Beneath the Skin

by Nicci French

  As if that wasn't enough, he produced Clive's accounts for the house. I tried to tell him that I didn't deal with any of that, it was all up to Clive, that I have no head for figures. But he didn't seem to hear. £2,300 for the living room curtains, which we hadn't hung yet. £900 for the tree surgeon. £3,000 for the chandelier. £66 for the front door knocker that I fell in love with in Portobello Market. The numbers started to blur. I couldn't make head or tail of them. I certainly couldn't remember the quarry tiles being that expensive. Dreadful how it all adds up.

  When we'd finished, he looked at me and I thought, This man knows more about me than anyone in the world except Clive.

  “Is this all relevant?” I asked.

  “That's the problem, Mrs. Hintlesham. We don't know. For the moment we just need information. Lots of it.”

  Then he told me to be careful, just like Links had said. “We don't want anything else happening, do we?”

  He sounded reasonably cheerful about it.

  Outside, the leaves on the trees had turned dark, dirty green. They hung limply from the branches, hardly stirring in the sluggish warm breeze. The garden looked like a desert, the earth was baked hard and was run through with cracks, like an old piece of china; some of the plants that Francis had recently planted were beginning to droop. The new little magnolia tree would never survive. Everything was parched.

  I rang Clive again. His secretary said he'd popped out. Sorry, she said, though she didn't sound sorry at all.

  Dr. Schilling was different. She didn't march into the room with a pile of names to check and bark questions at me. She looked at my hand, unrolling the bandage and holding my fingers in her slim, cool ones. She said she was very sorry, as if she was personally apologizing for it. To my horror, I suddenly wanted to cry, but I certainly wasn't going to do that in front of her. There was nothing she would like better.

  “I want to ask you some questions, Jenny.”

  “What about?”

  “Can we talk about you and Clive?”

  “I thought we'd done that already.”

  “There are some more details. Is that all right?”

  “I suppose so, but look . . .” I shifted uncomfortably. “This doesn't feel quite right. I just want to be sure that your questions are just about catching the person doing this. You probably think I'm completely mad and have an awful life, but I'm happy with it. Is that clear? I don't need your help. Or if I do need it, I don't want it.”

  Dr. Schilling gave an embarrassed smile.

  “I don't think any of that,” she said.

  “Good,” I said. “I just wanted to be clear.”

  “Yes,” said Dr. Schilling. She looked at a notebook that was open on her lap.

  “You wanted to ask about Clive and me.”

  “Do you mind that he's away so much?”

  “No.” She waited, but I didn't say anything else. I knew her tricks by now.

  “Do you think that he's faithful to you?”

  “You asked me that before.”

  “But you didn't answer.”

  I gave a huffy sigh.

  “Since Detective-whatever-he-is Stadler now knows when my next period is due, I suppose I may as well tell you about my sex life as well. If you really want to know, just after Harry was born he had a—a thing.”

  “A thing?” She raised her eyebrows at me.

  “Yes.”

  “How long for?”

  “I'm not exactly sure. A year, maybe. Eighteen months.”

  “So it wasn't just a thing, was it? It was rather more serious than that.”

  “He was never going to leave me. She was just extra. Men are such clichés, aren't they? I was tired, I had put on some weight.” I touched the skin beneath my eyes. “I was getting older.”

  “Jenny,” she said gently, “you were only, let's see, in your late twenties when Harry was born.”

  “Whatever.”

  “How did you feel about it?”

  “Don't want to talk about that. Sorry.”

  “All right. Have there been others?”

  I shrugged.

  “Perhaps.”

  “You don't know?”

  “I don't want to know, thank you very much. If he has some stupid fling, I'd prefer he kept it to himself.”

  “You think he does have affairs?”

  “I've just said: maybe, maybe not.” The unbidden image of Clive looking down at Gloria entered my mind. I pushed it away.

  “And you don't?”

  “As I told you last time you asked: no.”

  “Never?”

  “No.”

  “Not close to it?”

  “Oh, stop it, for goodness' sake.”

  “Do you and your husband have a satisfactory sex life?”

  I shook my head at her.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I can't.”

  “All right.” Once again, she was unexpectedly gentle. “Do you think that your husband loves you?”

  I blinked.

  “Loves me?”

  “Yes.”

  “That's a big word.” She didn't reply. I took a breath. “No.”

  “Likes you?”

  I stood up.

  “I've had enough,” I said. “You're going to walk away from this conversation and write it up in concise notes, but I'm going to live with it, and I don't want to. Clive isn't sending me razor blades, is he, so why do you want to know all this?” I stood at the door. “Has it ever occurred to you that what you do is rather cruel? Now, I'm rather busy, so if you'll excuse me.”

  Dr. Schilling left and I stood alone in the sitting room. I felt as if I had been turned upside down and emptied all over the floor.

  NINE

  I could hear the wind rippling in the trees outside. I wanted to open the windows, let the night breeze blow through all the rooms, but I couldn't. I mustn't. Everything had to be closed and locked. I had to be secure. The air inside was stale, secondhand. Heavy, hot, dead air. I was shut up in this house, and the world was shut out of it, and I could feel it all returning to chaos and to ugliness: wallpaper hanging off the walls, plasterwork abruptly stopping, floorboards torn up so you could see the dark, grimy holes beneath. The dust and bits and pieces of years and years working their way back onto the surface. All the unfinished work, all my dreams of perfect spaces: cool white, lemon yellow, slate gray, pea green, the stippled hallway, a fire in the grate throwing shadows across the smooth cream carpet, the grand piano with gladioli on top, the round tables for drinks in cut-glass tumblers, my prints hanging under picture lights, long views through the windows of green lawns and graceful shrubs.

  I was sweating. I turned my pillow over, to find a cooler patch. Outside the trees rustled. It wasn't quite dark; the street lamps cast a dirty orange stain across the room. I could see the shapes of my surroundings, my dressing table, the chair, the tall block of the wardrobe, the paler squares of the two windows. And I could see that Clive still wasn't here. What time was it? I sat up in bed and squinted across at the luminous numbers on the alarm clock. I watched a seven grow into an eight and then shrink into a nine.

  Half past two and he hadn't come home. Lena was out till tomorrow morning, staying with her boyfriend, so it was just me in the house, me and Chris, and all those empty disintegrating rooms, and outside a police car. My finger throbbed, my throat hurt, my eyes stung. It was quite impossible to sleep anymore.

  I stood up and saw myself dimly reflected in the long mirror, like a ghost in my white cotton nightdress. I padded across to Chris's room. He was sleeping with one foot tucked under the other knee and with his arms thrown up like a ballet dancer. The duvet was in a heap on the floor beside him. His hair was sticking to his forehead. His mouth was slightly open. Maybe, I thought, I should take him to Mummy and Daddy's house down in Hassocks. Maybe I should go there myself, get away from all this ghastliness. I could just leave, get in the car and drive away. Why not? What on earth was there to stop me and why hadn't I thought of that
before?

  I walked to the top of the stairs and looked down. The light was on in the hall, but all the rooms were dark. I gulped. Suddenly it was hard to breathe. Stupid. This was stupid, stupid, stupid. I was safe, absolutely safe. There were two men outside, all the doors and windows were locked, double-locked. There were ugly iron grilles on the downstairs windows. A burglar alarm. A light that turned on in the garden when anyone passed it.

  I went into the room that would be a spare bedroom, and turned on the light. Half a wall was papered, the rest just lined. The rolls of wallpaper were stacked in the corner, waiting beside the stepladder and the trestle table. The brass bed was in pieces on the floor. The room smelled musty. There was a hot bubble of rage in my chest; if I opened my mouth it would come out as a scream. A scream that would go on and on, ripping into the silent night, waking up everyone in the city, telling them to beware. I pressed my lips together. I had to put my life in order. Nobody else was going to do it for me, that was clear. Clive wasn't around. Leo and Francis and Jeremy and all the rest of them had gone, as if they'd never been here. Mary crept round me as if I was contagious, and I was lucky if she emptied the wastepaper baskets nowadays. Tomorrow I would tell her I didn't need her anymore. The police were all stupid, incompetent. If they had been my workmen, I would have fired them by now. I would just have to rely on me. It was just me, now. I felt a tic start up under my right eye. When I put my finger there, I could feel it jumping, like an insect under my skin.

  I picked up the box of wallpaper paste and read the instructions. It all seemed simple enough. Why did everybody make so much fuss about it? I would start with the room and then I'd move through my life, putting it all back together again, just like it was before.

  Clive arrived home about half an hour later. I heard the key in the door and froze for an instant, until I heard him take off his shoes and pad into the kitchen, where he turned on the tap. I didn't stop what I was doing. I didn't have time. I was going to finish this before morning.

  “Jenny,” he called when he went into our bedroom. “Jens, where are you?”

  I didn't reply. I slapped the paste onto the wallpaper. “Jens,” he shouted, from our bathroom this time, the one that was going to have Italian tiles one day. The hem of my nightdress was sodden with paste, but that didn't matter. The bandage on my hand was soaked as well, and my finger throbbed harder than ever. The most difficult part was putting the paper on straight, and without any bubbles. Sometimes I put on too much paste and it stained through the paper. That would dry, though.

  “What on earth do you think you're doing?” He stood in the doorway in his white shirt and red boxer shorts and the socks that bloody Father Christmas had given him last year.

  “What does it look like?”

  “Jens, it's the middle of the night.”

  “So?” He didn't say anything, just stared around the room as if he didn't quite know where he was. “What does it matter if it's the middle of the night? What does it matter what time it is? If nobody else is going to do it, I'm going to do it myself. And you can be pretty sure that nobody else is going to do it. If there's one thing I've learned it's that if you want something done, do it yourself. Mind where you step, for goodness' sake. You'll ruin everything and then I will have to do it all over again and I don't have time for that. Had a good day, did you? Good day at the office till three in the morning, darling?”

  “Jens.”

  I climbed up the ladder, holding up the sticky paper, which twisted round on itself.

  “I blame myself,” I said. “I've let everything go to pieces, that's what. I didn't notice at first, but now I see. A few silly letters, and we let the house fall down, fill up with dirt. Stupid.”

  “Jens, stop this now. It's all crooked anyway. And you've got glue in your hair. Come off that ladder now.”

  “The master's voice,” I hissed.

  “You're behaving in an unbalanced way.”

  “Oh really! How should I be behaving? I'd like to know. Take your hand off my ankle.”

  He backed off. A violent ache sprang up behind my eyes.

  “Jenny, I'm going to phone Dr. Thomas.”

  I looked down at him.

  “Everyone uses that tone of voice with me, as if there was something the matter with me. There's nothing the matter with me. They just need to catch this person and we'll be back to normal. And you”—I flourished my gluey brush at him so a drop fell on his frowning, upturned face—“you're my husband, in case you had forgotten, darling. For better or for worse, and this is for worse.”

  I tried to smooth the paper onto the wall, bending down at a painful angle with my damp nightdress slapping against my shins, and prickles of dust and grime on my feet, but it creased terribly.

  “It's hopeless,” I said, staring round the room. “It is all completely hopeless.”

  “Come to bed.”

  “I'm not in the least bit tired, thank you.” And indeed I wasn't. I was fizzing with energy and rage. “But if you want to do anything to help, you can phone Dr. Schilling and tell her it is at the very best dull, thank you very much. She'll understand what I mean. You look pathetic in your socks,” I added spitefully.

  “All right. Have it your own way.” His tone was a mixture of indifference and contempt. “I'm going to bed now. You do what you want. That strip is on back to front, by the way.”

  At six, Clive left for work. He called good-bye as he left, but I didn't bother to reply. Chris got himself up that day. I shouted at him to get his own breakfast. He stood and watched me for a few minutes, looking as if he was about to cry. Just the sight of him, standing in his blue pajamas with teddy bears, looking sad, with his thumb in his mouth, made me feel scorched with anger and impatience. When he tried to hug me, I shrugged him off, telling him I was all sticky. When Lena arrived, he ran to her as if I were his wicked stepmother. A new sidekick and pretend-best-friend, a small woman with a face like a fox who introduced herself as Officer Page, marched round the house, checking all the windows. She came into the spare room and said good morning to me in a careful voice, as if she was pretending that it was quite normal to find me decorating in my nightclothes. I ignored her too. Idiot. I had no use for any of them, no confidence in them at all. When I had finished the walls, I had a bath. I washed my hair three times, waxed my legs, shaved under my arms, plucked between my eyebrows. I applied new varnish on my nails and put on more makeup than usual, lots of foundation because my skin looked oddly blotchy, a bit of blusher to give me color, eyeliner. My face was a mask. But I couldn't keep my hand steady. The lipstick kept going outside my lips, which gave me the look of a drunken old woman. I got it right eventually: discreet plum color, hardly noticeable. It was me again in the mirror. Jennifer Hintlesham: immaculate.

  I chose a thin black skirt to wear, with black mules and a crisp white shirt. It was meant to look businesslike, chic, cool. But the skirt hung off my waist. I must have lost weight. Well, every cloud has a silver lining.

  I told Lena to take Chris to the London aquarium and then buy him lunch. Chris said he wanted to stay with me, but I blew him a kiss and told him not to be silly, he would have a lovely day. I gave Mary a week's wages and told her she shouldn't bother to return. I ran a finger over the top of the microwave and showed her the dust there. She put her hands on her hips and said she never wanted to come back anyway; the job gave her the spooks.

  I made a list. Two lists. The first was of things to do in the house and didn't take me long. The second was for Links and Stadler and was more complicated, and I drank four cups of strong coffee while I was doing it. They had said anything I could remember might be relevant, hadn't they?

  Dr. Schilling and Stadler arrived together, looking grave and mysterious. I asked them both to come into Clive's study.

  “It's all right,” I said to them. “Don't look so anxious. I've decided to tell you everything. Do you want some coffee? No, then do you mind if I have some more? Oops.”

  I spil
led a large splash on the desk, and wiped up the puddle with a document that was lying near the computer that said “Without Prejudice” at the top.

  “Jenny . . .”

  “Hang on. I made a list of things I thought you should know. I tried ringing the Haratounian woman, you know.”

  Grace looked at Stadler, stared at him as if she was ordering him to tell me something. Stadler frowned back.

  “I've met lots of strange men, if you want to know,” I said. “In fact, as far as I'm concerned, you're all strange. No one sticks out as odd because everyone sticks out.” I laughed and drank some more coffee. “My first boyfriend, in fact my only boyfriend if you don't count Clive, was called Jon Jones. He was a photographer—still is, maybe you know of him, he takes pictures of models wearing almost no clothes—and I met him when I was a model, only a hand model, of course, so I didn't have to take my top off, or not in public, but he took loads of pictures of me in private. When we broke up, except that's not what it felt like, breaking off—it felt as if he just ever so slowly withdrew his interest so that one day I couldn't be sure if we were going out any longer. Yes, well, when that happened, and that's about when I met Clive, I asked for the pictures back and he laughed and said he had copyright, so he must still have them somewhere.”

  “Jenny,” interrupted Grace. “Would you like something to eat?”

  “Not hungry,” I said, taking a violent slurp of coffee. “I was putting weight on my hips, anyway, before all of this. I don't think I'm a very sexual woman, actually.” I leaned forward and hissed under my breath: “The earth doesn't move for me.”

  Grace took the coffee cup out of my hand. I noticed I'd left a ring on Clive's desk. Never mind. I'd put that wonder polish on it later and it would vanish, like magic. I'd clean all the windows too, so that it would look as if there was no barrier at all between me and the outside world.

  “That's not what I wanted to say, though, except she keeps on asking about my sex life. I've made a list of men who I think act oddly towards me.” I waved it at them. “It's rather long, I must say. But I've put asterisks by the side of the oddest ones, to help you.” I squinted at the list. My writing was rather erratic this morning, or maybe I was just too tired to see straight, except I didn't feel tired.