Beneath the Skin (16 page)

Walking down a street, she glances constantly at her reflection in the shop windows, checking that everything is still in place. And it always is. Her clothes are ironed, her hair fits her like a cap. Her nails are manicured and painted a pale pink; her toenails are pink too, in their expensive sandals. Her legs are smooth. She holds herself straight, shoulders back and chin up. She is clean, neat, bright with energy and purpose.

Yet I have watched her. I see beyond her smile that is not a real smile, and her laugh that, if you listen carefully, very carefully, is forced and brittle. She is like a string on a violin that has been tightened to the thin screeching point. She is not happy. If she was happy, or wild with fear, or with desire, she would become beautiful. She would be liberated from her shell and become her true self. She does not realize she is not happy. Only I realize. Only I can see inside her and release her. She is waiting for me, sealed up inside herself, still untouched by the world.

Fate smiles on me. I see that now. At first I did not understand that I had become invisible. Nobody can see me. I can go on and on.

It’s very late, almost midnight, but it’s still almost indecently hot. Even though I’ve opened the windows upstairs, the wind that blows in is warm as well, as if it had blown across a desert. Clive isn’t back. His secretary, Jan, phoned and told Lena he wouldn’t be back until very late and now it’s very late and indeed he’s not back. As usual I left him some sandwiches in the fridge and had one of them myself, so that’s all right.

The house is quiet now. Lena’s out doing God knows what until God knows when. The boys are asleep. Just after eleven I went round and switched their lights out. Even Josh was asleep, exhausted by the rigors of an evening spent on the phone. Everything’s done. I’ve started to pack for Josh and Harry, who are catching the plane tomorrow. It’s going to be quiet in the house over the next few weeks, for various different reasons.

I’m not in general especially keen on alcoholic drinks. Clive’s terribly clever about wine, but it’s not something I would ever bother about if it were just me. But that night it was so incredibly stifling and I felt a bit on edge so that suddenly the idea of a gin and tonic came into my head as if it were in a magazine advertisement. I imagined a beautiful sultry woman, darkly tanned, in an exotic location with a drink that was so cold the glass was glistening with moisture. She would be sweating in a sexy way and in between sips she would press the cold glass to her forehead. She would be sitting alone but you would know that she was waiting for some pretty amazing man to arrive.

So I had to have one, of course. Unbelievably, there was no lemon in the house except for a rather dry leftover slice in the door of the fridge, which would just about do. I made the drink and I felt I needed a snack. All that I could find was one of the packets of cheese puffs that I put in Chris’s packed lunch. So I sat and nibbled my way through the packet, which took only a minute, and I was almost shocked to discover that the drink was finished. I had made it with very little gin, so I thought I could manage just one more to take upstairs to the bath.

I wasn’t sweating prettily and sexily like the girl in my magazine advertisement. My blouse was wet in the back. My bra was damp, there were dark patches of moisture around the edges of my knickers. My skin was clammy everywhere. I could smell myself. I thought I was going to rot.

The bath was warm and foamy and blurry. By the time I was halfway through the second drink, nothing seemed to matter as much as it had. For example, although I had mixed this rather pungent bath foam into the water, I then washed my hair as well and then rinsed it out in the bathroom without even showering separately. That’s not the normal way I behave. Did I mention that a second note had arrived?

Just after lunch today there was delivery after delivery: the right kind of paint, kick-space heaters that should have arrived a month ago. It was like a rugby team marching in and out, and at the end of it all, Lena found an envelope addressed to me lying on the doormat. She brought it to me. I knew what it was straight away but I opened it anyway.

Dear Jenny,

You’re a beautiful woman. But not when you’re with anyone. When you’re just alone, walking down the street. You bite your top lip sometimes when you’re thinking. You sing to yourself.

You look at yourself and I look at you. We’ve got that in common. But one day I’ll look at you when you’re dead.

It gave me the creeps a bit, naturally, but mainly I was cross. No, not cross: furious. I’d had days now, two days of Lynne hovering about, being nice enough in a statuary sort of way but always hovering, always being just a bit irritating, a bit ingratiating, a bit too determined not to be offended when I snap at her. And then the police car parked outside. People always watching me, keeping an eye on my day. And this was all the good it had done. So when I had read the letter I went off in search of her. She was on the phone. I stood in front of her, waiting until she got embarrassed and hung up.

“I’ve got something you might be interested in,” I said, handing her the letter.

That lit a rocket under her. It was barely ten minutes before Stadler was sitting in my kitchen, staring at me across the table.

“On the mat, you said?” he asked in a sort of mumble.

“That’s where Lena found it,” I said tartly. “Clearly he’s making private arrangements for his mail. To be honest, it makes me wonder what the point is of all this disruption if he can still walk up to the house and deliver a letter.”

“It’s disappointing,” Stadler said, pushing his hands through his hair. Handsome—and he knows it, my grandmother used to say with disapproval of men like that. “Did you see anybody approaching the house?”

“People have been approaching the house all day, tramping in and out.”

“Was anything else delivered?”

“Yes, lots of things.”

“Could you describe the people who delivered them?”

“I didn’t meet any of them. You can talk to Lena about that.”

I was walking busily around the kitchen. Stadler was sitting at the kitchen table looking gloomy, poor thing.

“Tell me what you’re actually
doing
about all of this,” I demanded.

“Doing?” he repeated, as if the question didn’t make sense.

“Yes, you know, forgive me for being stupid, but just spell it out for me, will you?”

He put his hand on mine and I let it lie there, hot and heavy. “Mrs. Hintlesham, Jenny, we’re doing everything we can. We’re doing forensic tests on all the letters, we’re trying to find out where the paper came from, we’re looking at the fingerprints in your house in case he should have broken in. As you know”—he attempted a rueful smile but it didn’t suit him—“we’re going through all your friends, acquaintances, contacts, people who work or have worked for you, to try and establish any connections between you and the, er, the other people who have been targeted by the writer of these letters. And then, of course, until he is caught, we are making quite sure you are safe and protected.”

I took my hand away.

“Is there really any point in carrying on with all this?” I asked.

“What?” said Stadler.

“All this ridiculous fuss about opening letters and hanging around the house.”

There was quite a long silence. Stadler seemed to be finding it hard to make up his mind what to say. Then he looked up at me with his very dark eyes, almost too dark.

“This is serious,” he said. “You’ve read the letters. This man has threatened to kill you.”

“Well they’re pretty nasty,” I admitted. “But really it’s the sort of thing you have to put up with living in London, like obscene phone calls and traffic and dog mess on the streets and all that.”

“Maybe,” said Stadler. “But we need to take it seriously. I’m going to liaise with DCI Links in a minute, but what I’m going to suggest—and I’m sure he’ll agree with me—is that we need to make this environment more secure.”

“What do you mean?”

“All the work being done here must stop. Just for the time being.”

“Are you crazy?” I was aghast. “These builders have a six-month waiting list. Jeremy’s off to Germany next week. The plasterers are arriving at the beginning of next week. Do you want to see my folder? This isn’t something I can just shut down and start up again when you feel like it.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Hintlesham. But it’s essential.”

“Essential for who? Is it just going to help you because you aren’t doing your job properly?”

Stadler stood up.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Sorry we haven’t caught this lunatic. But it’s difficult. Normally there’s a procedure, knocking on doors, looking for witnesses. But when a madman picks on somebody at random, there’s no normal procedure. You just have to hope that you get a break.”

I almost laughed, but I stayed coldly silent. This ridiculous man wanted my sympathy. He wanted me to say “There, there” because it was so hard to be a policeman. I felt like throwing him out, him and the rest of them.

“What we have to consider,” he continued, “is that he has made a serious threat on your life. We want to catch him, but our first priority is your safety. I don’t feel we can take any more risks with that. The alternative would be for you to move away from this house to somewhere more protected.”

I’d felt like there was a volcano trying to erupt deep in my stomach. The second prospect was even worse, so I had agreed, in a sort of cold fury. I asked when he wanted them to leave and he said straightaway, while he was in the house. So I stomped around like a nightclub bouncer and briskly ejected everybody. Then there was an awful hour of phone calls and half explanations to baffled people and attempts to make vague commitments for the future.

I drank the last of my gin and tonic and got out of the bath and wrapped myself with the big soft towel. It was so hot and so steamy in the bathroom that my skin remained clammy however much I rubbed it, so I walked through to the bedroom. The doors on the fitted cupboards had full-length mirrors on them. They were to have been ripped out next week. I stood in front of one of them and watched myself as I dried my hair and then my body. Even then I still felt damp in the heat of the evening, so I tossed the towel down on the carpet and stood and looked at myself. It was something I hardly ever did, not naked, without makeup.

I tried to imagine what it would be like to be unfamiliar with that body, to see it for the first time and to find it attractive. I narrowed my eyes and tilted my head to one side, but it seemed almost too much of an effort. I suppose it happens with all married couples after years together and children and all that, and hard work—you just become part of the furniture, something you hardly notice except when it starts to go wrong. Maybe that’s why other things—I mean other people—might seem more enticing. I tried to imagine what it was like when Clive and I had first seen each other in, well, in that sort of way, and the funny thing was that I absolutely couldn’t. I could remember our first time. At his first flat in Clapham. I could remember all the details. I could remember the play we had been to see beforehand, what food we had eaten afterward. I could even remember what clothes I was wearing, which he had then taken off, but what it had felt like, to see each other’s flesh for the first time—that had gone.

I’d had only one serious boyfriend before that. Well, fairly serious, to me at any rate. He was a photographer called Jon Jones. He’s pretty famous now. You see his name in
Harper’s
and
Vogue
. He did a nail-varnish commission using my hands, and one thing led to another. I was quite nervous really, about sex, I mean, that sort of thing. I wasn’t sure what to do. I was obedient, really, more than anything. I’m not sure how exciting it actually was technically, but the idea of it—of him—was exciting.

I was almost in a dream and then I realized I was standing naked in my room with the light on. The curtains were open. The windows were open. I walked to the window quickly to close the curtains and then stopped. What did it matter after all, to be looked at? Was it so bad? I stood there for a moment. The wind blew in hotly. I felt as if I would have given anything for a breath of cool breeze. It was too hot to close the window but I turned and switched off the light. That amounted to the same thing.

I lay down on the bed, on my back with the covers off. Even a sheet would have been agony. I touched my forehead and my breasts. I was already sweating again. I moved my fingers down across my stomach and between my legs. I felt warm and wet. I touched myself gently and looked up at the ceiling. What would it be like to be looked at for the first time? What would it be like to be wanted? To be lusted after. To be looked at. To be wanted.

I’m good at packing. I always pack for Clive when he has to go away for a few days. Men are hopeless at folding their shirts properly. Anyway, now I was packing for the boys, who were off into the wilds of Vermont for their summer camp. We’d heard about it years ago from a friend of a friend of a friend at Clive’s work. Three weeks of rappelling and windsurfing and sitting round campfires and, in Josh’s case, probably eyeing up nubile young girls in skimpy shorts. I said as much to him as I was carefully laying the T-shirts, shorts, swimming things, and trousers into his case. He just looked glum.

“You just want us out of the house,” he muttered.

Everything he says now is in a mutter that I can’t quite catch. It makes me feel as if I’m going deaf.

“Oh, Josh, you know you loved it last year. Harry doesn’t think it’s too long.”

“I’m not Harry.”

“Don’t say you’re going to miss me,” I said teasingly.

He gazed at me. He’s got huge dark brown eyes, and he can use them to look pathetically reproachful, like some fuzzy donkey. I noticed how bony and pale he was looking; his collarbones jutted out like knobs; his wrists were a mass of tendons. When he took off his shirt to put on his clean clothes for the flight, his ribs were like a pair of ladders climbing up his skinny body.