Beneath the Skin (27 page)

It could have been worse. We ate fried eggs and baked beans for supper, and Lynne told me all about her seven brothers and sisters, and her mother, who was a hairdresser. She did some tidying up, almost as if she needed something to do with her hands. Then she left. Not to go away, of course. She went and sat outside in the car. After tonight, she said, there would be other officers instead; after all, she had to sleep sometimes. I had a long bath, until the tips of my fingers were shriveled, and when I got out I looked out between the crack in the curtains. I could see her silhouette in the car. Was she reading or listening to the radio? I couldn’t tell. Probably nothing distracting was allowed. I wondered if I should go out with soup or coffee. I went to bed.

The next day Lynne followed me to the shops; she sat around while I wrote letters. There was a hint of embarrassment when Zach rang up and arranged to come round to go through the appointment book. I put the phone down, looked round at her, and said: “Um . . .”

She instantly responded: “I’ll wait outside.”

“It’s just that—”

“That’s fine.”

Early in the evening the doorbell rang and she went to answer it. It was Stadler. He was carrying a very serious briefcase, I saw, and wearing a somber suit.

“Hello there, Detective,” I said sweetly.

“I’ve taken over from Lynne for a spell.” His expression was impassive. No smile. “Everything all right?”

“Just fine, thanks.”

“I thought I’d ask some questions.”

He sat on the sofa, and I sat opposite him in the armchair.

“What are your questions, then, Detective?” He had lovely hands. Long, with smooth nails.

He opened his briefcase and fumbled with some papers.

“I wanted to ask you about previous boyfriends,” he said.

“You’ve done that already.”

“I realize that, but—”

“You know what? I think I’d prefer talking about my past relationships with Grace Schilling.”

He took a deep breath. He seemed ill at ease. I didn’t mind that.

“You might find it useful—” he began, but I interrupted him.

“I don’t really want to tell you any more details of my sex life.”

He gazed at me then, and didn’t look down at his notes anymore. I stood up and turned away from him.

“I’m going to have a glass of wine. Do you want one? And don’t say, Not while I’m on duty.”

“Maybe a very small one.”

I poured us both a glass of white wine, neither of them small. We walked out into what there was of the garden. My yard backs onto an industrial unit where containers are stored, but it made a change from being trapped indoors. The rain of yesterday and today had stopped and the air felt fresher than it had for weeks. The leaves of the pear tree glistened.

“I’m going to do lots of work out here soon,” I said, as we stood among the bolted plants. “It’s like
The Day of the Triffids
. The weeds are taking over.”

“It’s private, though. No one can see in.”

“True.”

I took a sip of my wine. He knew a lot about me. He knew about my work, my family, my friends, and my boyfriends; my exam results and my affairs. The things I wanted, like an open-top sports car and a better singing voice and more dignity, and the things I was scared of—like lifts and heights and snakes and cancer. I had talked to him, and to Grace, in the way I would talk to a lover, lying in bed after sex, with quiet dark outside, telling secrets and intimate nonsense. Yet I knew nothing about him, nothing at all. It made me feel giddy.

We began to lean toward each other. Here I go, I thought: another big mistake about to happen. But as I leaned I caught my foot on a thick bramble and stumbled badly. I dropped my glass and landed on my knees in the long, wet grass. He knelt down beside me and put a hand under my elbow.

“Come on, get up,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Come on, Nadia.”

I put my arms around his neck. He didn’t look away. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, what he wanted. I kissed him full and hard on his mouth. His lips were cool; his skin was warm. He didn’t push me away and he didn’t kiss me back at first. He just knelt there letting me hold him. I saw the lines on his face, the wrinkles round his eyes, and the grooves round his mouth.

“Help me up then,” I said.

He pulled me to my feet and we stood together in the wild garden. He was much bigger than me, wide and tall, blotting out the low sun.

I ran a thumb across his lower lip. I held his heavy head in my hands. I kissed him again, harder, for longer. I felt completely tipsy, as if I’d drunk not half a glass but six glasses of wine. I put my hands on his back, beneath his shirt, and pressed myself against him. He felt solid and huge. His arms hung by his sides. I picked up one of his hands, laid it against my hot cheek, then led him back through the double doors and into the sitting room again.

He sat himself in a chair and watched me. I unbuttoned my shirt and then I sat astride him.

“Stadler,” I said. “Cameron.”

“I shouldn’t do this,” he said. He burrowed his head between my breasts and I put my hand in his hair. “I really shouldn’t.” His eyes were closed at last. Then he was on top of me, on the floor, and there was a shoe under my back and an old hairbrush spiking my left foot, and dust everywhere, and he pulled up my skirt and came into me, there on the dirty old floor. Neither of us said a word.

Afterward, he rolled off me and lay on his back beside me, arms under his head. We spent about ten minutes just lying there, side by side, staring at the ceiling and saying nothing at all.

When Lynne came back, Cameron was on the phone, very businesslike, and I was reading a magazine. We said good-bye to each other quite formally, but then, muttering to Lynne that there was something he had forgotten to check, he followed me into my bedroom with his file under his arm, and closed the door and laid me back on the bed and kissed me again, pushed his head into my neck to muffle his groans, and told me he would be back as soon as he could manage it.

I spent the rest of the evening on my bed, tingling, pretending to read and not turning a single page and not reading a single word.

“What’s the plan?” I said to Lynne over breakfast.

I think I’m a woman of some degree of resource, but this was more than my brain could deal with. I’d had sex the day before with a man I hardly knew. Now I was having breakfast not with the man but with a woman I hardly knew.

This morning I’d woken out of a turbulent dream that I instantly forgot, and then I remembered what had happened the day before and the day before that. It felt incredible, a violent cartoon of reality, but I looked out of the window and there was Lynne sitting in the front seat, looking dully ahead. What a job. It made being me seem intellectually demanding. I washed and dressed and brushed my hair and teeth in about two minutes and then walked outside and tapped at the window of her car, giving her a start. Some protection.

I said I’d go and get us something for breakfast and she said she’d come with me. She insisted. We bought some croissants in the bakery. She paid half. I toyed with the idea of making her pay for the whole lot since I generally don’t have breakfast at all except on special occasions.

We came back, I made coffee and found a jar with about a millimeter of strawberry jam left and we sat down for breakfast. And I asked what the plan was.

“We’re taking responsibility for your protection,” she said, as if by rote.

I took a big munch of my croissant and washed it down with a swill of coffee. Once I’ve broken my rule about not eating breakfast, I make sure that I break it properly. There was a long pause, not for reflection but for consumption. I was like a python swallowing a deer. Finally I managed it.

“All the same,” I said. “Don’t you feel this is all a ridiculous overreaction?”

“It’s for your benefit,” she said.

“Someone sent me a letter,” I said. “Are you going to guard me for the rest of my life?”

“We want to catch the person who’s sending the letters,” she said.

“What if you don’t? You can’t carry on like this.”

“We’ll see,” she said. “When the time comes.”

In the face of nonsense like that, there was nothing more to be said on the subject.

“I’m embarrassed as well,” I said. “My life’s ridiculous enough with just me here. You seem great, Lynne, and I’m not criticizing you, but the thought of doing everything I do with a policewoman staring at me doesn’t seem cheering.”

“We’ll talk about that,” Lynne said with an earnest expression, as if I’d raised some important point about policy. But we were interrupted by the doorbell. I went over to the door and Lynne hovered in the background. It was Cameron. He looked over my shoulder and nodded toward Lynne.

“Good morning, Miss Blake,” he said.

“Oh, please call me Nadia, Detective,” I said. “We’re very informal here.”

“Nadia,” he said in a sort of feeble mumble. “I’ve stopped in to relieve Lynne for a couple of hours.”

“Fine,” I said, trying to sound bright and casual.

“And make some plan for the day,” he continued. “I don’t know if you’ve got any arrangements.”

“Yes,” I said. “At half past four me and Zach have to be at a children’s party in Muswell Hill. And there are two more on the weekend. Maybe more if anybody else rings up.”

“That’s no problem,” said Cameron. “Lynne can accompany you to those.”

“It might be a bit obtrusive,” I said.

“I’ll sit outside,” Lynne said. “I can give you a lift.”

“Better and better.”

Lynne still had a half-full cup of coffee and half a croissant.

“There’s no hurry,” said Cameron, unnecessarily.

It turned out that there really wasn’t any hurry. Lynne sipped her coffee slowly and only toyed with her croissant. She was in the process of buying a flat herself and she started to ask about what it had been like buying mine. Had I sold a flat of my own before buying this one? It was quite a long story and the shorter I tried to make it, the longer it got. Meanwhile Stadler walked around the room scrutinizing it in some supposedly expert and dispassionate way, picking up objects, opening drawers. I couldn’t help feeling that he was looking at me as he did it, finding out more things I wanted to keep to myself. Finally we exhausted the subject of flat-buying. Lynne turned to Cameron.

“Nadia has certain concerns about our plans.”

“Basically, I don’t know what they are,” I said.

“I’ll discuss it with her,” said Cameron dismissively, and turned away, not continuing the conversation.

She continued holding her coffee. Hadn’t this woman had enough of me? Didn’t she have a job to do?

“So I’ll see you back here about one?” said Cameron.

“Are you going out?” she asked.

“Whatever we do, we’ll be here at one.”

She nodded.

“Fine. See you later, Nadia.”

“See you, Lynne.”

She was out of the door. I saw her legs going up the steps outside and reaching the pavement. The legs walked away. Safe. I turned toward Cameron.

“About yesterday . . .”

And he was on me, holding me as if I was unbearably precious, his hands touching my face, stroking my hair. I pushed him away slightly and looked him in the eyes.

“I . . .” I stammered. “I’m not . . .”

“I can’t . . .” he murmured, and kissed me again.

I felt his hands behind me now, on my back, then under my T-shirt, feeling for my bra, discovering there wasn’t one.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“I don’t know. No.”

He took my hand and led me into my bedroom. It was different from the day before: more relaxed, more deliberate, slower. I sat down on the bed. He walked to the window and pulled the blind down. Then he closed the bedroom door. He removed his jacket, loosened his tie, and took that off too. It occurred to me that sex with a man who needed to remove a suit and tie was almost a unique experience.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said, as if it were a symptom. “I see you when I close my eyes. What shall we do?”

“Take your clothes off,” I said.

“What?” He looked down, almost as if it were a surprise to see he was still dressed.

He took his clothes off as if in a dream, tossing his trousers into a heap on a chair, looking at me all the time. I reached out my arms toward him.

“Wait,” he said. “Wait. Let me. Nadia.”

I lay in a fog of pleasure, and then at last he was inside me and later, when it was over and we lay there entwined, he was still looking at me, stroking my hair, saying my name as if it were some kind of magic spell. After a time we moved away from each other and I propped myself up on a pillow.

“That was lovely,” I said.

“Nadia,” he said. “Nadia.”

“And I feel confused,” I said.

A spell had been broken. He moved back slightly; a shadow crossed his face; he bit his lip.

“Can I be honest with you?” he said.

Suddenly I felt like shivering.

“Please,” I said.

“This job is my whole life,” he said. “And this . . .”

“You mean
this
,” I said, gesturing at the bed.

He nodded.

“It’s so not allowed,” he said. “It is so fucking not allowed.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” I said. “Is that it?”

“No,” he said bleakly.

“What is it?” I asked. He didn’t reply. “Fucking what is it?”

“I’m married,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry.”

And he started crying. I was lying there with a naked detective crying in my bed. About eighteen hours of the relationship and we’d already moved from first lust to the weeping and recrimination. I felt sour inside. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t pat him and stroke him and say that everything was all right, there, there. Finally he gave a huge sigh, as a sign that he was pulling himself together.

“Nadia?”

“Yes?”

“Say something.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Are you furious with me?”

“Oh, Cameron,” I said. “Just fucked off. And I suppose your wife doesn’t understand you.”

“No, no, I don’t know. I just know I want you. I’m not messing you around, Nadia, I promise you that. I want you so much. It means so much to me I don’t know what to do. Is that all right? What do you think? Nadia, tell me what you think.”