Second Skin Read online

  She switched on more lights in the hall, wondering how to keep herself busy. She ought to sort out Gerry’s clothes, but she couldn’t even bear to look at them. Or the stack of theatre programmes he had been collecting since the fifties. Andrew had cleared out all his other stuff, and Philip, John and Graham had already closed the business and found safer jobs elsewhere. She could hardly believe the speed of it. A company Gerry had taken ten years to build, dismantled in a month. The three reps were dead as well, in a sense. She had grown so used to them bustling in and out – Philip with his ginger hair, John invariably smoking, Graham’s booming voice. But you could hardly blame them for leaving a sinking ship, especially with the captain gone.

  She wandered down the hall to Gerry’s offices – once the dining-room and study. How bare the two rooms seemed, drawers empty, files denuded, desks without their usual clutter. Gerry had occupied the larger room while she worked in the smaller one as his assistant and receptionist, screening calls to protect him from time-wasters and doing the bulk of the paperwork. She sat down at her desk again, fiddling with a stray paper-clip. The room was deathly quiet. She was used to the whir of the printer, the judder of the fax machine, Gerry’s voice barking down the phone. She would never hear his voice again. The thought was like a stab from a knife. There were so many unbearable ‘nevers’. She would never wake in the morning to find him there beside her; never share another meal with him; never see him in her life again.

  She made herself get up. Impossible to sit there dwelling on such horrors. Gerry must come back. He must.

  She mooched into the sitting-room, which looked unnaturally clean and tidy. She had spring-cleaned it yesterday, at two AM – the first night she had been on her own in the house without Andrew and Antonia. The cards, though, she had left. But they couldn’t sit there for ever, with their infuriating stunted words. Sympathy. You felt sympathy when someone caught a cold or failed their driving test. Loss. You lost spectacles, or keys, or games of tennis. Yet it would be callous to throw them out. People had cared enough to send them. A few had added their own embarrassed messages beneath the printed words; promises of help, sometimes followed up with phone calls and visits. She was actually very fortunate.

  She opened the top sideboard-drawer. The cards could go in there until she had decided what to do with them. So many decisions, some she’d simply postponed. What to do with his shaving gear, the ancient razor and splayed-out brush which now seemed unbearably precious. Or the cache of old coins she had found in a tobacco tin, including the lucky sixpence given to him by an actor-friend on the first night of Macbeth. Lucky. She shuddered at the word.

  The drawer was full of tablecloths, so she opened the next one down and found another lot of cards – from the silver wedding. Someone must have stuffed them in there while she was at the hospital. She hadn’t even noticed they were gone. How grotesque, she thought, congratulations and condolences arriving within days of each other. She picked up the top one: a silver bow and a huge ‘25’, embossed in silk, looking iced and formal like the anniversary cake. They were going to keep the second cake for Christmas, but she didn’t ever want to see it again. Two was a mockery now. How could she have been so crass as to have seen those twos as her right: two sets of towels, two toothbrushes, two places at the table, a double bed? Now she was a one.

  A widow.

  Except widows were other people. And older than her, with grey hair and folded hands. Her hands were never still. She had caught Gerry’s resdessness and was constantly seeking things to do.

  As she closed the drawer and straightened up, she happened to glance in the mirror. She gasped. Gerry was there, behind her own reflection, smiling at her, clear in every detail. She wheeled round, to touch him, hold him, but her arms closed over nothing.

  She began to shake. She must be going mad. How on earth could her husband be there when she had seen his death certificate? She hadn’t actually read it. Andrew had brought it from the registrar, but she had thrust it back into his hands and stumbled into the kitchen, where she’d been preparing lunch for him. She had poured all her concentration into peeling, chopping, simmering, so that nothing else existed beyond the chopping-board and saucepan.

  The panic was returning. She sank down into Gerry’s chair, closed her eyes and let the wave break over her; accepting it, submitting, because she had no other choice.

  You’re all right, she kept repeating. You’ll be fine – just give it time.

  She gripped the chair’s cold leather arm. Gerry’s arm had rested there so often, his fingers drumming impatiently as he sat working on some problem.

  You’re not alone, she told herself. You’ve got lovely children, wonderful in-laws. You’re surrounded by kind people.

  So why did they all seem dead; the whole street deserted, the world stretching black and barren to infinity?

  She dragged herself out of the chair. Stupid to be so melodramatic. She might as well go back to bed for all the good she was doing down here. Yet she knew she would never sleep. She trudged upstairs and drifted into Kate’s old room, picking up the koala bear Kate had had since babyhood. ‘Poor thing,’ she whispered, ‘left all on your own.’

  Andrew’s room was next door – or Andrew and Antonia’s now. No shabby ragged bears there, only a magazine of Antonia’s lying on the bedside table. She took it into her own room and sat down with it on the stool. There was still no breath of air. The room was stifling and oppressive, as if all the day’s heat had accumulated here. The alarm clock said five past three. Time had changed, along with everything else. Widows’ time limped and crawled. She leafed through the magazine. Twos again. Everyone in couples: men and women, hand in hand, smiling from advertisements or illustrating stories. Once upon a time …

  Suddenly she sat bolt upright. There was a spider by the bed. Huge and black, with long hairy legs. She clutched the edge of the stool, not daring to take her eyes off it. Suppose it scuttled towards her, ran across her bare foot?

  Gerry had always dealt with spiders. He actually liked the things. Once, at drama school, he’d had to improvise being a spider and had spent hours observing them. The fascination had lasted, developed into a bond of fellow-feeling. ‘One of your friends!’ she used to joke if she came across a spider in the house, although he knew quite well that she detested them. He would remove them for her, carefully and considerately, with the aid of an inverted jar, and deposit them gently outside. But he wasn’t here to do that. And the great thing was advancing towards her – all legs, grotesquely ugly. She couldn’t kill it. Gerry would never forgive her. She held her breath in terror, willing it to stop moving. And all at once, uncannily, it did stop. She wondered if spiders had minds; whether they could think, or feel; respond. For all she knew, it too could have lost its mate. Death was so random – a careless foot, a weak heart.

  She wiped her sweaty hands on her nightdress, watching the spider all the time. It was alone, like her, sleepless, like her, and perhaps just as scared as she was. After all, however big it looked, she was a giant in comparison – a towering monster which could crush it underfoot, destroy it in an instant She thought so much about death these days, the millions of deaths throughout history jumbled in her mind: young men like Andrew bleeding in the trenches, medieval peasants dying in the plague, cavemen savaged by wild animals. She had cried for all of them. And for the dead bird she’d found in the garden yesterday. Even the dead plant in Gerry’s office. It was ridiculous, excessive, but she seemed to feel pain more intensely, especially the pain of weak and tiny things. Like sparrows. Spiders.

  She eyed the creature again. It was only inches away, yet she found she could actually look at it without shuddering.

  ‘If … if Gerry was here,’ she stammered, ‘he’d probably talk to you. He used to do that sometimes, you know, just to wind me up. He’d tell you what a handsome chap you are and what fantastic long legs you’ve got.’

  She was using Gerry’s intonation, even his teasing voice. And
suddenly it dawned on her that Gerry must have sent the spider. He had seen how panicky she was without Andrew and Antonia, so he’d arranged for one of his ‘friends’ to come instead.

  She smiled at the absurd idea, but already she felt better. She might even find the courage to switch off the lights and get back into bed. At least it would be more comfortable than perching on a stool all night.

  ‘Listen,’ she told the spider, ‘I’m going to get up now, but don’t be frightened, will you? I won’t hurt you, I promise. I only want to turn the lights off, okay?’

  She stood up very cautiously and tiptoed past the spider. She would feel a whole lot safer if she put it under ajar, but it might die without air and she couldn’t face another death. Besides, it hadn’t moved since she’d spoken to it, so perhaps Gerry was looking after her and would make sure it stayed there motionless, right on through the night.

  ‘Good lad,’ she whispered, wondering if it was male. Gerry called them all ‘good lad’, regardless. She climbed wearily into bed and turned off both the bedside lamps.

  Even if she didn’t sleep, she and Gerry’s messenger could keep each other company.

  Chapter Three

  ‘Would you care to take a seat in here, Mrs Jones?’

  Catherine followed the receptionist into a small but elegant waiting-room. Was she still Mrs Jones? The name – like so much else – was Gerry’s more than hers. The family was mostly his, and their circle of acquaintances, and the business, of course, and even the house (in the sense that he had chosen it while she was still up north). She had never really liked Jones as a surname. Gerry Jones had a certain jaunty ring to it, but Catherine Jones was just plain ordinary.

  ‘Mr Ashby won’t be long. Can I offer you a cup of coffee?’

  ‘No thank you.’ She was anxious to get the meeting over. Accountants made her nervous at the best of times, and Howard Ashby, senior partner at Ashby Storr, had sounded distinctly daunting on the phone. She had never met him before. He had been away for most of August and it was his assistant who had gone through Gerry’s papers.

  ‘I’ll let you know when Mr Ashby’s free.’ The receptionist gave her a motherly smile.

  Catherine smiled back dutifully. She was already accustomed to the fact that widows were treated like nursery-school children. Or shunned like Kate’s untouchables.

  She deliberately avoided the sun, which was forcing its way through the window, threatening her with its gloating golden tentacles. Yesterday she had sat for hours in its heat, hoping it might scorch away her grief, transform her pale and vulnerable skin into a tough brown hide which would stop her feeling everything so acutely. But all she had achieved was acutely painful sunburn.

  She shrugged at her own stupidity and stood looking at the magazines and newspapers fanned out meticulously on the table, as if you weren’t meant to actually read them, just admire the neat array. She chose the Daily Telegraph, merely because it was at the end of the row, and sat down with it in a stiff-backed chair. The centre pages showed pictures of the heat-wave: office-workers sunbathing in Hyde Park; half-naked tourists queuing for ice-cream. People shouldn’t die in the summer. It was supposed to be happy – holiday time. She scanned the statistics in the text: the hottest summer since … The driest August for …

  The coldest, saddest August for quarter of a century.

  She laid the Telegraph aside and stared down at the carpet: grey squiggles on maroon. The furniture was expensive repro – something Gerry loathed. ‘If you can’t afford antiques,’ he would say, ‘then buy honest junk till you can.’ They owned some of each: bargains they’d picked up in the early days and kept for sentimental reasons, and some really nice Victorian stuff, bought more recently. Their house was bursting at the seams, but this room seemed bare and dead. And the flower arrangement on the table reminded her of the funeral: regimented waxen blooms with no smell to them, no character.

  She picked up the paper again, determined not to think about that terrible occasion. The long delay had upset her more than anything – ‘fully booked’ sounded more like a restaurant or hairdresser’s than a crematorium: desperate corpses queuing at the door for a blow-dry or a meal.

  ‘Mr Ashby will see you now, Mrs Jones.’

  Instinctively she smoothed her skirt; put an embarrassed hand up to her sore, sun-reddened face. She was ushered into an oppressive-looking office, with tobacco-coloured walls and heavy curtains shrouding both the windows. No chance of the sun gaining entry here.

  ‘Ah, Mrs Jones. How good of you to come at such short notice.’

  The voice was plummy, the handshake firm. And Mr Ashby was thin: a tall and angular man, with sparse grey hair and a finely sculpted face. Mrs Ashby probably kept him on a rigid diet, as Antonia did with Andrew – a low-fat diet to reduce the risk of heart attacks.

  ‘Do sit down – that’s it. I’m so sorry I was away at the time of Mr Jones’s death, but may I take this chance to express my deepest sympathy.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He pulled his chair closer to the desk and opened the folder in front of him. ‘Well, I’m glad to see there are no problems with the will and that probate has been sorted out.’

  She nodded. She and Gerry had made their wills a few years back. They had treated it as something of a joke, feeling they were far too young to take the matter seriously. They had each bequeathed everything to the other, which seemed the simplest solution and dispensed with the need for lawyers.

  Mr Ashby cleared his throat and removed a sheaf of papers from the folder. ‘Now, as you know, Mr Lloyd has been going through your late husband’s affairs …’

  Late husband. Gerry was still her husband. She glanced at the photo on Mr Ashby’s desk, showing a wife and two daughters with peachy complexions and perfect teeth. She suddenly ached to be Mrs Ashby – her skin not red and sore, her husband lying close to her each night.

  ‘… So you see, Mrs Jones, things aren’t as straightforward as we might have hoped.’

  Lord! What had he been saying? She hadn’t heard a word. Her mind wandered so, these days. She spent too much time with Gerry, even now, six weeks after … ‘I’m sorry, Mr Ashby, I didn’t quite catch what you said.’

  ‘Well, you remember the second mortgage your late husband took out in 1986?’

  She fixed her eyes on the expanse of mahogany desk, forcing herself to concentrate. ‘Yes. Sixty thousand pounds. It was for a special pension plan.’

  Mr Ashby picked up a paperclip, studied it a moment, then put it down again. ‘Mm, I’m afraid it wasn’t a pension plan.’

  ‘What d’you mean? Gerry and I discussed it. I remember it distinctly. Things were going well then, and we felt we could afford to make …’ Her voice faltered to a stop. Mr Ashby was looking slightly awkward, deliberately avoiding her eyes. He had placed the tips of his fingers together and was frowning down at them.

  ‘No, Mrs Jones, the money was actually invested in a theatre company.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A small fringe company. It was run by one of Mr Jones’s old friends – someone he’d known at drama school, apparently.’

  ‘But I don’t understand. Are you sure? I mean, he told me …’ Gerry wouldn’t lie to her. They had always shared the important decisions, been open about everything. ‘Anyway, it seems such a crazy thing to do. D … do you know more about it? Where was it based? And what sort of company was it?’

  Mr Ashby slowly unlatched his fingers. ‘Well, they appear to have set it up in Manchester, in a room above a pub. And as far as I can gather, it was rather avant garde. They planned to do modern-dress Shakespeare, interspersed with contemporary plays, and take the productions on tour throughout the Pennines.’

  She stared at him incredulously – he must have got it wrong.

  ‘It’s true such projects can, of course, be precarious,’ he continued in a maddeningly unhurried tone. ‘But this proposition seemed relatively sound. Several experienced actors were involved, who’d agree
d to work for next to nothing in order to keep the costs down. And there were one or two other backers – solid local people who felt there was an educational need for such an enterprise. And Mr Jones obviously thought he’d get a return on his investment.’

  ‘That’s madness!’ she burst out. ‘I can’t believe he’d be so gullible.’

  ‘Yes, unfortunately, the venture folded.’ Mr Ashby leaned back in his chair, as if to put more distance between them. ‘And I’m afraid that means that when you come to sell the house, the proceeds will be much less than you expected. I mean with such a substantial amount outstanding on the second mortgage.’

  ‘But I’m not going to sell the house,’ she retorted, angry with him as much as with Gerry. ‘I’ve decided to hand it over to my son. He’s looking for a new place, so it seems an ideal solution.’

  She had broached the idea yesterday, when the three of them were sitting in the garden having tea. (She had cursed herself for getting out four cups.) Antonia had jumped at the offer – she had always liked the house and hadn’t seen anything else remotely suitable. And Andrew was delighted at the prospect of living in a fair-sized place without the financial strain, not to mention cutting out the hassle of estate agents. She had already thought of how she’d divide the house: she would have the top floor – the cosy attic floor, which could easily be made self-contained. The last thing she wanted was to get in their way, or be any sort of burden. But with them living below, she wouldn’t feel so frighteningly alone. And she would be there on hand to babysit, once they decided to have children.