“Where’s Marta now?”
“She’s gone to stay with a friend in Colliers Wood.”
“Colliers Wood.” He deepens his voice, as if I have said Voldemort’s lair. I can feel the whole thing edging from the Gothic to the comic, tensions loosening. “Show me where she sleeps.”
“The police have already been in there. What are we going to find that they didn’t?”
“Fresh eyes, new perspectives. The smallest thing can mean nothing to one person and everything to another. And inconsistent evidence is always suspicious. Come on!” He scrapes back his chair. “Are we going to investigate, or are we going to investigate?”
I make a gesture with my hands to say “I surrender,” and lead the way upstairs. He follows behind. I’m aware of the weight of his steps. I climb the stairs with a sort of self-conscious agility. When I push open the door to Marta’s room, I start. For a moment, I think she is lying on the bed, but it is just the duvet—she has folded it in a strange way, with the pillows on top.
Jack crosses to the window and opens the slats in the blinds. Rain dribbles down the glass. “You can see the common from here,” he says, “over the roofs of the houses.”
I’m still standing by the door. There seems to be a line one shouldn’t cross. But Jack apparently has no qualms. Maybe that’s because he has never met her—does that make a difference to the ethics of the situation? He is at the wardrobe, flinging open the door, ravishing the room. A roll of brown paper tumbles out.
He looks up. “What are you waiting for?”
“I suppose it’s okay.” I cross the threshold and join him at her closet. Still feeling ill at ease, I go through the shelves at one side, starting at the bottom: various textbooks called things like English Without Pain, an A-Z, a pile of leaflets—Madame Tussauds and the London Dungeon, a card for a cab company. At the back is a pile of padded brown envelopes, a thick roll of white stickers, and several Scotch tape dispensers.
“Why would she need so much stationery?” I say.
“Hm. Don’t know.”
Jack is flipping idly through clothes on hangers. “How many pairs of leggings does a girl need?”
“That,” I say, “is a matter of opinion.” I have searched a pile of towels and bed linen and a collection of toiletries and have got to the top shelf. I have to stretch up and feel to reach the back of this one. There is a garment bundled up there and when I pull it out I see it’s the pair of jeans I’ve been missing. I stare at them. “I wondered where these had got to,” I say, after a bit. “She must have put them away here by mistake.”
Jack closes the cupboard door. “What were we looking for anyway?”
“I don’t know. It was your idea.”
“What’s this?” He points to a shoe box under the bed.
“Should we really poke about?”
“You’re right,” he says. “We shouldn’t, but I’m going to open this anyway. Don’t look at me like that. For Christ’s sake, Gaby.”
It’s the first time he’s used my name.
I stand by the door, already leaving in my head, already downstairs with the kettle on, as he bends and slides the box across the carpet. I suspect Marta is lying to me, but even still, I don’t like the fact that he is doing this. It reminds me that I don’t know him. He probably shouldn’t be in the house, let alone in Marta’s room. But I’m paralyzed. I don’t do anything. I just watch. He pushes the duvet to one side and sits on the bed to open it. When he removes the lid, a couple of thin slips of paper float out.
“Post office receipts,” he says, flicking through. “Tons of them. Twenty, thirty, all for items posted in the last couple of months. And a stash of money, too. There must be five hundred pounds in notes.”
“Who would need to go to the post office with so many packages?”
“A mail-order company. Or”—he makes a face—“someone sending an awful lot of presents home.”
“Bloody hell.”
I cross the room and sit next to him. I’m intrigued now. A spring deep in the mattress upholstery twangs. I lose my balance, fall into the side of him. “Oh dear, too much lunch,” I say, without thinking.
He looks up. Our faces are close, his arm grazes mine. And then a noise. The rattle of a key, and the creak of the front door, a small vibrating bang as it hits the far wall, the reverberating crunch as it closes. A familiar sequence of sounds. Jack and I stay very still. I feel the pressure of his arm. There are footsteps in the hall. A clatter. A wait and then, coming up the stairs, a slow, heavy tread.
At my feet is a stain on the carpet that Marta has clearly tried to get out. The smooth nap of the carpet has been twisted into drawn fibers like a towel.
I stand up. The floor creaks.
Nora, on the other side of the door, gives a small yelp.
“Sorry, Nora,” I say. “God, I didn’t know you were coming. Did I scare you?”
“No,” she says, shaking her head, though one hand is clasped to her chest. She is wearing her gold lamé slippers and holding a cloth. “I’ve come back because on Thursday it was too difficult to clean.”
“That’s incredibly kind of you.”
“Sorry,” she says.
“No. No, I’m sorry.”
She is holding the cloth out—only it is unraveling. It isn’t a cloth. It’s the missing belt to my dressing gown. “I found this,” she said. “On the coat rack. I take it upstairs. Okay.”
“I wonder how it got there.” All these possessions that keep turning up in odd places. I’m losing control of my own life. “But that’s brilliant. You’re brilliant. Thank you.” It wouldn’t occur to me to be anything but grateful to Nora, but even as the words leave my mouth, I wonder if they are being registered, documented. Behind that door, Jack Hayward is listening.
• • •
That evening, when the house is full of creaks, I run myself a bath. Deep Relax. It doesn’t always work. I lie for a long time, looking down at my limbs, flickering under the water. I raise my hand, trying to be as quiet as possible, listening to the droplets fall. The freckles on my arm look dark against the pallor of my stomach. I think about Ania Dudek. Did she have my coloring? Was her body as white as mine?
Philip left a message—“what news, my darling?”—but I haven’t rung back. I put my head under the water, blocking out everything but the gurgle of the pipes. Out of the window, I can see violet clouds rushing across the street-lit sky. Blue, or gray, or orange: a night sky is never black in London. A splattering of rain. A helicopter whirrs, circling, the scissor-drone louder and softer in sequence. A prisoner escaped from Wandsworth. A drug bust in Brixton. An Al Qaeda cell in Tooting. Nowhere is safe.
After my bath it’s raining properly, and I walk through each room of the house opening shutters. The journalists seem to have scattered. Rain sees off hacks like it sees off rioters. Jack left by the front door and had a hurried conversation with the man at the gate—Mickey from the Mirror, I suppose. Afterward, one by one, they got into their cars, doors slamming, engines starting, and drove off. I should feel relief, but I don’t. They were a buffer, those bodies; they kept something, or someone, that I was fearing at bay.
Passing the front door on my way up to bed, I think I see a shape against the etched glass, the contour of a hand stretching out to press the bell, but it’s only the rippling shadow of an olive tree, thrown by the streetlamp.
SUNDAY
Philip rings again in the morning, and this time I answer. I tell him things have quieted down. “Oh good,” he says. “It’s awful, worrying so much about you and being so far.” Fake concern. If it is so awful, why don’t you come back?
“Is everyone at work being supportive?” he asks and in my head I reply, “Supportive? Are they being supportive? Is telling me they don’t want me anywhere near them supportive?” But I don’t say any of that. I say, “They’ve given me a couple of days off.” I sound like a petulant child.
“Oh, good of them.”
I rest my forehead on my palm. I feel irritated and drained at the same time. He is so far from understanding what I am going through. “I suppose so,” I answer in the end.
How different I am on the phone to my daughter. Millie is bursting with it: baby lambs and Easter bonnets and bike rides with Ian’s niece, Roxanne, who’s only nine and she has pierced ears. I delight in every joyous word. In the background is the clatter of Robin’s kitchen—the scrabbling of the dog and the snuffling of the baby, plates clattering: the rattle and hum of family life.
“That’s because she’s half Spanish,” I hear Robin shout. “They get their ears pierced at birth.”
“Like circumcision?” I say when she comes on the line.
“Oh, don’t,” she says. “Are you all right, Gaby?” Her tone is serious.
“I’m fine,” I say cheerfully.
“Are you sure? You’re having a nice break from work?”
“Yes! What’s happening up there?”
She tells me Millie is being awesome, brilliant with the baby and scarfing all her veggies. I ask if she is cleaning her teeth properly. They are at such funny angles; now that the big ones are coming through, she tends to miss some. And Robin, who knows me well enough not to mind me fussing, says Millie has been giving it her best shot. She calls out to Millie, to include her in the conversation: “I had to send you back, didn’t I, yesterday, to have another go at that one that’s growing behind the little tooth?” I can hear Millie’s distracted agreement. “She’s feeding Charlie,” Robin says by way of apology. “We’ve started solids.”
“What’s he eating?”
“Carrots.”
“I’ve got loads of those.”
“Bring them! We don’t have many carrots up here in the boondocks. When do you think you might come?”
I let out a small groan.
“Come now,” she says softly. “Get in the car and drive. If you bust a gut, you’ll be here in time for midmorning coffee. I’ve got those yum-yums I know you’re partial to.”
“M&S?”
“Sainsbury’s. Not quite as delish, but almost.”
“So more of a yum?”
“Hop in your car and get here for midmorning coffee and a yum.”
I groan again. “I can’t. I’m stuck. I have to wait . . . Next weekend—I should be able to come up then. I miss my little girl.”
“On Wednesday, I’ve got to come to London to see my ob-gyn guy. I could pop in and see you. I can’t let you have Millie back because it’s Roxanne’s birthday on Friday and I’ve promised Millie she can come to the party, but I could bring her up for the day. If you’re missing her enough by then.”
“Oh, yes, do that. Do that.”
“If I can coax her away from Roxanne and the baby . . .” Her voice fades. “Do you want to say good-bye to Mum?” Then, gently breaking the callousness of my little angel, “She’ll ring again later.”
I put my hand to my heart. A tiny dagger of disappointment.
“Okay,” I say cheerfully. I forgive my daughter everything. “I love you both.”
• • •
I forgot. I thought, now the hacks had gone, I was safe. I leave the house, my head still in Robin’s kitchen, through the front door as if life were normal. When the door closes. it’s already too late. A silver Mondeo is parked outside the gate, and Perivale is inside. A prickle of fear slowly climbs my spine, pelvis to skull, vertebrae by vertebrae. My neighbor was parked in that space last night. Perivale must have waited for them to leave, or circled.
He’s wearing his dirty green waxed jacket, and his face, in seated repose, looks more jowly than I remember. On the passenger seat is a heap of newspapers, and in his hand a takeaway polystyrene cup. I smile, my heart hammering. He nods tersely and looks hurriedly across at the newspapers, splashing a tiny bit of coffee with the movement, as if embarrassed at being seen.
I run to my own car, which is parked round the corner. I sit for a moment until my pulse settles. I think he might tap on the window, but he doesn’t. Why hasn’t he approached me? What is he waiting for? I contemplate going back and tapping on his window. I’d rather know what he wants, get it over with. I imagine myself screaming, “There’s a murderer out there. Don’t waste time watching me, or circling!” And then I think, Why, as an innocent person, should I care? Just the thought exorcises something inside, makes me feel better.
The sky has cleared and it’s a bright blue day. Sun, but air as cold as the sea after a downpour. Children on miniature scooters trickle past, expensively shaggy small dogs taut on leads, ambling parents shouting, “Stop!” Any minute one of them is going to see me, sitting here like a dressmaker’s dummy, so I put the key in the ignition and pull out.
I don’t notice at first. I am driving down Trinity Road, hugging the central reservation, when the filter light looms. I will be forced to turn right if I stay where I am. I put on my turn signal. The car behind, a small red Renault driven by a short-haired man, puts on his turn signal, too. A horn blares. We both swerve. The Renault pulls back a bit and puts some distance between us.
It is still there, two cars away, when I swing left onto East Hill, and still there, hugging my tail, after an erratic speed-weave into the bus lane. My hands grip the steering wheel; I change gears with coiled fury and fear. I pull back into the main stream of traffic and immediately right into the Tonsleys, a grid of residential streets choked with one-ways and no entries and commuter-blocking barriers. I turn this way and that, nip and tuck, and scissor back. I can feel a wildness in me, a sort of rage. The gears growl. The steering wheel jerks beneath my hands with a life of its own. Who is it? Perivale? Could he have changed cars? A tabloid reporter, hulking out there, out of sight?
I wrench into a parking space and wait, engine throbbing. Around me, the street is still. An airplane spirals. The squeal of a distant bus braking. I scan the street once more, pull back out, manage a wobbly three-point turn, and drive slowly back through the Tonsleys the way I came, eyes scouring. Nothing. I turn right onto East Hill and continue on my way. I begin to feel oddly bullish. Action is good. I can beat my opponents. If I can throw off a tail, surely I can withstand Perivale, fight for my reputation, wrest back my life.
At East Putney Tube Station, I pull in on a double-red line. No sign of Jack. I’m late, but then so is he. It hasn’t rained all morning, but the gutters are still flowing and the striped awning above the flower stall sags. Gloves warm the hands of the young florist; she is bashing them together in a sort of clumphing clap.
Behind her is a newsagent, and I leave the car quickly and run in to get a bottle of water. I grab a few random things at the till, including a packet of Polos. My throat is dry with thirst: must be nerves.
I’m back in the car, purchases stowed, before Jack arrives. I see him before he sees me. His head’s down, and he is walking with a lopsided gait, an Adidas messenger bag hanging over one shoulder. He scrunches up some sort of wrapper—a sausage roll?—and throws it into the closest bin. Then he looks up, clocks me, and heads over, almost at a run. He leaps a puddle, rather unsuccessfully; mud splatters up the back of his jeans. He’s wearing a warmer jacket today, which he brushes for crumbs, and a trendy reworking of a deerstalker hat. In the car, he yanks it off, and his hair bounces out as if it’s been restrained.
He rearranges his feet to avoid the empty cans and sweet wrappers, the pay-and-display tickets stuck to chewing gum. It’s a cleaner-free zone, my car, a glimpse into my grubby little soul—the bit Philip could never begin to understand. Jack doesn’t say anything. Maybe he’s at home in such a mess. Instead, he apologizes for being late. It was more of a journey than he’d anticipated: long wait for a Wimbledon-bound tube at Victoria, and the District line, so slow, chugging along like a rural train.
If he had been standing there waiting for me as I drove up, I would have told him about the red Renault, shrieked a little, but now I feel the tension of it slipping out of reach. Am I being paranoid? Have I made the whole t
hing up? The sense I have of being followed, watched, may be getting worse . . . am I the problem? Is it in my mind? The bullishness I felt earlier has gone. If I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t, how can I be sure, make sure, of anything?
I’ve reached the lights. “Where to?” I say. I look straight ahead. I feel jaw-achingly self-conscious. I realize that I am without parameters. I have no idea what he thinks of me at all. I have lost my bearings. I don’t know what to do with my face.
“Ah, yes.” He pulls out his phone and fiddles until he finds what he needs.
The Baxters live in a pretty tree-lined street of semidetached Victorian villas in West Putney. We are not followed. I keep checking. Their house, painted one of those tasteful National Trust colors—Clutch, or Bone, or Dead Skin—is set back from the road behind a gate and a small drive. An ornamental cherry, its boughs laden with clusters of candy pink blossom, squats in a raised flower bed by the front door.
“People’s taste in plants is often so much more vulgar than their taste in anything else,” I say. My voice sounds strange. I’m quoting Roger Peedles: off camera, he’s a big one for the arch, withering generalization.
Jack looks at me and shakes his head. “I can’t believe you said that. I’m sitting in a beaten-up Nissan with a plant snob.”
“ ‘Beaten-up Nissan?’ ” I say, raising an eyebrow. “Could I possibly be sitting in a ‘beaten-up Nissan’ with a car snob?”
He grins and I realize we’re both more comfortable when we’ve had a go.
We’ve agreed I should wait in the car. Jack leaps out and negotiates the gate. Children’s shouts reach me through the open window. The back garden: that climbing frame from the photograph at the police station. A toddler’s red plastic car. Millie was desperate to have one of those. Why didn’t we let her? Philip probably thought they were ugly. The front door opens. A slim woman greets him. They’re expecting him: he rang ahead. He’s writing an in-depth profile of Ania Dudek, cutting through the tabloid mulch, getting to the real woman. Mrs. Baxter was open to persuasion. She loved Ania. They all did. The children miss her madly.
Under Your Skin: A Novel Page 17