Under Your Skin (15 page)

I find myself in the kitchen—an instinct, I suppose, the heart of the house. The floor is grubby in here; not filthy, but slightly scuffed, as if Robin has been to visit with her dog. Perhaps the police brought a dog. Oddly, on the counter, the top of the Frosties box is open. Did they search the cereal? Hoping to find the murder weapon lurking in a plastic wrapper like a free toy? Or maybe someone was peckish. I imagine Perivale nipping into the kitchen and grabbing a quick handful.

I look for his markings but there are no dirty fingerprints. He will have washed his hands, or worn gloves. In the sitting room, the sofa cushions are lopsided—pointy-up triangles, not face-on squares. One of the silver-framed photographs on the piano, a picture of the three of us, is missing. The keyboard cover is down.

Near the window, I hear shouts. Whirring. They’re still out there. I close the shutters with Philip’s remote. My hands are still shaking, blue veins snaking down my arms. I catch movement in the mirror above the fireplace. My own white face. I am clenching and unclenching my teeth. The muscles in my neck flex like rope.

Upstairs, in Marta’s room, her TV is on the floor, and the shutters are opened out—her naked window stares back at me. The mysterious piles have gone, though I doubt it was the police who tidied them away. A floor away, Beechwood Hall, home of Millie’s Sylvanian creatures, has been shunted sideways, like one of those whole-house moves they go in for in America, all the furniture tipped forward. Her bookcase has been rearranged; one book by her bed has been shaken with sufficient force to rend the binding, for the original hieroglyphic cover to be ripped.

Initially, my bedroom,
our
bedroom, looks untouched, but there’s a cigarette butt floating in the loo in the bathroom, and for some reason Marta’s toothbrush has made its way here. The glass of water on my side of the bed has a mottled surface, like a piece of old Scotch tape, a skin of fiber and dust. There is a faint herringbone stripe in the weave of the duvet cover. I always lay it so the stripe lies vertically, but it has been put back on the horizontal, and when I move the top pillow, the lower one is dented, as if someone has slept on it.

I open the wardrobe. Philip’s side is untouched, his piles still neat. But someone has gone through mine. Blouses are scrunched with trousers, skirts in between jeans. A dress: crumpled on the floor, wrinkled up like a sock. Silk and satin, wool, twill and cotton, they’ve fingered it all. Even my undergarments. The shelf where
M&S pants and Myla Marlenes should be neatly piled (a pile for every day and a pile for . . . well,
never
) is a jumble. My knickers are literally in a twist.

Embarrassment, pity for whoever had to look through all this, irritation. I work on this as I tread back down the stairs, in the way of Philip when he’s kept awake by a neighbor’s music, and after a while, it’s not the noise that becomes the problem, but his own forensic scrutiny of their inconsideration. What right do they have? Millie’s toys, her
books
. In the garden, they’ve tramped the hellebores, and two of the new tulips lie on the grass, snapped. How dare they? How
very
dare they?

I sit at the kitchen table. I want to see Millie. It is all that matters. I think hard. It’s Thursday. She has hockey after school, but I want her pressed in my arms. I feel in my pocket for my phone, but of course I haven’t got it and thus, not Marta’s number either. Panic starts again at the tips of my toes and works up. Where
is
Marta?

I put my head down, feel the wooden surface cool against my chin. I’m so tired I can’t think straight. Is this shock? Exhaustion? The horror of my own behavior out there? The tulips. The Frosties. The rummaging of my smalls. I wasn’t expecting this. I had thought myself in control, but things keep happening. The strings of my life are being pulled. The connections, the oddities—they may be circumstantial, but they are still weird. I need answers, but I don’t know where to find them. I can’t see my way through. I am powerless, trapped inside my house, and I don’t know what to do.

Philip. In the police station, all I could think about was the bad things, but now other memories fill my head: a long wait in casualty once when I chopped off the top of my finger, the one-word impressions Philip did of his colleagues to take my mind off the pain. The time my train broke down in Leeds and he drove up to collect me. Persuading me to dance at that wedding, pulling me up some hill in Wales. People talk about “alpha males” all the time
these days, and that’s what Philip is. That’s what I fell for. Philip’s strength, his capability. He’s a man who takes control.

His mobile number is the only one I know by heart. It takes a while for lines to connect, satellites to align, and when I finally hear the long, low dialing tone of abroad, I’m already crying with preemptive relief.

No answer.

The time difference. It’s eight hours ahead in Sinapore, past midnight. He traveled all day yesterday, arrived late last night, morning there, hurtled into meetings. He will have gone to bed, exhausted, two hours ago at least. I leave a brief message on his voicemail, asking him to call: it’s enough. It would be selfish to keep trying, to ring the hotel switchboard . . . If I had my mobile I could text him, but I don’t. I’ll speak to him tomorrow. He should sleep.

The act of deciding this, the shape of kindness, makes me feel a little better. I’m home now at least. I sit up. I think of the things I’ve dealt with in the past. I might not get through this entirely on my own, but I can make a start. I will be organized. One step in front of the other.

Philip will say I’ve been brave. And even in my imagination, that feels like love.

•   •   •

I start with practicalities. I know when I handed over my phone—it was in the car on the way to the police station. I gave it to de Felice. It’s probably still in his pocket. All I need is a number for the phone at the front desk where PC Morrow perched—I rang Philip and Marta from it—but it turns out this number is unavailable. I ring a three-digit code, which puts me through to a central hub where my call is recorded, and a helpful person says they will patch me through. Except they patch me through to a recorded message and, before I go mad, I hang up.

Caroline Fletcher has gone home.

To get hold of Terri, I ring the main number for the studio, which involves more choices than I thought possible and the pressing of more buttons. Then I speak to the downstairs reception—spelling out my name (she must be new)—and then a brief exchange with Hal, the floor manager, and then an agonizing wait.

“Thank God,” I say, when I hear Terri’s voice. “It’s me.”

“Gaby!”

I sit up straight. I can see my reflection in the window, the shape of my face, though not my features. My heart pounds in my ears. “I’m so sorry, Terri. I would never have let you down for the last two days if I had had any control over this at all.”

“You’re all over the Internet!”

“They did ring to warn you, didn’t they? PC Morrow promised she would. Has it been okay? I’m so sorry for landing you in it. The weirdest things have been happening, but this end is almost sorted out now. I suppose I should speak to Alison in publicity. She must be going mad.”

“I know she has had a lot of enquiries. The police rang to inform us yesterday . . . But yes. No. We’re fine.”

“Good. I’m so glad. Did Stan have to go it alone?” (
Please
let him have gone alone.)

“Well. Actually . . .”

“Did India have a tryout?” It’s easier if I say it myself.

“She needed some persuading, but we got her on the sofa in the end.”

“That’s good,” I say, thinking, shit. “Was she any good?”

“She did well . . . But how are
you
? What’s going on?”

She did well
 . . . what does that mean? I’ll have to dissect that later. “It’s been horrid,” I say, “but you have to do what you have to do. If it’s all over the Internet . . . that explains the welcoming committee of reporters outside my house.”

“So you’re at home at least. That’s good.”

I’m still smiling; my facial muscles ache with the effort, but the conversation seems strained. She makes it sound like I’ve been in hospital or the Priory.

“I’m bemused by the whole thing, I must say. Such a storm in a teacup. I don’t know what the police thought they were doing arresting me, but I’ve tried to help as much as I can, and it’s just awful what happened to that poor woman, though there is a limit to how involved they can expect me to be. I have a life, a job. Other people—you!—are depending on me, so—”

“Gaby—”

“Anyway, I can come back to work now. If that’s okay. So, you know, let India down gently . . . tell Steve to be here tomorrow normal time.”

“Gaby . . .” She pauses. “Are you sure it’s not too soon?”

“Work is what I need! I know I’ve been a bit distracted recently.” My voice is cracking and I clear my throat, try again. “Have we got anything good lined up for tomorrow’s show?”

“Have a day or two off. No one is going to blame you.”

“I’m up and at ’em. You know me, Terri, old pro.” I close my eyes. “Please.”

“Let’s see how things look in the morning. Ring me first thing.”

“Okay.” I’m pressing the ball of my hand into my forehead. “No biggie!”

She hangs up before I can ask her to patch me through to publicity. It was an awkward conversation, but perhaps that was only to be expected. I will worry about it tomorrow, deal with Terri and Alison when I’m there.

I have an overwhelming desire to hear a friendly voice after this. I wish I knew Clara’s mobile number off by heart, or had it written down. How idiotic to be so dependent on technology. Philip is always talking about “backup.” He’s right. I try her at home, but
there is no answer. She could be watching one of the boys play football, or she could have a meeting after school, or . . . she could be
anywhere
. There are other friends I could have rung—Justice and Anna, but it has been so long since I’ve seen them I can’t just ring them out of the blue with this. At moments like this, I am painfully aware of my lack of family—if only I had a sister, or a brother. Philip’s parents would help, they would drive straight up—but they are unreachable, floating on their cruise, somewhere in the Ancient World. I can’t ring Robin. She has a new baby. She has enough on her plate. And Jude? Well, I just don’t know her well enough.

I look at my watch. It is 5:30
PM
and Marta isn’t here, nor is Millie, and I have no idea where they are. I’m alone. I can’t leave the house. I haven’t eaten all day, and I have no phone. I let my misery zero down on to that. “I’ve got no phone,” I wail like Andromache in that production of
Women of Troy
we saw at the National Theatre, howling in anguish as her infant son is wrenched from her arms to be butchered by the murdering Athenian forces. “No phone,” I cry again. I know I am being ridiculous, but at least I’m alone. I put my face in my hands and feel the wetness seep through my fingers. For the first time since it started, I bawl.

It’s a flicker I notice, more than a creak. I look up. Marta is standing in the doorway to the kitchen.

“I’ve lost my phone,” I say pathetically.

“Yes,” she says. “I heard you.”

“Philip’s not here.” I’m still weeping, can’t quite stop. “And I didn’t know where Millie was.” The sobs are coming out like hiccups. “Or you.”

She looks at me with interest. “Millie is with her friend from hockey. Izzie Mathews.”

I haven’t got a tissue, but I squeeze my nose between my thumb and finger. “Isn’t she the one she hates?”

“Not today,” Marta says flatly. I’m not sure she means to make a joke, but I laugh through my tears anyway.

I grab some kitchen roll to wipe my nose, try and control myself. “Do we need to pick her up?”

The “we” is rhetorical. I couldn’t leave the house, thrash a path through those men, if there were a Royal Television Society Interview of the Year Award at the other end of it.

“Her mother, Mrs. Matthews, says a sleepover is okay. Izzie is not normally allowed sleepovers in the week, but she understood the circumstances are difficult. Also, tomorrow they have the Easter holiday.”

“Easter!” I had forgotten that. It had flown out of my mind, flapped up into the ether like a skylark disturbed by a dog.

“So . . .” Marta says. She looks over her shoulder.

Is she planning to escape before I veer into a colloquy on the local bars? No. She walks across the kitchen floor, gingerly, as if the smears on the tiles might contain germs. She is in a blue shirt with a paisley pattern, quite diaphanous, and a pair of jeans that remind me of mine. When she gets close, I smell fig again. I wonder if it
is
my perfume, or just one that’s similar. She sits down and explains, in her broken English, everything that happened while I was in custody. I once told her I liked to be kept informed of Millie’s “daily doings” and there is a dutiful precision to her narration. The police searched the house, but Millie was still at school, so she was not affected, but this morning, people started knocking on the door and once she had dropped Millie off—early because she had running club—Marta found the class phone list and rang Mrs. Matthews, who had been happy to look after her. “I have taken her toothbrush to hockey and handed over her bag. It seemed best as I was”—it’s almost a smile; I should catch it and cage it—“holding the fort.”

I don’t say anything for a moment. I miss Millie. I long for her. I want her here. But maybe this sleepover is a good idea. It gives me
time to pull myself together. I can ring Mrs. Matthews, using the invaluable tool of “the class list,” to thank her, and speak to Millie, say good night to her. In the meantime, I could make the most of this: a moment on my own with Marta.

“Thank you,” I say, and then, “and are you okay?”

“Yes,” she says.

“It must have felt horrible in the house after everything, and I don’t mind at all, but did you sleep in my bed?”

“No.”

“Oh. It’s only . . . never mind.”