Under Your Skin: A Novel

by Durrant, Sabine

  I expected Philip to go to the police. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, waiting, but he didn’t. I was tense with anticipation. When he stayed quiet, I had to adjust, think ahead, keep my brain turning. And once I was arrested, Philip had to keep away. I longed for him with every nerve in my body, but I had to play it down or there was a danger he would rush back. He would come armed with lawyers and injunctions—but it was too risky. He would have told the police everything, perhaps even suspected me himself. Singapore played into my hands. As long as he was out of the picture, I didn’t have a motive.

  I manage to get to my feet and immediately duck down. A man is hovering by the café, peering across. Has he heard me scream or sob? Has he seen me? I try and stay still, but my whole body shudders. I cover my eyes.

  Imaginary voices, creaking boards. The police, the hacks, I could cope with them, but the feeling of being spied on, followed, the pranks played by guilt to keep itself diverted, is driving me insane. My stalker didn’t exist. He was a cry for help, a failed bid for sympathy at the height of Philip’s affair. Philip hardly noticed. I brought him out again last week, one last flight of terror, the DVD purchased with the Polos in the corner shop in Putney, to divert attention, try and convince Perivale someone was out to get me. All those suspects I kept finding, throwing them in my path like meat before a dog: Marta, Tolek, the man in the red Renault. All of them innocent. The police kept on coming.

  A sudden movement in the bushes—a bird rises, squawking. My heart pounds. The thing is, Perivale is out to get me.

  A vibration in my pocket. My phone.

  Jack.

  I switch it to silent. I stand and scan the area. No sign of the man by the café. He seems to have gone. I’ve got to pull myself together. I’ve got to keep going. I can’t give up. I haven’t got much time.

  I used Jack at first—a despairing response to the trap I was in. Was he using me, or not? I needed to investigate and I couldn’t do it alone. A sympathetic write-up was an extra bonus. Ania had friends, people she might have talked to, employees; I had to find out if anyone knew about Philip. Choosing Jack was random. I wanted him to help me, but I didn’t want him to be too clever, too good at his job. I watched and listened, considered everything he said and did, adjusted my opinion by a million daily calibrations. I had to be in control. It was fine at first—he seemed a little lackluster in his interest, had other work to follow through. But there were difficult moments. He was both more sentimental and sharper than I realized. He remembered names—Caroline Fletcher’s, Millie’s, and Clara’s—too promptly for my comfort. He knew Philip was in Singapore. There was even a moment down by the river, when I thought he’d guessed.

  I liked Jack. I like him. He is gentle and funny and straightforward. And the heart-rending thing is, he likes me. He knows things, too. I told him. In the restaurant, I drank too much. I opened my mouth, let him see into the dark morass of my soul. Here’s the odd thing: it drew him closer, made him more interested. And perhaps I began to fall for him, with all the loss of control and dignity that that implies.

  Shifts and adjustments; they’ve been needed all along. As soon I discovered Christa knew Ania had another man, “the baby father,” I tried to head Jack off. I couldn’t risk him getting any closer to the truth. But he was out of control. He’d gone rogue, passionate in his determination to prove my innocence, meeting Tolek, Hannah Morrow, and her loose lips. And then whatever he did to get the diary from Christa—charm and threats. The diary is the clincher. Philip will be named in there. Down in black and white. Even if he doesn’t go to the police himself, the truth is out.

  This is the end. And the ironic thing is: Jack did it for me. He ruined my life out of kindness. It’s all gone wrong. You make it up as you go along. You have to make the best of what you have.

  • • •

  I’m calmer now. Altogether calm. I have to think. I have to act.

  I start walking in the direction of the house. I must pace myself. It’s busier out now, a couple of dog walkers on their evening constitutional, a gaggle of kids horsing about on the parallel bars.

  We used to come out here, Philip and I, when we first moved in, stroll out over the common when we got back from work. We would link arms and talk about our days, my hopes, his ambition. We would do the house up, when we had the money, dig out the basement. “Fill it with children,” I remember saying.

  On bright evenings, we would sit by the bowling green, coax out the skanky cat.

  Philip’s hair curled about his collar. I remember watching his hands as he stroked the cat’s white throat. Once from his pocket, he produced a piece of ham, saved from lunch.

  I lean against a tree. I can’t remember this now. It’s a snapshot from another world. It’s all too late. Philip isn’t that person anymore. He has changed too much. That person has gone. I have to wrench my mind away. I must get this straight. I mustn’t get this wrong. No more mistakes.

  Think. Sort.

  Alibi. He cycled down here. He was outside her flat. His alibi has holes.

  Motive. She was pregnant, threatening to tell me. Or seeing another man—Tolek? Or blackmailing him? Several possible motives.

  Evidence. My DNA can be explained. I found the body. It is my contamination. The clothes, the credit card receipt, the mud: they link to the house—to Philip—as I have said all along. The police will have the diary now. One last niggle, one last obstacle that might trip me up. The most recent evidence from the flat: what is it?

  I take out my phone and call Jack. He wants to know if I’m all right. There is alarm in his voice. “I am,” I say. “I’m fine. It’s going to be okay.” I tell him I will ring him back when I know what’s happening. “No, I’m not in any danger. I promise.”

  He has given the diary to Morrow, he tells me; she’s finding a translator. And the new evidence, I ask, from Ania’s flat: did he ask her what it was?

  “Nothing interesting,” he says, almost conversationally. “She said it was a bracelet. Some old broken bracelet.”

  A bracelet. My bracelet. It snapped when I killed her, slipped into the folds of the sheet, or down behind the mattress. My DNA is on it, but so is Philip’s. I think about his bent head as he leaned to fasten the clasp. A man who would steal his wife’s clothes to give to his mistress. What’s one bracelet more? I can deal with the bracelet. I’d been dreading a tissue, dropped from my sleeve. There would have been no explanation for that.

  So the police have the diary. There’s no going back from that.

  Jack is still talking. He says something about he wishes I’d rung earlier, how he’s been out of his mind with worry.

  “I’ve been out of my mind, too,” I say.

  I lean against the wall, just outside the alley. I look up at the trees. Do people change? I think they do. Philip is not the same person. It makes it easier to think that. And I have changed, too. I must get home. I don’t have long.

  • • •

  Philip is still in the bath. He’s in the gaping depths of sleep—the jet lag, the Deep Relax, the packet of antihistamines dissolved in his whiskey. The tumbler glints under the bath. It will have fallen from his hand. On the mat, a single ice cube melts. I hope he drank every drop. When we talked earlier it would have been better if he had been less selfish, thought more about poor Ania. I didn’t like all those excuses, that shifting of blame. He was lucky to have her. I know that now. She deserved more. We both did. But I don’t want it to hurt. I don’t want him to feel pain.

  I’m wearing gloves. My hands are shaking so hard I can hardly hold the blade. A vertical line, I know that from Dr. Janey on Mornin’ All. I grip one wrist to stop the tremor, and it helps. It isn’t hard once I’ve made the first cut. There’s barely a splash on the floor at all.

  A suicide. PC Morrow had said, “You get a lot of them in this job.”

  I curl up on the bathroom floor, clutching my knees. I cry as silently as I can. I feel the blood pumping in my own veins. This is
worse, so much worse than I imagined. I’d have done anything to keep him, and I did. But nothing was enough. I’ll take off his Asics in a minute. The St. Christopher is waiting for the police in the running machine. The murder weapon? I have pulled the ends back through the seam of the hoddie and knotted them, so they dangle back where they should. And the suicide note: he wrote his own—the confession letter. So neatly divided, page one from page two. So easy to lose page one, and leave page two sitting on the bed. It’s all there. Words, phrases, stories, lies. How many mistakes have I made? Are there more to come? All I can do is hope.

  I will wait a little while, here in the bathroom, until the horror passes. My face is pressed into my hand; I can feel the imprint of my fingers on my cheek. Soon I will take my hand away and I will scream.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For sharing their knowledge and experience, thank you to Matt and Vanya Nunn, Ben Smith, Hilary Kirkbride, Diana Eden, Emma Smith, and Jill Mellor. For guidance and advice: Francesca Dow, Derry Clinch, Lucy Akrill, Lucy Horton, and Gill Hornby. Much gratitude is due to Judith Murray at Greene & Heaton; Grainne Fox at Fletcher & Co; Ruth Tross at Hodder; and to Emily Bestler and Kate Cetrulo at Simon & Schuster—all of whom made this possible. Most of all, thank you to Giles Smith, who helped in everything.

  SABINE DURRANT is a former assistant editor of the Guardian and a former literary editor at the Sunday Times whose feature writing has appeared in numerous British national newspapers and magazines. She is currently a magazine profile writer for the Sunday Telegraph and a contributor to the Guardian’s Family section. She live in south London with her partner, the sportswriter Giles Smith, and their three children.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Sabine Durrant

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  First Emily Bestler Books/Atria Books hardcover edition February 2014

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  Designed by Kyle Kabel

  Jacket design by Janet Perr

  Jacket photograph by Tony Watson/Arcangel Images

  Author photograph by Mark Mawson

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  ISBN 978-1-4767-1623-7

  ISBN 978-1-4767-1631-2 (eBook)

  Contents

  1: Friday

  2: Saturday

  3: Monday

  4: Tuesday

  5: Saturday

  6: Wednesday

  7: Thursday

  8: Friday

  9: Saturday

  10: Sunday

  11: Monday

  12: Tuesday

  13: Wednesday

  Acknowledgments

  About Sabine Durrant