I can’t put it off any longer. I know I shouldn’t. It’s like going down into the basement. There’ll be a madwoman with a knife. But the compulsion is too strong. I go into the kitchen. If I hadn’t found the remote control, I’d have put the television on with my teeth.
Sky Plus. Thursday, Friday, and today’s episodes are lined up neatly in the series link. I choose today’s.
At first, I think it’ll all be okay: I’ll survive. When he does his introductory blurb to camera—a group interview with the cast of Made in Chelsea, an item on the rise of eyebrow threading—Stan looks diminished. A bad shirt, too short in the sleeve. Too much body hair. He needs ballast. He needs me. It’s our relationship that gives him his youthful edge. I’m Mrs. Robinson to his Benjamin Braddock, Francesca Annis to his Ralph Fiennes. Without me, well, he looks sordid, grubby, a bit old. As for India? She’s nervous. She’s perching on the sofa, her hands wildly gesticulating, in the way they always tell you not to. She’s got a habit, too, of swallowing in the middle of a sentence, almost a gulp, as if she’s got so much to ask, so much to tell me—me, the viewer—she can’t get the words out.
I’m not sure when it dawns. It’s like a thought I can’t quite pinpoint, fluttering lightly like a moth in my mind. They’ve got a catchphrase going. Stan says, “Top news . . . top views . . .” and India finishes with, “Top gossip.” It’s a first, he’s giving her the punch line. Stan, legs crossed, is subdued, avuncular, oddly sweet, and India is slightly leaning into him. Her hair has been pulled back. No, chopped. I detect Annie’s magic touch, the kind of shocking, deliciously flattering cut that will set a trend. Binky from Made in Chelsea can’t take her eyes off it.
The Tory backbencher doing Pick of the Papers is so charmed by India’s girlishness he slips up. He refers to the prime minister as “an Eton mess.” It will have been Tweeted. It’ll already have been propagated by The World at One. Perfect publicity. That’s all Terri ever wants: to get people talking. Stan shakes his head at the MP, more in sorrow than anger. “Top news . . . top views . . .” he says, and India says, “Top gossip.”
I know what it is. It’s chemistry. It’s what Stan is always banging on about.
I switch off the television, groan into the silence of the kitchen. A terrifying realization. This isn’t about publicity, good or bad. Accusations, true or false. This is no blip, no misunderstanding. This is the opportunity they’ve been waiting for. This is their way of nudging me out. I’ll never get back now, whatever happens with this case. Not after this. India’s triumph. I’m old news, past it. If I’m honest with myself, I know they’ve been trying to get rid of me for months.
“Good bits and bad bits,” I told Jack. I think about them. And it’s Steve, my driver, who comes into my head. Steve’s face, his chatter, his tact, the updates on his wife and daughter. If this is the end, I won’t find out what happened about the polyp. The polyps! Or whether Sammy got an interview. And it’s thinking about Steve that finally makes me cry.
Upstairs in the bathroom, I splash water on my face. It is a face that has seen too much and done too much. It’s a face that’s been around too long. Frown lines and smile lines, and a little crack across one of my front teeth. Secret hairs that need plucking, violet shadows that need more concealer by the day. I’m costing them too much in Touche Éclat. My hair, too: ridiculous. Nail scissors poke out of the toothbrush pot, and I start hacking at it angrily, watch the coils spiral into the basin, clog up the drainage holes. I keep going. Once, my mother, in one of her spurts of exuberant extravagance, decided to prune our patch of garden. She came back from the shops with clippers, loppers, and pruning shears, and I watched from the house as, arms scratched and flailing, she slashed at the hedge of rambling roses, tugged and swore. She didn’t seem to know when to stop. She just kept cutting and cutting until the beautiful bushes were reduced to a few black stubby branches.
Afterward, I study the hair in the sink. It looks like a dead animal. I study my face again. All those comments, I believed them, but I don’t look like Ania, not without makeup. It was just the hair, the same length of reddish hair, nothing more. People have no imagination. Christa, who knew her well, who saw the expressions of her face shift and change, didn’t even notice.
I bundle the hair into a bag and take it downstairs. For a moment, as I hold it above the bin, I wonder if I could sell it. We live beyond our means—school fees, holidays, tennis club, a ridiculous mortgage. And if I have lost my job, and if Philip is planning . . . well, I’m not going to think about that now. Disassociation: Jack is right. Images flock and throng if you let them; better to lay them flat like photographs, let them fade, slip them into dark, undisturbed corners, into books and under stones.
Life will be different, I tell myself, when this is over. I start by ringing up the Harbor Club to cancel our membership. I can feel the sneer of their surprise. Philip will be furious. I don’t care! And then I collect a roll of black bin bags from the drawer in the kitchen and go through my wardrobe. It’s a purge. Three identical brown V-necked sweaters, four wrap dresses, several pairs of heels that weren’t to be trusted on the slippery studio floor, silk scarves, silk shirts, kitten-heeled boots, and smart black trousers with crease marks down the legs: they all get bagged up. Then I start on clothes I do wear and bag up most of them too.
Nora comes in while I am in the middle of this. I make her a cup of tea and tell her to take what she wants. “Oh, okay,” she says happily. She decides on the trousers—Agnès B. and Joseph—and all the scarves and dresses. She tries on the heels, which are far too big, and shows interest in a pair of Juicy Couture tracksuit bottoms, which have lost their elastic. I mend them for her—doing that trick with a safety pin, when you pin it to the end of the elastic and wrinkle it through the seam.
She lives in Burgess Hill, she tells me, with two friends. “Long, long way.” Her little girl, back home in Manila, is twelve.
• • •
I screw up my courage and ring Jude. Nice, interesting Jude, who could have been my friend, who still could be. But friendships don’t come free, you have to work at them—take the plunge, even when you’re scared. She might be away, or she might be free for a coffee one of these days, but I won’t know unless I try.
“Oh,” she says. “Hi. Yes. Gaby. How are you?”
“Oh God, Don’t ask,” I say. “It’s been a nightmare.”
“I’ve heard. You’ve left your job.”
“It’s not what it seems. If you’ve read the papers you’ll think—”
“Listen,” she interrupts, “I’m glad you’ve rung. I’ve been meaning to get in touch. Well, it’s just this PTA quiz night. You’d probably forgotten it. But just to say Polly’s husband, an auctioneer at Christie’s, says he’ll do it. I’m sure it’s the last thing you feel like doing at the moment on top of . . . everything.”
“No, I—”
“So basically, you’re off the hook!”
I don’t want to be off the hook. I want to be on the hook. I want to be hanging from the scruff of my neck from a school peg.
“I can still do it!” I say. “I’ve been looking forward to it. You know, perching with the PTA squaddies!”
“Another time maybe. I’ve sort of told him he could now.”
There is a cool tone in her voice. I don’t know whether it is the police investigation, or the person the papers are making me out to be, or just the simple fact that I haven’t been straight with her, but it feels like a door is closing.
“Oh. Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Best, probably. Anyway, have a good holiday. I’ll see you.”
“Yes. See you.”
The friendship that never was.
• • •
Clara is leaving her last class when I ring. She is so pleased to hear my voice. She has been so worried. Am I all right? Am I really? All that stuff . . . Lies, of course.
I tell her I’m actually relieved, that I hadn’t been enjoying work. “Change is g
ood,” I say.
I’m trying to stop her from worrying, but there is truth in my words.
“I’ve cut off all my hair,” I tell her.
“Oh, my rising stars. Bold. Some posh Mayfair salon?”
“No. Bathroom basin. Did it myself.”
“Are you on your own?” The anxiety in her voice has gone up a notch.
“I miss Millie,” I say, caving inside, now I’ve got Clara in my ear. “Got that horrible feeling when you think you are never going to see your child again.”
“At least you know she’s in safe hands.”
“No one’s hands are safer than Robin’s.”
“Exactly. Yes.”
I’ve been pacing a bit, and I’m looking out of the sitting room window now, pressing my nose to the glass, so as not to be distracted by my own reflection.
Clara is offering to come down to see me, or meet me in town, but I can tell it wouldn’t be that easy. Her voice is cautious with piano practice and physics homework and project marking—a hundred visions and revisions.
I tell her I’m fine, that actually I have a mountain of things to do—“you know, admin et cetera. Later in the week would suit me better.” I don’t want her to worry, or put her out. I say I have a friend coming round in a minute. “You know, Jude, that woman from the school gates? A local friend. I’m working on it.”
A movement catches my eye beyond the olive trees.
Clara is relieved. “Lovely. Better go. Staff meeting.”
A shadow shifts. Branches move.
I burst out of the front door. I am filled with fury—Stan, the producers, the tabloids, the opportunistic drinker in the pub—it’s for them all, my mad, enraged dash. The body, the man, darts out from behind the railings, charges across the road. He turns at the alleyway. I see his face, short hair, squat pugnacious features. I shout at him—a hot stream of temper and outrage—but it’s too late. He’s turned into the alley, and by the time I’ve got to the end of it, he has disappeared.
I’m out of breath when I get home. My fingers are shaking. I have to tell Perivale. This is as close as I’ve got to catching anyone. It’s vindication. If he’s doubted me before, he’ll believe me now.
I am about to hang up when he answers. I tell him a man was outside my house, lurking. I describe him. Perivale might be driving. His voice sounds blurred, as if he’s talking loudly at a distance. Same man as yesterday? The one from the red Renault? I tell him I don’t know. I can’t be sure. I think so. His voice is reassuring. He’ll look into it, he says. I’m to leave it with him. And for the first time, I wonder whether he knows something I don’t, that he isn’t watching me, but guarding me.
• • •
“Have you eaten?”
I take a deep breath. I’ve been lying in my bedroom with the shutters closed. “No, not yet.”
“Can I take you out for a slap-up meal?”
“You’re back from Tottenham, then.”
“Yes, and you sound like you are in need of cheering. It was a bit traumatic.”
“Even with chopping bits of yourself off?”
“Even with the chopping.”
I stand up. My legs are wobbly. I peer through the slats, holding the phone with my chin. The evening is strangely lit. Violet over the rooftops. No one in the street.
Jack is suggesting a new place nearby, one of those bistros/bars/cafés that does sharing plates and demi-plats or demi-pliés, or Demi-Moores, or something. In my ear, he is talking goat’s curd and razor clams and rhubarb sorbet.
“Seasonal produce,” I say, trying to sound normal. “Simply cooked.”
“Tantamount to a moral code,” he says. “You coming? Are you morally up to it?”
I don’t answer. I would have to put clothes on, and shoes, and go out again through the front door. I would have to assume I wasn’t hated and despised by everyone in the world, forget the short squat man, and Jude, and the women with their buggies who glared at me on the common. I would have to pretend I was morally up to it. I make a noise. I’m not sure if it is a yes or a no.
“Great,” he says, deciphering for us both. “See you there.”
• • •
I’m going to walk. I scour the street when I open the front door. A yellow parking-suspension sign has gone up on a lamppost. An Asda shopping bag skits between the wheels of cars.
My mobile rings.
“Gabs, Gabs,” says Philip’s voice, “I miss you, doll. Move closer,” he sings. His words are slurred. “Move your body real close until it feels, feels like I’m reallyIdon’tknow.”
“You’re up late,” I say. “Hello.”
It’s the middle of the night in Singapore, or the early hours of the morning.
“Where’s my little girl? Can I talk to her? My Mills, my baby.”
“She’s in Suffolk with Robin, Philip. Just for a few days, until . . .”
“My lovely Millie. My Gabs. ’Member that time we went skinny-dipping in Cornwall? So cold, wasn’t it?”
“It was really cold.”
“Brrrrrrr. It was so cold. Do you remember how cold we were?”
“I do. We were really, really cold.”
“Do you miss me?” I can hear music in the background, shouts, laughter, singing. A Chinese-style banquet. Karaoke and shots of sake. Lots of shots of sake.
I close the front door with a quiet click behind me. My phone is cupped under my chin. “Yup.” I open the gate and turn left toward the common. Tears are pricking the corners of my eyes. “When are you coming home?”
“Endoftheweek. Promise, if I can. Soonermaybe.” I turn out of the alley and into the trees. Why does he have to ring, with this, now? It feels like too late. The common stretches out, empty, green. A cathedral of trees, of dark corners and empty places.
“Love you. Promiseseeyousoon. Bye. Bye.” His voice goes as if someone has pulled him away.
I feel the phone, heavy in my pocket, knocking against my thigh as I crunch along the gravel path. I want to turn round. All the way across the common, I have to force myself not to. I put one step in front of the other. I pull my shoulders back. I don’t turn round.
• • •
The bistro/bar/café is all dark wood and steel, Ercol chairs and vintage Anglepoise in alcoves.
Jack is nibbling on some olives and what look like toenail clippings.
I pause a minute at the door to collect myself, to pull my face into the right expression. And then I stand up straight and walk over, as if we were old friends and life was just normal. “You couldn’t wait?” I say behind him.
He looks up, outraged. “I haven’t eaten all day.”
“Not since you put away your body weight in custard tarts this morning.”
“Oh, yes. Forgot you were there.”
“Charming.” I slip off my coat and hang it on the back of my chair. It’s busy. A mixed crowd—singles straight from work, couples on a night out, women plying small children with cold chips. (Round here, even in late-night bars called Doom and Inferno, you find women plying small children with cold chips.) Nobody notices me, but I sit down quickly, shield my face.
Jack has a trendy French carafe of red wine in front of him. We do a swift mime of him offering and me accepting and I lean back and take a big gulp. I can feel it bypassing my veins and going straight to my head. I close my eyes briefly, give the alcohol a few minutes to work away the phone call from Philip.
When I open them, Jack is looking at me, with a slight frown. “New hair?”
“Cut it all off.”
“Makes you look younger.”
“Thank you. I . . .”
He sweeps his hands through his own. “So glad you came. I know we’ve got things to talk about, but first, God, this afternoon, this bloke . . .”
That’s it about the hair then. He starts talking about the father of the dead boy and how, when the bomb had exploded, he had run down to reception, scoured the wreckage, hoisted masonry, sifted through body parts,
demanded answers from police, officials, hospitals, plastered the resort with posters. Then finally, after a week of desperate searching, had driven five hours across the desert to a morgue in a different part of Egypt, where the body of his son lay.
Jack carefully rolls up the sleeves of his white shirt, one fold after the other, when he gets to this bit. It’s not an easy movement. It’s controlled, but his hands are shaking. “Meanwhile, he and his wife and his two other sons had been relocated to a different hotel—much posher than the one they’d booked—and when they weren’t searching, they were sitting by the pool. Can you imagine that? They didn’t know what else to do.”
“It’s the banality of tragedy, isn’t it?” I shake my head. “The fact that life just goes on—kids demanding another Coke. They were probably hand-washing knickers in the hotel bathroom.”
“They ran out of suntan lotion. They had to buy more from the hotel shop.” He takes a swig of his wine.
“Bloody hell.”
“I didn’t see his wife—she didn’t want to meet me—but I could hear her, through the walls. She was washing up the whole time.”
“God. Losing a child, and in such terrible circumstances.”
I sigh deeply. The horror, the finality of death, it’s more than I can bear. I feel intense sorrow for this mother and father welling and growing, and then very slightly stagnating. Everybody is somebody’s child. Ania. Alfie, the biter. Millie. I feel I am dying just to think of it.
“He wanted to tell me every detail.”
“Maybe he thought if he kept telling the story, it would have a different outcome, that he would have some control over the ending.”
“Yes perhaps. And now he’s fighting to change the compensation law, but it’s not really what he wants. He just wants his son back.”
“Poor guy.” I’m wondering if it is too early to change the subject. We’ve run out of things to say, but we can’t launch straight into me. Even the man outside my house. It would be heartless. I sigh again. “My problems seem so pathetic after—”
Under Your Skin: A Novel Page 21