Beneath the Skin

by Nicci French

  “Did it end badly?”

  I thought of sitting opposite Stuart in a café near Camden Lock. I gave a sad laugh.

  “It just fizzled out, really. Anyway, the last I heard he was hitchhiking across Australia. You can cross him off the list of suspects.”

  Carthy gave a loud click of his ballpoint pen and stood up.

  “DS Aldham will help you fill out a case form and take a brief statement.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I've told you.”

  “I mean, to catch him?”

  “If anything else happens, give Aldham a ring and we'll take it from there. Oh, and take sensible precautions in your private life for a while.”

  “I told you, I've got a boyfriend.”

  He nodded curtly and turned away, muttering something I couldn't hear under his breath.

  EIGHT

  I was late arriving at school. Even later than I'd said. When I walked out of the police station, I felt so tired I thought my legs would give way beneath me. My skin felt dusty, gritty, under my cotton dress. My scalp itched. My mouth was ashy. My shoulders were full of vicious little knots, bubbles of stress. When I walked out into the glare of the sunlight, my eyes, which already felt sunken back into their sockets, throbbed painfully. I screwed them up against the dazzle and fumbled in my bag for my dark glasses. Damn. I'd forgotten them. And my vitamin tablets. And I had only one more cigarette left. For a moment, I thought of going back to the flat and having a bath, cleaning my teeth, pulling myself together, before going to school. Or even just going to one of the nearby parks and sitting on the yellowing patches of grass by the side of a pond, watching the ducks, closing my eyes.

  Instead I bought two packs of cigarettes, a cheap pair of sunglasses from a roadside stall, and then guiltily slunk into a greasy-spoon café. I ordered two cups of black coffee and a poached egg on toast. I ate slowly, watching people pass outside the smeary window. A Rasta in a yellow cap. A teenage couple, arm in arm, who stopped to kiss every couple of steps. A group of Japanese tourists with cameras and wearing jerseys. Surely they must be lost. A man carrying a baby in a sling; I could just see its tufty head. A woman screaming at the minute, red-faced child at her side. An Indian woman draped in a scarlet sari, picking her way in delicate sandals through dog shit and litter. A flock of schoolchildren carrying swimming bags, herded across the blaring, fume-filled road by a harassed young woman who reminded me of me. A cyclist in fluorescent yellow shorts, head down, swerving in and out of the traffic on thin wheels. A woman with a wide-brimmed hat, a bosom like a shelf, and a tiny poodle, who looked as if she had stepped into the wrong story.

  I had stepped into the wrong story. He could be looking at me at this moment. Maybe I could see him, if I knew where to look. What had I done, that this should happen to me? I lit a cigarette, drank my cooling, bitter coffee. I was so late now a few more minutes wouldn't make any difference.

  Before catching my bus up Kingsland Road, I passed a phone box and I had the stupidest impulse to phone my mother. My mother who hadn't been alive for twelve years. I just wanted her to tell me everything was going to be okay.

  Pauline was politely chilly with me when I arrived. She told me a man named Fred had called. He had asked me to phone him on his mobile during the day. She didn't seem happy to be collecting messages from a boyfriend for an absent member of staff. The primary assistant who was sitting in for me had the children in plastic pinafores, mixing up paints with thick brushes. So I told them they all had to draw a portrait of themselves to put up on the wall before parents' evening. Raj painted himself with a pale pink face and brown hair, and legs sticking straight out of his chin. Eric, who never smiles, gave himself a red mouth that stretched from ear to ear. Stacey spilled water all over Tara's efforts and Tara hit her in the neck. Damian started crying, tears dripping onto the paper. I took him into the home corner and asked him what was wrong, and he told me that everyone picked on him, called him sissy, pushed him over on the playground, locked him in the toilet. I looked at him: a pale and snuffly creature with clothes that hung off his skinny frame and dirty ears.

  Fred wanted me to come and watch him play five-a-side football that evening. They played every Wednesday, he said—a regular lads' feature. He was cheerful and laid-back, as if nothing had happened last night. He told me he was deadheading roses in suburbia, but he kept thinking about my body.

  Pauline told me I had to have my literacy-hour material ready by the end of the week and did I think that was possible. Oh yes, I replied, unconvincingly, head throbbing. I usually buy a roll with cheese and tomato at the sandwich bar on the way to school, but today I'd forgotten, so while the other teachers ate healthy sandwiches and fruit, I had boiled potatoes and baked beans from the obese dinner lady, followed by steamed pudding and custard. Comfort food: It made me feel better.

  I made the children write the letter f over and over again, following the dotted lines on their work sheets. F for fox and frog and fun. “And fuck,” said four-year-old Barny, an August baby and youngest in the class, to the hoots of his admiring friends.

  At circle time, we discussed bullying. I didn't look at Damian when I talked about everyone trying to care for each other, and all the children gazed at me with their cruel and innocent eyes. He sat quite near me, picking bits of fluff out of the rug, eyes swimming behind his thick glasses.

  “Better?” I asked him as they left for the day.

  “Mmm,” he mumbled, head hanging. I saw that his neck was grubby; nails dirty. I felt suddenly irritated and angry with him, and wanted to shake him out of his hopelessness. Maybe that's how I was being, I thought: Maybe I was letting myself be bullied.

  It's amazing how much noise ten men can make. Not just shouting at each other, but grunting, screaming, howling, yelling, hitting the ground with a thwack, hurtling into each other, kicking each other's shins so I thought I could hear the bones crack. I was amazed not to see blood gushing, bodies on stretchers, fisticuffs. But at the end of the hour they were all sweaty, smelly, fine; clapping each other round the shoulders. I felt a bit stupid, standing on the sidelines and watching them like part of the fan club. There were four other women there, as well, who obviously knew each other, were part of some kind of group who went out every Wednesday to watch their men getting pulped. Clio, Annie, and Laura, and someone whose name I never quite got and didn't like to ask again. They asked me how I'd met Fred, and wasn't he a charmer, and were friendly in a restrained kind of way that made me think there was a different girl most weeks and they didn't want to commit themselves. I guess I was meant to have cheered Fred on, as he rushed past me in a hot blur, eyes glazed, yelling something, but I couldn't quite bring myself to do it.

  Afterward, he came over and draped an arm round my shoulder and gave me a kiss.

  “You're sweaty.”

  I didn't mind that much, but on the other hand I didn't intrinsically take huge pleasure in it in some primitive hormonal way.

  “Mmmm.” He nuzzled me. “And you're all cool and lovely.”

  After work, I'd been to Louise's flat to have a bath, and she'd lent me a pair of gray cotton trousers and a sleeveless knitted top to put on. I hadn't wanted to go back to my place. “Coming for a drink?”

  “Sure.” The last thing my body needed was a drink, but I wanted company. As long as I was with other people, in a public place, I felt safe. Just the thought of it getting dark again, and me in my flat, on my own, made me breathless.

  “I'll see you after the shower.”

  One drink turned into several, in a dark pub whose landlord obviously knew them all well.

  “And she's been getting all these mad letters,” continued Fred, as if it were all a big joke. His hand moved round to my side, feeling its way down my ribs. I shifted nervously, lit another cigarette, tipped the last of the lager down my throat. “Including ones that threaten to kill her. Haven't you, Zoe?”

  “Yes,” I mumbled. I didn't want to talk about it.r />
  “What did the police say?” asked Fred.

  “Not much,” I said. I made an attempt at lightness: “Don't worry, Fred. I'm sure you'll be suspect number one.”

  “It can't be me,” he said cheerfully.

  “Why not?”

  “Well . . . er.”

  “You've never seen me sleep,” I said and immediately wished I hadn't, but Fred just looked puzzled. It was a relief when Morris started telling me how they used to come here on quiz night.

  “It's cruel, really,” he said. “It's just too easy. It feels like helping ourselves to their money. We're lucky they don't just take us out back and break our thumbs.”

  “The Hustler,” said Graham.

  “What?” I said.

  “Is my idiot brother boring you?”

  “Don't be mean,” I said.

  “No, no,” said Morris. “It's another reference. That's what Herman Mankiewicz said about Joseph Mankiewicz.” Now he grinned over at his brother. “But Joseph was the more successful one in the end.”

  “I'm sorry,” I said. “I don't know who these people are.”

  Unfortunately, they then started to tell me. To me the interplay of these old friends and brothers was a bewildering mixture of ancient jokes, obscure references, private catchphrases, and I generally thought the best thing was to keep my head down and wait for something I could follow. After a while the frenzied, competitive cross talk subsided and I found myself talking to Morris once more.

  “Are you together with any of . . .” I said in a subdued voice and giving a discreet nod in the direction of the various young women around the table.

  Morris looked evasive.

  “Well, Laura and me are sort of, in a way . . .”

  “In a way what?” said Laura across the table. She was a large woman with straight brown hair pulled back in a bun.

  “I was telling Zoe that you've got ears like a bat.”

  I assumed that Laura would get furious with Morris. I would have. But I was starting to see that the three women hovered on the edge of the group, mostly talking among themselves and only being brought into the general conversation when necessary, which didn't seem to be very often. The boys, fresh-faced, bright-eyed after the football, looked more like little boys than ever. Why had I been embraced by their little group? As an audience? Morris leaned over very close to me and I almost thought for a moment he was going to nuzzle my ear. Instead he whispered into it.

  “It's over,” he said.

  “What is?”

  “Me and Laura. It's just that she doesn't know it yet.”

  I looked across at her as she sat there, unaware of the sentence hanging over her head.

  “Why?” I asked.

  He just shrugged, and I felt I couldn't bear to talk about it anymore.

  “How's work going?” I said, for want of anything better.

  Morris lit a cigarette before answering.

  “We're all waiting,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  He took a deep drag and then an even deeper gulp of his beer.

  “Look at us,” he said. “Graham is a photographer's assistant who wants to be a real live photographer. Duncan and me go around showing stupid secretaries how to do things with their software that they should have read in the manual. We're waiting for one or two of our ideas to, well, come to fruition. The way things are now, you need one halfway plausible idea and you're worth more than British Airways.”

  “And Fred?”

  Morris looked reflective.

  “Fred is digging and sawing while trying to decide who he is.”

  “But in the meantime there's that tan and those forearms,” said Graham, who'd been eavesdropping.

  “Mmmm,” I said.

  We sat there for a long time and drank too much, especially the boys. Later Morris moved across to be close to Laura, at her request, which sounded more like a command, and Duncan sat next to me. First he talked about his work with Morris, how they were out on the road every day, working mainly separately in different companies, teaching idiots with too much money and no time how to operate their own computers. Then he told me about Fred, how long they'd known each other, their long friendship.

  “There's just one thing I can't forgive Fred for,” he said.

  “What's that?”

  “You,” he said. “It wasn't a fair fight.”

  I made myself laugh. He stared at me.

  “We think you're the best.”

  “The best what?”

  “Just the best.”

  “We?”

  “The guys.” He gestured around the table. “Fred always chucks his women in the end,” he said.

  “Oh well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, shall we?”

  “Can I have you afterward?” he said.

  “What?” I said.

  “No, I want her,” Graham said from across the table.

  “What about me?” said Morris.

  “I was first,” said Duncan.

  There was a little bit of me that recognized that this was one of their jokes, and maybe at some other time I might have laughed and made a flirtatious attempt to play along, but this wasn't one of those times.

  Fred pushed himself against me. Pushed his hand against my trousers, Louise's trousers. All of a sudden I felt nauseous. The thick, noisy atmosphere of the pub was curdling around me.

  “Time to go,” I said.

  He gave me a lift back to my flat in his van, dropping Morris and Laura on the way. He must have been way over the limit.

  “Do you mind when they talk to me like that?”

  “They're just jealous,” he said.

  I told him how the police had asked about my personal life.

  “They made me think it was my fault,” I said. “They asked about my sex life.”

  “A long story?” There was a gleam in his eyes.

  “A very short story.”

  “That many?” He whistled.

  “Don't be stupid.”

  “So they think it's one of your ex-lovers?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Did any of them seem like nutcases?”

  “No.” I hesitated. “Except, when you start thinking like that, of course, everyone seems odd, a bit sinister. Nobody's just normal, are they?”

  “Not even me?”

  “You?” I looked across at him as he drove, thin hands on the steering wheel. “Not even you.”

  He seemed pleased. I saw him smile.

  He pushed me back in my seat and kissed me so hard I tasted blood on my lip, and pressed a hand against my breast, but he didn't ask to come in. And I'd learned my lesson from last night. I didn't ask him. I waved him off, in a reasonably convincing charade of cheerfulness, and instead of going into the flat I walked down the still crowded road to the nearest pay phone. I called up Louise: Maybe I could go there for the night. But the phone rang and rang and nobody answered. I stood in the booth, holding the phone to my face, until a cross man with a bulging briefcase banged on the glass. There was nobody else I knew well enough to ask; there was nowhere else to go. I dithered on the street for a few minutes, then told myself not to be so stupid. I walked back to the front door, opened it, picked up the junk mail, the gas bill, and the postcard from my aunt, and went upstairs. There were no hand-delivered letters. The windows were all locked. The peppermint liqueur stood on the table, top off. Nobody was there.

  NINE

  “I really think he's interested.”

  “Who? Fred?”

  “No. This man who's coming back to see the flat. God knows why, but I think he might like it. If only he did. I hate it here, you know, Louise. Really hate it. I dread coming back at night. If I could only get out of here, maybe all the letters would stop and he'd go away.”

  Louise looked round the room.

  “What time is he coming?”

  “About nine. Strange time to be viewing flats, don't you think?”

  “That giv
es us nearly two hours.”

  “Are you sure you want to give up your precious Thursday evening like this, Louise?”

  “I was only going to sit eating chocolate and flick through the TV channels. You've saved me from myself. Anyway, I like a challenge.”

  I looked grimly around the flat.

  “It's certainly a challenge,” I said.

  Louise rolled up her sleeves, looking, rather alarmingly, as if she were going to scrub the floor.

  “Where shall we start?”

  I love Louise. She's down-to-earth and generous; even when she's acting outrageous and reckless, I know she's got her feet on the ground. She gets the giggles. She cries at soppy films. She eats too many cakes and goes on mad, hopeless, completely unnecessary diets. She wears skirts that make Pauline raise her beautifully shaped eyebrows, and high platform shoes, T-shirts with strange logos on them, huge earrings, a stud in her navel. She is small, stubborn, sure of herself, dogged, with a sharp, determined chin and a turned-up nose. Nothing seems to get her down. She's like a pit pony.

  When I arrived at Laurier School, Louise took me under her wing, for all she had been there only a year herself. She gave me teaching tips, warned me which parents were troublesome, shared her sandwiches with me at lunch when I forgot to bring any, lent me tampons and aspirins. And she was my one point of stability in the whole fluid mess that was London. Now here she was, putting my life in order.

  We began in the kitchen. We washed the dishes and put them neatly away, scrubbed the surfaces, swept the floor, cleaned the tiny window that looked over the pub's back garden. Louise insisted on taking down the pots and pans I'd hung above the stove.

  “Let's open up the space,” she said, squinting around her as if she had turned into an unimpressed interior decorator.

  In the living room, twelve foot by ten, she emptied ashtrays, pushed the table under the window so the peeling wallpaper was partly obscured, turned over the stained sofa cushions, vacuumed the carpet, while I stacked bits of paper and mail into piles, threw away junk.