Under Your Skin (37 page)
On bright evenings, we would sit by the bowling green, coax out the skanky cat.
Philip’s hair curled about his collar. I remember watching his hands as he stroked the cat’s white throat. Once from his pocket, he produced a piece of ham, saved from lunch.
I lean against a tree. I can’t remember this now. It’s a snapshot from another world. It’s all too late. Philip isn’t that person anymore. He has changed too much. That person has gone. I have to wrench my mind away. I must get this straight. I mustn’t get this wrong. No more mistakes.
Think.
Sort
.
Alibi. He cycled down here. He was outside her flat. His alibi has holes.
Motive. She was pregnant, threatening to tell me. Or seeing another man—Tolek? Or blackmailing him? Several possible motives.
Evidence. My DNA can be explained. I found the body. It is my contamination. The clothes, the credit card receipt, the mud: they link to the house—to Philip—as I have said all along. The police
will have the diary now. One last niggle, one last obstacle that might trip me up. The most recent evidence from the flat: what is it?
I take out my phone and call Jack. He wants to know if I’m all right. There is alarm in his voice. “I am,” I say. “I’m fine. It’s going to be okay.” I tell him I will ring him back when I know what’s happening. “No, I’m not in any danger. I promise.”
He has given the diary to Morrow, he tells me; she’s finding a translator. And the new evidence, I ask, from Ania’s flat: did he ask her what it was?
“Nothing interesting,” he says, almost conversationally. “She said it was a bracelet. Some old broken bracelet.”
A bracelet. My bracelet. It snapped when I killed her, slipped into the folds of the sheet, or down behind the mattress. My DNA is on it, but so is Philip’s. I think about his bent head as he leaned to fasten the clasp. A man who would steal his wife’s clothes to give to his mistress. What’s one bracelet more? I can deal with the bracelet. I’d been dreading a tissue, dropped from my sleeve. There would have been no explanation for that.
So the police have the diary. There’s no going back from that.
Jack is still talking. He says something about he wishes I’d rung earlier, how he’s been out of his mind with worry.
“I’ve been out of my mind, too,” I say.
I lean against the wall, just outside the alley. I look up at the trees. Do people change? I think they do. Philip is not the same person. It makes it easier to think that. And I have changed, too. I must get home. I don’t have long.
• • •
Philip is still in the bath. He’s in the gaping depths of sleep—the jet lag, the Deep Relax, the packet of antihistamines dissolved in his whiskey. The tumbler glints under the bath. It will have fallen from his hand. On the mat, a single ice cube melts. I hope he drank
every drop. When we talked earlier it would have been better if he had been less selfish, thought more about poor Ania. I didn’t like all those excuses, that shifting of blame. He was lucky to have her. I know that now. She deserved more. We both did. But I don’t want it to hurt. I don’t want him to feel pain.
I’m wearing gloves. My hands are shaking so hard I can hardly hold the blade. A vertical line, I know that from Dr. Janey on
Mornin’ All
. I grip one wrist to stop the tremor, and it helps. It isn’t hard once I’ve made the first cut. There’s barely a splash on the floor at all.
A suicide. PC Morrow had said, “You get a lot of them in this job.”
I curl up on the bathroom floor, clutching my knees. I cry as silently as I can. I feel the blood pumping in my own veins. This is worse, so much worse than I imagined. I’d have done anything to keep him, and I did. But nothing was enough. I’ll take off his Asics in a minute. The St. Christopher is waiting for the police in the running machine. The murder weapon? I have pulled the ends back through the seam of the hoddie and knotted them, so they dangle back where they should. And the suicide note: he wrote his own—the confession letter. So neatly divided, page one from page two. So easy to lose page one, and leave page two sitting on the bed. It’s all there. Words, phrases, stories, lies. How many mistakes have I made? Are there more to come? All I can do is hope.
I will wait a little while, here in the bathroom, until the horror passes. My face is pressed into my hand; I can feel the imprint of my fingers on my cheek. Soon I will take my hand away and I will scream.
For sharing their knowledge and experience, thank you to Matt and Vanya Nunn, Ben Smith, Hilary Kirkbride, Diana Eden, Emma Smith, and Jill Mellor. For guidance and advice: Francesca Dow, Derry Clinch, Lucy Akrill, Lucy Horton, and Gill Hornby. Much gratitude is due to Judith Murray at Greene & Heaton; Grainne Fox at Fletcher & Co; Ruth Tross at Hodder; and to Emily Bestler and Kate Cetrulo at Simon & Schuster—all of whom made this possible. Most of all, thank you to Giles Smith, who helped in everything.
SABINE DURRANT
is a former assistant editor of the Guardian and a former literary editor at the
Sunday Times
whose feature writing has appeared in numerous British national newspapers and magazines. She is currently a magazine profile writer for the
Sunday Telegraph
and a contributor to the Guardian’s Family section. She live in south London with her partner, the sportswriter Giles Smith, and their three children.
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