Under Your Skin (27 page)

•   •   •

I screw up my courage and ring Jude. Nice, interesting Jude, who could have been my friend, who still could be. But friendships don’t come free, you have to work at them—take the plunge, even when you’re scared. She might be away, or she might be free for a coffee one of these days, but I won’t know unless I try.

“Oh,” she says. “Hi. Yes. Gaby. How are you?”

“Oh God, Don’t ask,” I say. “It’s been a nightmare.”

“I’ve heard. You’ve left your job.”

“It’s not what it seems. If you’ve read the papers you’ll think—”

“Listen,” she interrupts, “I’m glad you’ve rung. I’ve been meaning to get in touch. Well, it’s just this PTA quiz night. You’d probably forgotten it. But just to say Polly’s husband, an auctioneer at Christie’s, says he’ll do it. I’m sure it’s the last thing you feel like doing at the moment on top of . . . everything.”

“No, I—”

“So basically, you’re off the hook!”

I don’t want to be off the hook. I want to be
on
the hook. I want to be hanging from the scruff of my neck from a school peg.

“I can still do it!” I say. “I’ve been looking forward to it. You know, perching with the PTA squaddies!”

“Another time maybe. I’ve sort of told him he could now.”

There is a cool tone in her voice. I don’t know whether it is the police investigation, or the person the papers are making me out to be, or just the simple fact that I haven’t been straight with her, but it feels like a door is closing.

“Oh. Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Best, probably. Anyway, have a good holiday. I’ll see you.”

“Yes. See you.”

The friendship that never was.

•   •   •

Clara is leaving her last class when I ring. She is so pleased to hear my voice. She has been so worried. Am I all right? Am I really? All that stuff . . . Lies, of course.

I tell her I’m actually relieved, that I hadn’t been enjoying work. “Change is good,” I say.

I’m trying to stop her from worrying, but there is truth in my words.

“I’ve cut off all my hair,” I tell her.

“Oh, my rising stars.
Bold
. Some posh Mayfair salon?”

“No. Bathroom basin. Did it myself.”

“Are you on your own?” The anxiety in her voice has gone up a notch.

“I miss Millie,” I say, caving inside, now I’ve got Clara in my ear. “Got that horrible feeling when you think you are never going to see your child again.”

“At least you know she’s in safe hands.”

“No one’s hands are safer than Robin’s.”

“Exactly. Yes.”

I’ve been pacing a bit, and I’m looking out of the sitting room window now, pressing my nose to the glass, so as not to be distracted by my own reflection.

Clara is offering to come down to see me, or meet me in town, but I can tell it wouldn’t be that easy. Her voice is cautious with piano practice and physics homework and project marking—a hundred visions and revisions.

I tell her I’m fine, that actually I have a mountain of things to do—“you know, admin et cetera. Later in the week would suit me better.” I don’t want her to worry, or put her out. I say I have a friend coming round in a minute. “You know, Jude, that woman from the school gates? A local friend. I’m working on it.”

A movement catches my eye beyond the olive trees.

Clara is relieved. “Lovely. Better go. Staff meeting.”

A shadow shifts. Branches move.

I burst out of the front door. I am filled with fury—Stan, the producers, the tabloids, the opportunistic drinker in the pub—it’s for them all, my mad, enraged dash. The body, the man, darts out from behind the railings, charges across the road. He turns at the alleyway. I see his face, short hair, squat pugnacious features. I shout at him—a hot stream of temper and outrage—but it’s too late. He’s turned into the alley, and by the time I’ve got to the end of it, he has disappeared.

I’m out of breath when I get home. My fingers are shaking. I have to tell Perivale. This is as close as I’ve got to catching anyone. It’s vindication. If he’s doubted me before, he’ll believe me now.

I am about to hang up when he answers. I tell him a man was outside my house, lurking. I describe him. Perivale might be driving. His voice sounds blurred, as if he’s talking loudly at a distance. Same man as yesterday? The one from the red Renault? I tell him
I don’t know. I can’t be sure. I think so. His voice is reassuring. He’ll look into it, he says. I’m to leave it with him. And for the first time, I wonder whether he knows something I don’t, that he isn’t watching me, but guarding me.

•   •   •

“Have you eaten?”

I take a deep breath. I’ve been lying in my bedroom with the shutters closed. “No, not yet.”

“Can I take you out for a slap-up meal?”

“You’re back from Tottenham, then.”

“Yes, and you sound like you are in need of cheering. It was a bit traumatic.”

“Even with chopping bits of yourself off?”

“Even with the chopping.”

I stand up. My legs are wobbly. I peer through the slats, holding the phone with my chin. The evening is strangely lit. Violet over the rooftops. No one in the street.

Jack is suggesting a new place nearby, one of those bistros/bars/cafés that does sharing plates and
demi-plats
or demi-pliés, or Demi-Moores, or something. In my ear, he is talking goat’s curd and razor clams and rhubarb sorbet.

“Seasonal produce,” I say, trying to sound normal. “Simply cooked.”

“Tantamount to a moral code,” he says. “You coming? Are you morally up to it?”

I don’t answer. I would have to put clothes on, and shoes, and go out again through the front door. I would have to assume I wasn’t hated and despised by everyone in the world, forget the short squat man, and Jude, and the women with their buggies who glared at me on the common. I would have to pretend I was morally up to it. I make a noise. I’m not sure if it is a yes or a no.

“Great,” he says, deciphering for us both. “See you there.”

•   •   •

I’m going to walk. I scour the street when I open the front door. A yellow parking-suspension sign has gone up on a lamppost. An Asda shopping bag skits between the wheels of cars.

My mobile rings.

“Gabs, Gabs,” says Philip’s voice, “I miss you, doll. Move closer,” he sings. His words are slurred. “Move your body real close until it feels, feels like I’m reallyIdon’tknow.”

“You’re up late,” I say. “Hello.”

It’s the middle of the night in Singapore, or the early hours of the morning.

“Where’s my little girl? Can I talk to her? My Mills, my baby.”

“She’s in Suffolk with Robin, Philip. Just for a few days, until . . .”

“My lovely Millie. My Gabs. ’Member that time we went skinny-dipping in Cornwall? So cold, wasn’t it?”

“It was really cold.”

“Brrrrrrr. It was so cold. Do you remember how cold we were?”

“I do. We were really, really cold.”

“Do you miss me?” I can hear music in the background, shouts, laughter, singing. A Chinese-style banquet. Karaoke and shots of sake. Lots of shots of sake.

I close the front door with a quiet click behind me. My phone is cupped under my chin. “Yup.” I open the gate and turn left toward the common. Tears are pricking the corners of my eyes. “When are you coming home?”

“Endoftheweek. Promise, if I can. Soonermaybe.” I turn out of the alley and into the trees. Why does he have to ring, with this, now? It feels like too late. The common stretches out, empty, green. A cathedral of trees, of dark corners and empty places.

“Love you. Promiseseeyousoon. Bye. Bye.” His voice goes as if someone has pulled him away.

I feel the phone, heavy in my pocket, knocking against my thigh as I crunch along the gravel path. I want to turn round. All the way across the common, I have to force myself not to. I put one step in front of the other. I pull my shoulders back. I don’t turn round.

•   •   •

The bistro/bar/café is all dark wood and steel, Ercol chairs and vintage Anglepoise in alcoves.

Jack is nibbling on some olives and what look like toenail clippings.

I pause a minute at the door to collect myself, to pull my face into the right expression. And then I stand up straight and walk over, as if we were old friends and life was just normal. “You couldn’t wait?” I say behind him.

He looks up, outraged. “I haven’t eaten all day.”

“Not since you put away your body weight in custard tarts this morning.”

“Oh, yes. Forgot you were there.”

“Charming.” I slip off my coat and hang it on the back of my chair. It’s busy. A mixed crowd—singles straight from work, couples on a night out, women plying small children with cold chips. (Round here, even in late-night bars called Doom and Inferno, you find women plying small children with cold chips.) Nobody notices me, but I sit down quickly, shield my face.

Jack has a trendy French carafe of red wine in front of him. We do a swift mime of him offering and me accepting and I lean back and take a big gulp. I can feel it bypassing my veins and going straight to my head. I close my eyes briefly, give the alcohol a few minutes to work away the phone call from Philip.

When I open them, Jack is looking at me, with a slight frown. “New hair?”

“Cut it all off.”

“Makes you look younger.”

“Thank you. I . . .”

He sweeps his hands through his own. “So glad you came. I know we’ve got things to talk about, but first, God, this afternoon, this bloke . . .”

That’s it about the hair then. He starts talking about the father of the dead boy and how, when the bomb had exploded, he had run down to reception, scoured the wreckage, hoisted masonry, sifted through body parts, demanded answers from police, officials, hospitals, plastered the resort with posters. Then finally, after a week of desperate searching, had driven five hours across the desert to a morgue in a different part of Egypt, where the body of his son lay.

Jack carefully rolls up the sleeves of his white shirt, one fold after the other, when he gets to this bit. It’s not an easy movement. It’s controlled, but his hands are shaking. “Meanwhile, he and his wife and his two other sons had been relocated to a different hotel—much posher than the one they’d booked—and when they weren’t searching, they were sitting by the pool. Can you imagine that? They didn’t know what else to do.”

“It’s the banality of tragedy, isn’t it?” I shake my head. “The fact that life just goes on—kids demanding another Coke. They were probably hand-washing knickers in the hotel bathroom.”

“They ran out of suntan lotion. They had to buy more from the hotel shop.” He takes a swig of his wine.

“Bloody hell.”

“I didn’t see his wife—she didn’t want to meet me—but I could hear her, through the walls. She was washing up the whole time.”

“God. Losing a child, and in such terrible circumstances.”

I sigh deeply. The horror, the finality of death, it’s more than I can bear. I feel intense sorrow for this mother and father welling and growing, and then very slightly stagnating. Everybody is somebody’s child. Ania. Alfie, the biter.
Millie
. I feel I am dying just to think of it.

“He wanted to tell me every detail.”

“Maybe he thought if he kept telling the story, it would have a different outcome, that he would have some control over the ending.”

“Yes perhaps. And now he’s fighting to change the compensation law, but it’s not really what he wants. He just wants his son back.”

“Poor guy.” I’m wondering if it is too early to change the subject. We’ve run out of things to say, but we can’t launch straight into me. Even the man outside my house. It would be heartless. I sigh again. “My problems seem so pathetic after—”

Jack smiles at me, as if I am someone he has known all his life. He slaps his thigh. “Listen,” he interrupts. “We are going to clear your name. Get you back to work.”

“I don’t know if I even want to.” I tell him how good India was and how hopeless I’ve been recently, how my career is probably over, but I don’t know what else to do.

“First things first,” Jack says. “Let’s at least finish what we’ve started. Once there’s a lovely piece out there, proclaiming your innocence, you’ll feel differently. I’ve had time to snoop about a bit today, by the way.”

The waiter arrives, and I leave the ordering to Jack. He continues.

“This afternoon, when I got back from Tottenham, I found myself ‘passing’ Battersea police station. Got a tip from Mickey Smith at the
Mirror
, that Hannah Morrow—the PC—had a few more things to say off the record about the investigation.”

“And?” I am watching him carefully. This has surprised me.

“She sneaked out for a cup of tea and a ‘millionaire’s shortbread’ in the café round the corner. I think she’s playing a clever game—sees a chance to undermine Perivale, which is not to say that she doesn’t believe what she’s saying. She implied he has been prejudiced against you from the beginning of the investigation. Pursuing
you, proving to his superiors that he won’t be cowed by a person’s fame or reputation, a way of showing he’s made of strong stuff, worthy of promotion. Personally”—he smiles—“I think he fancies you and has quite an interesting way of showing it.”

I look down at my glass, swill the contents, because I think I’ve blushed.

“Hannah doesn’t understand why he hasn’t followed up properly on Marta,” Jack continues.

“Hannah already?”

“
Hannah
—it’s amazing how intimate you can get over a shared shortbread slice—also thinks it’s worth looking at the possibility Ania had been seeing another man, or men.”

“Did she have any idea who?”

“No. But I think Christa knows. She was cagey this morning, wasn’t she? She referred to ‘the baby’s father.’ Not Tolek. Did you notice how she kept talking about Tolek being angry? Odd adjective for someone who has just lost his girlfriend.”

“Not necessarily—”

“I’m going to get back to Christa. Deploy my famous charm. Try and meet him.”

“Be careful,” I say. “It’s not a game.”

The food arrives. It is delicious—such ordinary offerings as beetroot and hard-boiled eggs with exotic extrusions from places like Santiago de Compostela. I realize, as we eat, that I don’t want to think any more about Ania’s death. For the first time, I think perhaps we should drop it. We are getting out of our depth. If Christa has things to hide, we should leave that to PC Morrow. It is beginning to feel dangerous.