He wishes he’d go away forever.