Under Your Skin: A Novel

by Durrant, Sabine

  “Okay,” I say.

  Then I walk slowly upstairs.

  Philip is scrunched up on our bed, his face entombed in the pillow. He is wearing new shoes. The price tag is still stuck to one of the soles.

  For a fraction of a second, I think he is dead. I stand in the doorway, considering him. Then I kneel down and say his name, and he turns his face to me, blotched and red and tear stained, eyes squeezed by swollen skin, a ruin of a face.

  “Philip,” I say again, and like a desperate child conceding need, he pulls himself up and buries his head in my chest and sobs. His hands claw at my top. Is it grief for the girl, or anguish at his actions, or guilt, or fear at what I might say? I don’t know. All and nothing. His body is racked. A creature, not a man. I can’t quite bear it at first—we didn’t mean to fall in love—but after a few minutes, I touch him. First his hair and then his shoulders. The strokes are light, then firm, like a massage. I knead the anguish out of him. Pity like a small caged bird beats inside me.

  Time passes. His shudders slow and then stop.

  When he raises his head, he shields his eyes with his hand so I can’t look at him. Gingerly, I lift his hand away.

  “I’ve made your shirt all wet,” he says in a small voice.

  “Budge up.”

  He moves over, and I lie next to him. We stare at each other.

  “I’m so sorry, Gaby. I’m so sorry for everything.”

  He says sorry again and again.

  I interrupt: “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It was an affair. I thought you didn’t need to find out. Everyone at work has affairs. I just thought . . .”

  “You just thought?”

  “I thought I could get away with it.” He groans. “Pete Anderson once told me a little extramarital is something extra, a treat for working so hard, a perk of the job.”

  My stomach turns. “But you were in love with her?”

  He lets out a noise, a strangulated moan. “I don’t know. I wasn’t going to leave you. I would never have left you and Millie. I got in out of my depth.” He has stopped crying, taken control of himself now. “She reminded me of you. As you were when we first met, so fiercely independent, so determined to put the past behind you and make something of yourself.”

  He is gazing at me with tenderness.

  “She even bit the corner of her lip the same way you used to—half confident, half desperately insecure. The day she was in the kitchen, when your mother was ill, she was so sweet with Millie. I . . .”

  “When I asked why you didn’t tell me, I meant when she died, Philip. How could you not have told me then? How could you have kept it to yourself? I just don’t understand.”

  He closes his eyes. “I was terrified. Gaby? Please. Listen to me. I didn’t know that the dead woman, the body you—my wife—had found was Ania until the police came to my office. I thought it was a teenager. You told me it was a teenager.”

  “I didn’t. I said ‘a girl.’ You misunderstood.”

  “I almost passed out when the policewoman told me her name. I had been worried about her. She hadn’t been answering her phone. I hadn’t seen much of her for a week or two. She’d been in Poland for a wedding. I was supposed to have gone to her flat, but then you threw that date night at me. I’d been trying to ring her, I had been round there . . . I never imagined . . . I got through the police interview—it was you they were worried about, not me, they had no idea. I could see the policewoman giving me funny looks—I was sweating; I told her I had eaten something dodgy. They took my alibis and they went away. I was sick in the loo, Gabs, really, I just couldn’t . . . And then I just got on my bike and cycled. I didn’t know where. I spoke to you from the middle of Hyde Park, told you I was still at the office. I was in shock. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I waited until I knew you’d be asleep before I came home.”

  “I saw you that night downstairs, at your desk. You looked as if you were working.”

  “I was dying.”

  “So you lied to me, and you lied to the police? You didn’t think either of those things mattered? All this evidence that linked her to this house—the soil from our front garden; the Tesco receipt, the clothes? Even when they suspected me, even when they arrested me, took me to a police station, put me in a cell, and kept me there overnight.” I have raised my voice. I can’t stop myself. “You didn’t come back and sort it out. You let them think I did it.”

  He begins to bite his hand. I pull it away from his mouth. He has started weeping again. “I couldn’t,” he says. “I couldn’t tell the police.” The words are only just decipherable.

  “Why?”

  He shakes his head.

  “You need to tell me,” I say.

  A long silence and then finally: “I was there.” His hands cover his face. “The night she died. I was there.”

  “Tell me,” I say again. Gently, I take his hands away.

  He puts them on his head, presses them down hard. “I did use the gym. I did go to Nobu and for a nightcap at the Dorchester. I was with people most of the time. But there’s a window, a forty-minute gap, when I wasn’t with anyone. Bob thought I was on a call, but I wasn’t. I left Nobu and cycled to her flat. She hadn’t been answering her phone, and I was worried.”

  “And you fancied a quickie?”

  “No. Gaby. Don’t.” He turns to me, his face anguished. “She wasn’t in, and I didn’t want to come home so I cycled back. I thought I would have to come clean. I thought the police would find out, but no one seemed to have noticed I was gone for a bit. I’d got away with it. And no one knew, you see. I’d used a pay-as-you-go phone, and I destroyed it. We always met in secret. I hadn’t told anyone. Not even Pete. I was scared. It didn’t look good, Gaby. My girlfriend—dead—and me outside her flat the night she died. I wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  “So you thought life could go on as if nothing had happened?”

  “No. I tried. God, that weekend in Brighton, the hell of trying to pretend. I cooked up that work trip, just to get away. I needed time to think.”

  “To grieve?”

  “I suppose. Yes. I only had one meeting. I could have been back in thirty-six hours. I sat for hour upon hour in my hotel room, or random bars, drinking myself into oblivion, trying to pull myself together, trying to work out what to do. The strain of those phone calls, pretending everything was fine, making up boat trips and karaoke.”

  We stare at each other until at last I say, “So who killed her, Philip, if it wasn’t you?”

  He lets out a bellow, like childbirth. “I don’t know. An old boyfriend. Tolek? His jealousy drove her mad. Or someone she met? There was another English bloke before me. Everywhere she went, men fell for her. She wasn’t that pretty, but you couldn’t take your eyes off her. She just had something, you know.” He lets out another terrible sob. “Or some nutter? I don’t want to . . . But not me, Gaby. I promise you, not me. Please believe me.”

  “Ssh.”

  “She pulled me in, Gaby, enchanted me. It was like a dream. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  I stroke his hair. I wish he wasn’t saying this, trying to absolve himself. It grates.

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  His limbs loosen a little. He nestles into the pillow. A corner of the duvet is free of our bodies, and he subtly nudges it so it covers his shoulder.

  “You sent her flowers and bought her expensive presents—Agent Provocateur. You gave her my clothes.”

  He puts his hand over his face. I can’t quite hear what he says.

  I don’t pull the hand off this time. I just say, “Did you really love her?”

  “I did, but it was more—”

  “More of a physical thing?”

  I’m feeding him his lines. He nods.

  “Even with that tattoo? Tasteful as those cherries were. I don’t think of you as a tattoo man.”

  “She was different. It was all different. I was a different person when I was with her.”<
br />
  He is removing himself from the equation, shucking off responsibilty. It wasn’t him. It was “a different person.”

  He puts his hand on my face now, cups a whole cheek. “I’m sorry, Gaby. I never wanted to hurt you.”

  “Well . . .” I breathe in soap and coffee and the salty lemon scent of his body. Then I can’t think of anything else.

  A pause. “I should go to the police,” he says.

  I put my hand over his to keep it where it is. My tears are catching in his fingers. “Millie will be here any minute,” I say into his skin. “Go later. Maybe even tomorrow. What’s a few more hours? Let’s have our day.”

  He releases a sigh like a shudder. He looks at me with hope and trust. I hold his life, the beating heart of it, in my hands. “Where would I be without you?” he says.

  We lie for a little while longer. I don’t know how long. I lose track of time. Maybe it is only minutes when noises erupt below our window. Car doors, laughter, voices, the clattering of gates.

  I leave Philip in the bedroom and go downstairs and open the front door wide, and there is Millie, in shorts and bare feet, her face rosy with country walks and fresh air and home cooking. And coming up behind her is dear Robin, cheerful and no-nonsense, holding a handful of muddy rhubarb.

  We hug and shriek a little. Millie jumps up and down and makes a cross face at my hair and Robin makes a dash to the loo because her pelvic floor is shot to shreds. I hold the rhubarb and wonder what I’m supposed to do with it. Then Philip is on the stairs, his cheeks silvery with cold water, and Millie gives a yelp when she sees him, and he comes down and picks her up and swings her round and kisses and hugs her, a noise in the back of his throat like a growl. Then Robin emerges from the loo, still zipping up her jeans, and says something about a family reunited, and for a moment I forget about it all and think everything will be all right.

  • • •

  We have our day. We roast chicken, which Millie is too full of sausages and chips to eat, and we play Racing Demon, a holiday treat. We go for a walk, over to the playground, and Philip sits next to me on the bench, his fingers coiled in mine, protection from the nudges and the stares. They don’t know me, these people. They think they do, but they don’t. You have to make more of an effort when you’re not on the telly, when you’re no one in particular. As soon as this is over, I’m going to work harder at things like this.

  Later, at home, I find a recipe, in the shiny cookbooks, for a cake with rhubarb, and we curl up on the sofa, the three of us, and eat it watching House of Anubis. Philip tries to stay awake. Millie taps him when his head lolls. His eyes seep. His nose runs. Hay fever, or jet lag, or grief. I’m watching him dissolve.

  When his BlackBerry chirrups, he doesn’t notice, or perhaps he doesn’t care.

  My phone doesn’t stop: Philip’s parents back from their cruise, with tales of the Ancient World and Modern Plumbing. Can they come at the weekend? Is that okay? Their heads are full of Sparta and Byzantium, the lovely couple they met from West Byfleet. I want to tell them everything that has happened while they’ve been out of contact, but I don’t. A neighbor will tell them, or one of their friends. It can wait. Texts and missed calls from Jack I don’t read or return. My voicemail fills and overflows. Everything turns to liquid.

  Robin gets back at 5:00 PM, flushed, her curly hair wild. The sky has darkened; thick clouds have chased her from the station. I tell her she’s an allegorical representation of health and fecundity. “I’m certainly that,” she says. “Doc says I’m tickety-boo down under.” She gulps down a cup of tea and a slice of cake, but she’s bushed, her boobs are bursting, and she’s bloody desperate to get back to her baby. “What about you, little lady?” she says to Millie. “Do you really want to come back with me?”

  “I want to stay with Mum and Dad,” Millie says. “But I also want to go to Roxanne’s party.”

  “We’ll come and get you at the weekend,” I say.

  Robin heaves herself to her feet. “Are we going to do this, or are we going to do this?”

  I carry Millie to the car. I feel her hot arms on my neck, her legs at my waist, her small, muscular body wrapped around mine. I belt her up and kiss her forehead and her chin and both cheeks. Philip kisses her and bends to say good-bye.

  We stand and wave. I chase the car up the street, shouting, “See you in two days!” Drops of rain polka-dot the pavement. When I turn round, Philip has returned to the house. The brickwork, wet now, has darkened. He has left the front door open, and I close it behind me.

  It’s murky in the hall. Philip has gone upstairs. It’s gloomier in the kitchen than it should be. It’s not raining heavily—you need to concentrate hard on the dark patches of shrub to tell it’s raining at all. A square of halogen stares down above the apple tree. I still haven’t ordered blinds.

  I have my finger on the light switch when Philip says, “I don’t understand one thing.”

  “God!” I put my hand to my heart. “You gave me a shock.”

  He is sitting on the sofa in the shadows.

  “The tattoo. How did you know about that?”

  I switch on the light. The empty cushion beside him holds the shape of Millie.

  “What tattoo?”

  “Ania’s tattoo, the one of a cherry.”

  I put the cups and plates in the dishwasher. I open the cupboard for the dustpan and brush to sweep cake crumbs from the floor. “I saw it, on the body. Her top was rucked up. My top”—I give him a pointed look—“which you weirdly gave her, along with all those other things. Though, actually”—I pause in my sweeping and reflect—“maybe I didn’t see it. Maybe the police told me and I imagine that I saw it. In all those hours of questioning, it might have come up.”

  “God. Hours of questioning. I am so sorry.”

  “I thought they would never release me. But—hurrah—they did! And now I’m going to run you a bath.”

  “I’m so tired, Gabs.”

  “I know you are.”

  “I need to go to the police.”

  I kiss the top of his head. “Later,” I say. “There will be time enough for that.”

  I climb the stairs to our bathroom and turn on the taps, dribbling in a capful of my precious Deep Relax. You don’t need much.

  He wanders in. He’s so drowsy he can hardly speak. He pulls off his clothes with his back to me, his movements clumsy, eases himself into the water. “That’s nice,” he says.

  “How about a whiskey?”

  “Even better.”

  When he’s settled, a large tumbler in his hand, I put on my tracksuit bottoms. I wish I had my Asics. My Dunlops are too jolting. I chuck them back into the cupboard and lace on Philip’s Asics instead.

  I stand in the doorway of the bathroom. I gaze at the face I loved. His eyelids are closing. The fatigue, and the stress, the grief: for once, he looks older than me. “I’m going for a run, my darling,” I tell him.

  And I leave the house.

  • • •

  I prefer running in the evening to the morning. It helps me sleep. I’m not good at letting the turmoil of the day rest. Not always. The rain has stopped, or perhaps it never really got started. The clouds threatened more than they delivered.

  I take the path round the pond. It’s wet, tacky underfoot. Even with extra socks, Philip’s Asics are too big. The mud doesn’t help. I can’t get up any speed. I need that to run it out. We all have coping mechanisms. The slap and pound of rubber compound on tarmac and gravel and grass, that’s mine.

  Small flies swarm above my head. I bat them away. It can be idyllic, Wandsworth Common, in certain seasons, certain lights—a patchwork of rich greens, the pale mist of hawthorn, autumn in its bright regalia. This evening, it feels dull and flat. A supermarket cart is upended in the weeds. There’s a gathering of bored geese.

  I leave the pond and join the central path. A black scarf—cashmere, perhaps, though that might be the effect of raindrops on wool—hangs on a railing. A child�
�s broken scooter sticks out of the bushes. Pieces of people. Dropped. Forgotten. Abandoned.

  I keep my eye out for that bracelet. I always do.

  Breathing is harder when I’m upset. It catches and tangles in my throat.

  The real hell of life, someone once said, is that everyone has their reasons.

  Running: I couldn’t have got through this without that. The fake smiles, the brave face, the pretend family jollity, hoping it would go away. Birthday teas. Pub lunches. Date nights. Running helped release the anger. It massaged out the pain, the acid. Perhaps it would all have been different if I had been honest, confronted him at the very start, but dissimulation is my natural response, my childhood training. All those hours at the kitchen table—the life cycle of the frog, the origins of the Second World War—blocking out the drunken jags. The life lessons given by an alcoholic mother. Keep laughing and carry on.

  I turn the corner. Another runner passes, elbows like knives. At the playground, two teenage girls dangle on the swings. I stop, lean forward on my knees. I try and inhale. I am not sure I can run this evening after all. I can’t do it right. I can’t do anything right. My head is throbbing, churning, my heart is beating, too fast. Is this panic? Or is my body giving out? I lean against the playground railings, try to recover.

  Did he really think I didn’t know? Of course I knew. Oh not at first, not when I was burying my mother, when I couldn’t see for grief and guilt. It was a week or two later, when that had settled into something lower and duller, that I suspected. My husband the secret philanderer: not so much. And what gave the great lover away? A yawn. In September, a Sunday night after a weekend when Millie and I had been in Yeovil packing up my mother’s flat, “shoveling shit” as Robin put it. What had he been up to, I asked, how had he spent the days? He began to answer—“I, er . . .” and then paused to open his mouth, force it out: a slow, fake yawn that played for time. “Bit of bike,” he said. “Bit of work.” Not lipstick on the collar. Not a blush or a long, blond hair. Philip slipped up with casual exhaustion.