Beneath the Skin(91)

Sophie continues to sit in the car, still not ready to move. Her breathing has deepened and her heartbeat has slowed but the anxiety is still there like a knife in her chest. Rejection, rejection, that fear of rejection. She tries to focus on her therapist’s advice: ‘Reality check, Sophie. What’s the worst that can happen?’

She had loathed the therapist, naturally. She sat in stubborn silence for most of the first session.

‘The only remotely good thing I can say about her is that she hasn’t got a beard,’ she said to Norma on returning home. ‘I’m not going again.’

But a combination of self-will she didn’t know she possessed, and Norma’s face, drove her back. Then once she started to speak, to explain it all from the beginning, she found that she couldn’t stop.

‘You say that you love him, you say you miss him. Why haven’t you gone back to Sami?’

‘I’m afraid.’

‘Afraid of what?’

She thought about the answer for a long time. Where to begin? I’m afraid of losing him. I’m not as young or as slim or as pretty as the other girls. He’ll hate me when he knows that I can’t give him a baby, she thought. She settled on rejection, she supposed that was the crux.

‘I’m afraid of rejection. Really afraid.’

‘How do you know he’ll reject you?’ the therapist asked.

It was a fair point. Sophie didn’t know, she didn’t know anything. She assumed all sorts. Her mind had been inundated with assumptions for a long time now. Assumptions and paranoia and anxiety which she’d gratefully drowned in chilled Chablis.

‘Would it be fair to say that it was only ever temporary drowning?’

Sophie started. She must have said the words out loud. Or perhaps the therapist was very good after all.

‘What would be a more permanent death, Sophie? For all those assumptions?’

She shuffled in her chair, feeling like a school kid, afraid of getting the answer wrong. ‘To know?’ she ventured. ‘To actually know?’

The beep of a text message rouses Sophie from thought. She lifts her head and looks out of the car windscreen. A passer-by turns her head and stares. She looks confident, Sophie thinks. A young woman in a short suit with long legs, wavy hair, slim and young, without a care.

Sophie sighs, wondering what happened to the forthright girl she once was, the one who would head into battle, fearless, brave and strong.

‘Perhaps it’s because you care too much. Or perhaps you need good on your side to go into battle,’ her mum had said yesterday.

Norma is probably right on both counts, but Sophie hasn’t acknowledged it. During her long stay, she’s discovered her mother is right most of the time and it doesn’t make for good fellowship. But on the quiet, despite Antonia’s assurance, if things work out, she’s decided to confess everything to Sami. To say sorry and come clean about the miscarried baby, the infection, the infertility and the lies. In a strange way, she’ll then have good on her side.

Sami is upstairs making the bed with worrying precision when the doorbell rings.

‘Jemima, the champagne. Of course,’ he panics. He should’ve left it outside. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

He walks slowly down the stairs, his heart thumping. Fucking hell, he’ll have to have a word with Charlie about a restraining order at this rate. It’s a bloody nightmare.

He opens the door and she’s there.

‘Avon calling!’ she says with a smile. ‘Got your apology.’

For a moment he’s frozen, dumbstruck. ‘That was quick. I only sent it five minutes ago.’

She puts her feet together and bends her knees, air hostess style. ‘I think you’ll find we run an exceptional service.’

He stares at her face, her beautiful face. She’s smiling. The hugest of smiles. Thank you, God, thank you. He grins and he grins, standing there on his doorstep, like a laughing idiot.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me in, dear husband?’

He scoops her up and carries her into the house, then puts her down in the lounge, holding on to her tightly.

‘I was a lot thinner the last time you did that,’ Sophie says into his chest.

Sami pulls her away and holds her by the shoulders. He looks at her face, imperfect but beautiful. ‘I love you just the way you are, Sophie.’

‘Are you pleased to see me, Sami?’ she asks, her voice a husky croak.

He holds her again. ‘You can’t begin to know how much. Don’t you ever go away again, Sophie Richards. Do you hear me?’

Sophie’s eyes are closed. She’s cupped by Sami’s body, sweaty and warm in their bed. His arms are around her waist and every so often he lifts a hand to play with strands of her hair.

She practised her lines in the car. ‘There’s something I have to confess.’ It’s going to be difficult, she knows. He’ll be very, very angry. ‘I wasn’t ever pregnant.’ He’ll shout and pace. She’ll need an excuse. ‘You should have asked me to marry you sooner. Then I wouldn’t have lied, Sami.’

But of course it started earlier than that, when she met his family, his sisters, all those bloody children. Not a lie as such, but an omission.

‘Your sisters have so many kids, Sami.’

‘Yeah, bet we will too, one day. Won’t that be great?’