by Nicci French
Dear Jenny,
You're a beautiful woman. But not when you're with anyone. When you're just alone, walking down the street. You bite your top lip sometimes when you're thinking. You sing to yourself.
You look at yourself and I look at you. We've got that in common. But one day I'll look at you when you're dead.
It gave me the creeps a bit, naturally, but mainly I was cross. No, not cross: furious. I'd had days now, two days of Lynne hovering about, being nice enough in a statuary sort of way but always hovering, always being just a bit irritating, a bit ingratiating, a bit too determined not to be offended when I snap at her. And then the police car parked outside. People always watching me, keeping an eye on my day. And this was all the good it had done. So when I had read the letter I went off in search of her. She was on the phone. I stood in front of her, waiting until she got embarrassed and hung up.
“I've got something you might be interested in,” I said, handing her the letter.
That lit a rocket under her. It was barely ten minutes before Stadler was sitting in my kitchen, staring at me across the table.
“On the mat, you said?” he asked in a sort of mumble.
“That's where Lena found it,” I said tartly. “Clearly he's making private arrangements for his mail. To be honest, it makes me wonder what the point is of all this disruption if he can still walk up to the house and deliver a letter.”
“It's disappointing,” Stadler said, pushing his hands through his hair. Handsome—and he knows it, my grandmother used to say with disapproval of men like that. “Did you see anybody approaching the house?”
“People have been approaching the house all day, tramping in and out.”
“Was anything else delivered?”
“Yes, lots of things.”
“Could you describe the people who delivered them?”
“I didn't meet any of them. You can talk to Lena about that.”
I was walking busily around the kitchen. Stadler was sitting at the kitchen table looking gloomy, poor thing.
“Tell me what you're actually doing about all of this,” I demanded.
“Doing?” he repeated, as if the question didn't make sense.
“Yes, you know, forgive me for being stupid, but just spell it out for me, will you?”
He put his hand on mine and I let it lie there, hot and heavy. “Mrs. Hintlesham, Jenny, we're doing everything we can. We're doing forensic tests on all the letters, we're trying to find out where the paper came from, we're looking at the fingerprints in your house in case he should have broken in. As you know”—he attempted a rueful smile but it didn't suit him—“we're going through all your friends, acquaintances, contacts, people who work or have worked for you, to try and establish any connections between you and the, er, the other people who have been targeted by the writer of these letters. And then, of course, until he is caught, we are making quite sure you are safe and protected.”
I took my hand away.
“Is there really any point in carrying on with all this?” I asked.
“What?” said Stadler.
“All this ridiculous fuss about opening letters and hanging around the house.”
There was quite a long silence. Stadler seemed to be finding it hard to make up his mind what to say. Then he looked up at me with his very dark eyes, almost too dark.
“This is serious,” he said. “You've read the letters. This man has threatened to kill you.”
“Well they're pretty nasty,” I admitted. “But really it's the sort of thing you have to put up with living in London, like obscene phone calls and traffic and dog mess on the streets and all that.”
“Maybe,” said Stadler. “But we need to take it seriously. I'm going to liaise with DCI Links in a minute, but what I'm going to suggest—and I'm sure he'll agree with me—is that we need to make this environment more secure.”
“What do you mean?”
“All the work being done here must stop. Just for the time being.”
“Are you crazy?” I was aghast. “These builders have a six-month waiting list. Jeremy's off to Germany next week. The plasterers are arriving at the beginning of next week. Do you want to see my folder? This isn't something I can just shut down and start up again when you feel like it.”
“I'm sorry, Mrs. Hintlesham. But it's essential.”
“Essential for who? Is it just going to help you because you aren't doing your job properly?”
Stadler stood up.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “Sorry we haven't caught this lunatic. But it's difficult. Normally there's a procedure, knocking on doors, looking for witnesses. But when a madman picks on somebody at random, there's no normal procedure. You just have to hope that you get a break.”
I almost laughed, but I stayed coldly silent. This ridiculous man wanted my sympathy. He wanted me to say “There, there” because it was so hard to be a policeman. I felt like throwing him out, him and the rest of them.
“What we have to consider,” he continued, “is that he has made a serious threat on your life. We want to catch him, but our first priority is your safety. I don't feel we can take any more risks with that. The alternative would be for you to move away from this house to somewhere more protected.”
I'd felt like there was a volcano trying to erupt deep in my stomach. The second prospect was even worse, so I had agreed, in a sort of cold fury. I asked when he wanted them to leave and he said straightaway, while he was in the house. So I stomped around like a nightclub bouncer and briskly ejected everybody. Then there was an awful hour of phone calls and half explanations to baffled people and attempts to make vague commitments for the future.
I drank the last of my gin and tonic and got out of the bath and wrapped myself with the big soft towel. It was so hot and so steamy in the bathroom that my skin remained clammy however much I rubbed it, so I walked through to the bedroom. The doors on the fitted cupboards had full-length mirrors on them. They were to have been ripped out next week. I stood in front of one of them and watched myself as I dried my hair and then my body. Even then I still felt damp in the heat of the evening, so I tossed the towel down on the carpet and stood and looked at myself. It was something I hardly ever did, not naked, without makeup.
I tried to imagine what it would be like to be unfamiliar with that body, to see it for the first time and to find it attractive. I narrowed my eyes and tilted my head to one side, but it seemed almost too much of an effort. I suppose it happens with all married couples after years together and children and all that, and hard work—you just become part of the furniture, something you hardly notice except when it starts to go wrong. Maybe that's why other things—I mean other people—might seem more enticing. I tried to imagine what it was like when Clive and I had first seen each other in, well, in that sort of way, and the funny thing was that I absolutely couldn't. I could remember our first time. At his first flat in Clapham. I could remember all the details. I could remember the play we had been to see beforehand, what food we had eaten afterward. I could even remember what clothes I was wearing, which he had then taken off, but what it had felt like, to see each other's flesh for the first time—that had gone.
I'd had only one serious boyfriend before that. Well, fairly serious, to me at any rate. He was a photographer called Jon Jones. He's pretty famous now. You see his name in Harper's and Vogue. He did a nail-varnish commission using my hands, and one thing led to another. I was quite nervous really, about sex, I mean, that sort of thing. I wasn't sure what to do. I was obedient, really, more than anything. I'm not sure how exciting it actually was technically, but the idea of it—of him—was exciting.
I was almost in a dream and then I realized I was standing naked in my room with the light on. The curtains were open. The windows were open. I walked to the window quickly to close the curtains and then stopped. What did it matter after all, to be looked at? Was it so bad? I stood there for a moment. The wind blew in hotly. I felt as if I would have given any
thing for a breath of cool breeze. It was too hot to close the window but I turned and switched off the light. That amounted to the same thing.
I lay down on the bed, on my back with the covers off. Even a sheet would have been agony. I touched my forehead and my breasts. I was already sweating again. I moved my fingers down across my stomach and between my legs. I felt warm and wet. I touched myself gently and looked up at the ceiling. What would it be like to be looked at for the first time? What would it be like to be wanted? To be lusted after. To be looked at. To be wanted.
SIX
I'm good at packing. I always pack for Clive when he has to go away for a few days. Men are hopeless at folding their shirts properly. Anyway, now I was packing for the boys, who were off into the wilds of Vermont for their summer camp. We'd heard about it years ago from a friend of a friend of a friend at Clive's work. Three weeks of rappelling and windsurfing and sitting round campfires and, in Josh's case, probably eyeing up nubile young girls in skimpy shorts. I said as much to him as I was carefully laying the T-shirts, shorts, swimming things, and trousers into his case. He just looked glum.
“You just want us out of the house,” he muttered.
Everything he says now is in a mutter that I can't quite catch. It makes me feel as if I'm going deaf.
“Oh, Josh, you know you loved it last year. Harry doesn't think it's too long.”
“I'm not Harry.”
“Don't say you're going to miss me,” I said teasingly.
He gazed at me. He's got huge dark brown eyes, and he can use them to look pathetically reproachful, like some fuzzy donkey. I noticed how bony and pale he was looking; his collarbones jutted out like knobs; his wrists were a mass of tendons. When he took off his shirt to put on his clean clothes for the flight, his ribs were like a pair of ladders climbing up his skinny body.
“You could do with some fresh air. As could this room. Don't you ever open your windows?”
He didn't answer, just stared moodily out at the street below. I clapped my hands to wake him up.
“I'm in a hurry. Your father is taking you to the airport in about an hour.”
“You always think you're in a hurry.”
“I'm not going to have an argument with you just before you go off on holiday.”
He turned and looked at me.
“Why don't you get a proper job?”
“Where's your deodorant? I've got a job. Being your mother. You'd be the first to complain if I didn't drive you around to your parties and clubs, and cook your dinner and wash your clothes.”
“So what do you do while Lena's doing your job?”
“And I'm doing up this house. Which you seem happy enough with. Okay, what are you going to do in the short time you've got before you leave? Why don't you go and see Christo—he's going to miss you.”
Josh muttered something and sat down at his computer.
“In a minute. I want to look at this new game. It's only just come.”
“That's why it's good you're going away. Otherwise you'd spend two weeks in the dark in front of a screen. Anyway, while you're here you might as well strip your sheets and put them out for Mary.” Silence. I started to leave the room and then stopped. “Josh?” Silence. “Will you miss me? Oh, for God's sake, Josh.” I was shouting now.
He turned sulkily. “What?”
“Oh, nothing.”
I left him locked in a form of unarmed combat in which every blow sounded like a falling tree.
I hugged Harry, though he seems to think that eleven is far too old to be hugged and he stood stiffly in my arms. He's an eager boy, none of Josh's moodiness, thank God. He's like me, not one to brood. You can tell just by looking at him, with his brown curly hair and his snub nose and his stocky legs. Josh looked spindly beside him, his skinny neck sticking out of his new, too-big shirt. I kissed him on the cheek.
“Have a wonderful time, Josh; I'm sure you will.”
“Mum . . .”
“Darlings, you've got to go. Clive's in the car. Be good—don't get in trouble. See you in three weeks' time. Bye, darlings. Bye.” I waved to them until they were out of sight.
“Come on then, Chris, it's just you and me for the next three weeks.”
“And Lena.”
“Well, yes, of course, Lena too. In fact, Lena's going to take you to the zoo soon, with a picnic lunch. Mummy's got a busy day.”
A busy day cooking for this wretched dinner party that Clive had foisted on me. I couldn't remember the last time I had been alone in the house. It was oddly quiet, echoey. No Josh and Harry, no Chris and Lena, no Clive, no Mary or Jeremy or Leo or Francis; no banging of hammers, whistling of workmen as they slapped paint onto plaster; no ringing of the doorbell as gravel, or wallpaper lining, or electric cables got delivered. Well, almost alone. Lynne was always around somewhere, like a bumblebee that occasionally buzzes into the room and then out again.
This house used to be a building site, which was bad enough. Now it's a building site that's been abandoned: wallpaper half put up in the spare room, floorboards ready to be laid in the room that will be the dining room one day, dust sheets in the living room, all ready for the painting that isn't going to happen, the garden full of weeds and holes. The police may not be able to find the person bothering me but they've certainly blocked my plans. And that Schilling woman had got quite angry with me.
She came around again. More of that irritatingly grave and attentive expression, which I bet she practices in front of her mirror. Pushing and pushing, into my life, about Clive, men, generally, scratch, scratch. She says it's a standard part of the investigation. I sometimes feel she doesn't really care about the criminal at all. What she really wants is to solve my other problems. To change me into something else. What? Her, probably. I keep wanting to tell her that I'm not a door that will one day open onto some enchanted garden inside me. Sorry. This is who I am: me, Jenny Hintlesham, wife of Clive, mother of Josh, Harry, Chris. Take me or leave me. Actually, just leave me, leave me alone, to get on with my life again.
I don't enjoy cooking that much, but I do like preparing dinner parties, if I've got plenty of time, that is. Today I had loads of time. Lena wouldn't be back till teatime and Clive was going straight from the airport to a golf course. I had been through my recipe books, which are still all in a cardboard box under the stairs. Because of the heat I had decided to go for a real summer meal: fresh, crisp, clean, with lots of good white wine. The canapés with wild mushrooms I'd have to do at the last minute, the gazpacho I had made late last night, while Clive was sitting in front of the TV. The main course—red mullet in a tomato and saffron sauce, to be served chilled—I could do now. I made the sauce first, just a rich Italian goo, made with olive oil, onions, herbs from the garden (at least Francis had put in the herb garden before everything was put on hold), lots of garlic, seeded and skinned plum tomatoes. And when it's really nice and thick, you add red wine, a touch of balsamic vinegar, and a few strands of saffron. I do adore saffron. I laid the six mullet into a long dish and poured the sauce over them. They only had to cook at a moderate heat for about half an hour and then I could put them in the larder.
For pudding I was doing a huge apricot tart. It always looks spectacular, and apricots are gorgeous at this time of year. I rolled out the puff pastry (I'd bought it ready-made: there are limits) and laid it in a dish. Then I made the frangipane with ground almonds and icing sugar and butter and eggs, and poured it over the pastry. Finally, I halved the apricots and popped them on top. There; just a hot oven for twenty-five minutes. Perfect with gobs of cream. The wine and the champagne were already in the fridge. The butter was cut into little knobs. The brown rolls I was going to pick up this afternoon. The green salad I would do just before we ate.
We were going to have to eat in the kitchen, never mind Clive's important client, but I pulled out the Chinese screen so the room was divided in half, and covered the table with our white lace tablecloth, the one my cousin gave us for a wedding presen
t. With our silver cutlery and a mass of orange and yellow roses in a glass vase, it was a brilliant improvisation.
I had invited Emma and Jonathan Barton along as well. God knows what this Sebastian and his wife would be like. I had a picture of a fat City of London type, with a paunch and broken veins in his nose, and a hard-bitten, ambitious, power-dressing wife, bottle-blond and heavy round the hips. I don't envy women like that, even though sometimes they patronize people like me.
I wanted to look good this evening. Emma Barton has got round hips and big breasts and full lips that she paints bright red, even in the morning for the school run. She seems a bit obvious to me, but men certainly seem to like her. The trouble is, she's getting on a bit now; she's probably my age, maybe a little bit older. And pouting and wriggling is all very well when you are twenty, or thirty, but it starts to look ridiculous when you're forty, and when you're fifty it looks positively pathetic. We've known the Bartons forever. Ten years ago he was all over her, furiously possessive, but now I've seen his eyes stray to women who look just like Emma used to look then.
At six o'clock I had a long bath and washed my hair. Downstairs, I heard the door open and Lena come in with Chris. I put on a dressing gown and sat in front of my mirror. Lots of makeup this evening. Not just foundation, but blusher on my cheekbones, gray-green eye shadow, dark gray eyeliner, my beloved wrinkle concealer, plum-colored lipstick, my favorite perfume behind my ears and on my wrist—I'd splash more on later as well. Usually, between courses, I come up to my bedroom to repair my face and put on perfume. It gives me courage.
I put on a long black dress with spaghetti straps, and over it a delicate maroon lace top with black velvet around the neck and cuffs, which I bought for a small fortune in Italy last year. High-heeled shoes. My diamond choker, my diamond earrings. I examined myself in the long mirror, turned slowly round so I could see myself from every angle. Nobody would think I was nearly forty. It takes a lot of effort, to stay young.