Under Your Skin (25 page)

I find a parking space right outside and wait. The flats are rather wonderful actually—1950s, Bauhaus or Le Corbusier,
unité d’habitation
or something. Should look it up. You can see how much thought was put into the landscaping. An expanse of cropped grass and tall pine trees. A sense of space, of nature—jackdaws chattering, pigeons pecking—not too far away.

I’ve been awake since 4:00
AM.
Two hours before Philip called—he knows I wake up early. He’d just had lunch, a few sakes, too, just enough to take the edge off. “All well?” he said, “Coping?”

I fell backward on the bed. “Yes,” I said.

“Well, I won’t keep you,” he said. “Anything fun lined up today?”

“No,” I said. “What about you?”

“Busy afternoon ahead,” he said. “Tonight—Chinese-style banquet at the Mandarin.”

I clutched my scalp, screamed silently. “That’s good.”

“I’ll ring you later.”

•   •   •

Jack texts to find out where I’m parked, and a few minutes later, on the bend in the road up to the apartment complex, I see him emerge from behind a delivery van.

I wind down my window. He leans in, faintly flushed, as if he has been hurrying. He is freshly shaved—I catch the soapy tang of foam—and wearing a newly ironed white shirt. I can tell immediately, by the way his fingers drum against his thigh, jingling coins, that he has put last night’s call out of his mind. His mood has shifted. He is distracted. No joke, no greeting, no concern, no pastry crumbs.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says. “An editor rang. I’ve got an assignment today. Let’s do this and then I’d better get off.”

“Oh, okay,” I say, swallowing disappointment. What was I expecting? Kindness? A husband’s concern? At the very least, a bit more English foreign-speak. I am wrong-footed, like the one person at a black-tie do in casual dress. “No biggie,” I say, trying to sound offhand.

“You all right?” he says. “Did you sleep in the end?”

“Like a log.”

I am to wait in the car while he sees Christa, ready for a debrief when he comes out. I watch him galumph across the sloping sheet of grass. The pigeons by the bins scatter. I see him tilt into the shadows, his face turning as he talks. He consults his watch, a swift, irritated flick of the wrist.

I wait. On the fourth floor of Christa’s building, a man with a shaved head is leaning on the balustrades staring down. The delivery
van slams shut and rattles by. A burst of music: “Don’t you want me, baby?” The van passes. The man with the shaved head goes into his flat.

Jack treads back up the grass toward the road. Christa is with him. He is being careful not to look in my direction.

Even from inside the car, I can tell she is a striking woman, pointy-featured with a chestnut bob and bangs. It’s a chilly day, but she is wearing a summer dress with wedge sandals. The final wind of rope on the wedge has come unraveled. It snaps at her ankle as she walks.

I don’t think about it and the moment I am out of the car it is too late. I intercept them on the path. Jack looks alarmed. He begins to introduce us, flustered, but she interrupts.

“Gaby Mortimer,” she says. “You are Gaby Mortimer from
Mornin’ All
.”

“Yes.”

“You found Ania. You found my friend.”

I nod.
My friend
. The two women were friends. I curl my toes tightly to stop myself from swaying. I think about them on the phone, chatting, out together, arm in arm, laughing.

“And you know each other?” She looks from Jack to me. He opens his mouth and closes it; he is still trying to pull himself together.

“Yes, we do,” I say, moving my feet farther apart. “And I wanted to meet you. I’m sorry. We should have said at first. I should have been more open.”

“Gaby’s helping with my book of rememb—”

She cuts across him. “But the police, they took you in?” she says. “They question you about my friend?”

“It was a mistake,” I say. “I tried to help. Poor Ania. I just got caught up . . .” But there is a look in her eyes, so helpless, so sad, I stop explaining and put my arms around her. I feel the narrowness
of her bones, the point of her chin, her breath on my neck. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I am so, so sorry about Ania. It must be very difficult for you, to lose a friend. I can’t imagine.” I pull away. I catch Jack’s expression. He is startled. He hadn’t thought of this.

She bites her top lip and nods. Her eyes are green, diamond-flecked with hazel. Her complexion is pale. When she lets go of her lip, color floods into her cheeks. She looks back at me. “You are so kind. Thank you.” She rests her hand on my arm, and I am aware of something dull and heavy diminishing. She believes me.

Jack interrupts now and explains that Christa’s husband, Pawel, is sleeping—he works nights as a security guard—and the plan was to walk to a café. He widens his eyes to remind me he is in a hurry to get to his other assignment.

“Well, it’s always lovely to go to a café. Not that I’m hungry. What about you, Jack?” I’m coaxing, as if to a child. “I’ve only just had breakfast.”

We are walking back down the hill toward the main road, through velvety shadows and squares of light. Lopsided buses congregate at the bottom, reverberating throatily. It’s a narrow sidewalk, and Jack walks a few feet behind. I ask Christa if she has spoken to the police, and she says yes, once, but had nothing to tell them. She was in Poland on her honeymoon when Ania . . . died.

A car pulls up. Miniature Union Jacks fly from the rear windows. Rihanna blares and abruptly dies. A young man with tattooed forearms emerges, clutching a helium balloon in the shape of a three. Christa nods at him.

“I had been home to Kraków, to get married,” she says after he has gone. “A big wedding with all my family. Ania came. It was the week before . . . the last time I saw her.”

“Did you have a nice wedding?” I ask gently.

“Yes. Big. My mother was very busy. She was very bossy.”

She gives a rueful smile, and I ask if she wore a lovely dress and
she spends the rest of the walk describing it—the layers of tulle skirt and the lace bodice and the decorative beading. I mention a frock I saw in a magazine, which had a flower at one hip, fashioned out of the fabric of the skirting, and Christa, animated, says, “Yes, yes, exactly. My dress was like that.”

“How beautiful,” I say. “You’re so lucky. Mine was some cheap old thing.”

“Have you just had your wedding?”

“No!” I laugh. “My wedding was a very long time ago.”

“And your mother, was she bossy?”

“Not so much,” I say, smiling.

She rubs her eyes with the back of her knuckles. Goose bumps speckle her chest.

“Are you freezing?” I ask.

She laughs, rubs her arms.” My coat is in the room where Pawel is sleeping.”

The café is at the far end of a stretch of shops, between a posh florist and a Greggs bakery. It smells of bacon and fresh coffee and cheese toasties. A table has just come free in the window, and Jack leaps to secure it. Two middle-aged women clock me—I see something complicated cross their eyes—and an old man reading a newspaper glances at me and then away too quickly. It makes me feel both restless and exhausted. But Christa and I are at the front of the queue now and I’m ordering lots of tarts, because she looks like she needs feeding up, and a pot of tea and a cappuccino and—after calling over to Jack—a double espresso.

He leans forward the moment we sit down and clears his throat. He hasn’t spoken for a while. “About this remembrance book,” he begins.

“Yes.” Christa sits down. “I do not know quite what you mean, remembrance book?”

“It’s a scrapbook,” he explains.

“A scrapbook?” She takes a scoop of froth with a spoon and swallows it.

“Yes. A book in which you stick pictures and memories of a person.”

“No it isn’t,” I say.

They both look at me.

“I mean, it
is,
but that’s not why we’re here. Jack is a really good journalist and he wants to write a piece for a newspaper about Ania, what she was like, and what might have happened. It was an accident me finding her, Christa. It could have been anyone. But because it was me, I feel entangled, responsible somehow. I don’t know if that makes sense. But I want to find out how she died and bring her killer to justice.”

“She was very, very kind. She wouldn’t . . . what do you say? She wouldn’t kill a fly.”

Jack looks from me to her. “So you don’t mind talking to me about her?”

“You are kind people. Whether it is for a book or the newspaper, I know you tell the truth.” She picks up one of the custard tarts with long, tapered fingers and takes a small bite.

“The truth is always best,” I say, looking at Jack.

He gives a sheepish smile.

“The people she worked for said she used to bring the kids to Richmond Park,” he says.

“Yes.” She puts her hand over her mouth while she swallows. “Excuse me. She loved the park. When she lived with me, we used to go in every day last summer. She took the children to the pond, and afterward, we met here for tea and cake—Ania and Molly and little Alfie.”

“Did he bite you?” I say.

Jack makes a noise that is a bit like a laugh.

Christa says, “Oh, yes. I know Ania said he could be a very
naughty boy, but with her he was very good. All children are very good with Ania.
Were,
” she adds. She pulls in the corner of her lower lip.

What if I had employed Ania, if she had been our nanny? If she moved in with us, would it still have happened? My chest feels tight. The pain of missing Millie and the pain of Ania’s death seem to get mixed up for a minute. I can’t entangle one from the other. It’s the cat dream all over again, a powerful need to keep something safe, the desperate fear of failure.

Jack continues to ask questions. How long had Ania lived with her? (Six months.) How long had they known each other before that? (Since childhood.) He helps himself to a tart—pops it in his mouth whole. He swallows it with a look of alarm—there is more of it than he thought—and afterward wipes his mouth with a paper napkin. “Was it expensive, the flat she found?” he asks.

She shrugs. “She had many jobs, and she was hoping to get work as a teacher in a good school, good paid job, when she was trained. But it is a very small flat, so maybe not so expensive. She has a cupboard here with some of her things—books, papers, her old diaries—that she didn’t need. I suppose”—she breaks off, looks slightly lost for a moment—“I should send them to her parents in Lodz.”

Her
parents
. Her poor parents. It’s just unbearable. I need to get back to work, pick up my normal life, forget all this. I should have stayed in the car.

But Jack looks at her intently. “Can we see them? The diaries, I mean?”

“Maybe.” She sounds doubtful. I wonder if he is pushing too hard.

“Her boyfriend?” I ask, forcing myself to focus. “Was he a good thing?”

“Yes. No.” She is biting her bottom lip again. “A good thing? I don’t know.”

“A bad thing?” Jack interjects.

“Tolek, he loved Ania very, very much.” She smoothes invisible crumbs from the knee of her dress. “
Too
much.”

“What do you mean?” Jack says sharply.

She studies me as if she’s thinking hard. Finally, she says quickly, “He wanted to marry Ania soon, but she was always talking about a career, her teaching. Tolek, he is good with his hands, a kind man. He wanted to have a wife who loved him like he loved her. It was difficult.”

“Was he excited about the baby?” I ask.

“Oh, yes,” she says vaguely. “So worried Ania was, with the baby scare. Blood spotting. Big relief for Ania and the baby father when the scan say it was okay.”

I see Jack start. He catches my eye. He noticed it, too.
“The baby father.”

“Do you have a number for Tolek?” Jack says. “We would like to speak to him very much.”

“His English is not good. He was in Poland when she died. He is very angry, and so guilty.”

“And you’re sure he was in Poland?” Jack asks.

She makes a little movement in her seat, a squirm. “Yes. He is very angry with the police, asking and asking questions.”

“Angry?” Jack says. “Even though he is innocent? What do you mean, angry?”

“He is a plumber, a hardworking man,” she says enigmatically. She runs her hands up each forearm, as if pushing up invisible sleeves, a gesture that says she wants to get going. She is rattled. She is looking anywhere but at us.

The old man at the next table has got to his feet, and I nudge my chair forward so he can get past. Christa is staring at the newspaper he has left on the table. In the bottom right-hand corner, there is tiny postage-stamp photograph of me.

Christa looks up and catches my eye. She stands. She wants to
go out into the fresh air, but Jack clings to his empty cup. He has another question. “Had Ania come into any money recently? Her employers thought she had started living more expensively: new clothes, underwear, jewelery.”

“Ania worked hard,” she says. “Very single-minded. She always wanted the best.”

“Tolek?”

“He earn good money,” she says emphatically. “People in South London”—she waves vaguely in the direction of Wandsworth—“always want new bathrooms.”

•   •   •

We walk Christa back up the hill and say good-bye to her at the entrance to her flat. I hug her again. “When you find out,” she says, “you tell me.” Her mouth straightens into a fierce line. Her head is nodding; she is trying not to cry. “I promise,” I say. I nod, too, and at that moment I would love to bring back an answer, for Christa, Ania’s friend, if no one else.

Jack is fussing with his phone. He is checking something and fiddling. I don’t say anything. I just walk away, back up over the grass to where the car is parked. I’m trying not to cry.

I sit down in the driver’s seat and take the old man’s newspaper out of my bag where I stuffed it. It’s one of the Sunday tabloids—yesterday’s paper. The postage stamp photo is a teaser for an article inside. I turn to page six.

Mornin’ All
Presenter Chucks It All In