Nicci French - Beneath The Skin

“I love to stand out here in the evenings,” I said. Lynne nodded back at me. “I mean in the summer. I don’t do it in the rain. I like looking at the flowers and wondering what their names are. Do you know anything about gardening?” Lynne shook her head. “Pity.” I took another sip. Now for it. “I owe you an apology,” I said, just as she was lifting the mug to her lips, testing the heat of the liquid with that delicate first sip. She looked puzzled.

“What for?”

“Yesterday I was asking you whether all this-I mean all the protection-wasn’t a bit much. I wondered why you were doing this. But in fact I knew.”

Lynne froze in the act of lifting the mug of tea to her mouth. I continued.

“You see, a funny thing happened. Yesterday at the children’s party I got talking to the nanny of one of the children. And then completely by chance I discovered something. She worked for, I mean used to work for, a woman called Jennifer Hintlesham.” I had to give Lynne credit. She gave no visible reaction at all. She wouldn’t catch my eye, that was all. “You have heard of her?” I said.

Lynne took some time to answer. She looked down at her tea.

“Yes,” she said, so quietly I could hardly catch the words.

A thought-actually more a feeling than a thought-occurred to me. I remembered that strange sensation when I’d gone somewhere with Max and he would say something that would make me realize that he’d been there before with an earlier girlfriend. And, although I knew it was stupid, things would go a bit gray and sour.

“Did you do this with her? With Jennifer? Did you stand in her garden with her, drinking tea?”

Lynne looked trapped. But she couldn’t run away. She had to stay here, looking after me.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It felt bad not telling you, but there were strict instructions. They thought it might be traumatic for you.”

“Did Jennifer know about the one before?”

“No.”

I felt that my mouth was flapping open. I was aghast. I just couldn’t think what to say.

“I… you lied to her as well” was all I finally managed.

“It wasn’t like that,” said Lynne, still not catching my eye. “It was a decision made from the beginning. They thought it would be bad to panic you.”

“And to panic her. I mean Jennifer.”

“That’s right.”

“So-let me get this straight in my mind-she didn’t know that the person sending her letters had already killed somebody.”

Lynne didn’t reply.

“And she couldn’t make decisions about how to protect herself.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Lynne said.

“In what way wasn’t it like that?”

“This wasn’t my decision,” Lynne said. “But I know that they’ve been acting for the best. What they thought would be the best.”

“Your strategy for protecting Jennifer-and the first one as well, Zoe-it didn’t quite work out.” I took a gulp of the whiskey, which made me cough. I wasn’t really used to spirits. I felt so miserable and frightened and sick. “I’m sorry, Lynne, I’m sure that this is awful for you, but it’s worse for me. This is my life. I’m the one who’s going to die.”

She moved closer toward me.

“You’re not going to die.”

I recoiled. I didn’t want these people to touch me. I didn’t want their sensitivity.

“I don’t understand, Lynne. You’ve been sitting here with me for days. You’ve been here in the house, drinking my tea, eating my food. I’ve talked to you about my life. You’ve seen me barefoot, slouched on the sofa; half-naked, wandering around. You’ve seen me believing you, trusting you. I can’t understand it. What were you thinking?”

Lynne stayed silent. I didn’t speak, either, for a time. I reached for my whiskey and sipped at it.

“Do you think I’m being stupid?” I said. “It’s just that I have this problem with everybody knowing something about me and me not knowing it. What would you feel, if it was you?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

I took another sip of the drink. It was starting to work on me. I have a startlingly low resistance to any kind of drug. I would like it to be because I have a perfectly attuned body, but I think it’s just a weak head. It was getting harder to maintain my feeling of fury, although the fear was still throbbing away somewhere deep inside. But I could feel the alcohol all over my body and outside it as well, making the world seem softer, fuzzier in the golden light of this summer evening right in the middle of north London.

“Did you look after the first one?”

“Zoe? No. I only met her once. Just before… well…”

“And Jennifer?”

“Yes. I spent time with her.”

“What were they like? Were they like me?”

Lynne drained her mug of tea.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry you were kept in the dark like this. But it’s completely forbidden to divulge details of that kind. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t you understand what I’m saying?” I raised my voice in some bitterness. “I’ve never met these two women. I don’t even know what they look like. But I’ve got something very big in common with them. I’d like to know about them. It might help.”

Lynne’s face had gone blank now. She suddenly looked like a bureaucrat behind a desk.

“If you’ve any concerns, you’ll have to raise them with DCI Links. I’m not authorized to make any disclosures.” There was a flash of human concern on her face. “Look, Nadia, I’m not the one to ask. I haven’t seen the files on the case. I’m just on the edge of it, like you.”

“I’m not on the edge,” I said. “I wish I were. I’m in the black hole at the center. So that’s it? You just want me to trust you, to have faith that you’re getting better at this?”

Fuck her, I thought. Fuck all of them. We walked inside, hardly looking at each other. She made some sandwiches with bits of ham that were left in the fridge and we sat watching the TV and not talking. I hardly noticed the program. At first I thought angrily, playing through scenes from my recent life, conversations with Lynne, Links, Cameron. I remembered lying in bed with Cameron, the way he gazed at me. I tried to imagine the erotic charge of a naked body like mine, the body of a woman who was going to die soon and didn’t know it. What was it like to be a lover whose only rival was a murderer? Did that make sex more exciting? The more I thought of it, the thought of him nuzzling my body made me want to vomit, as if there had been rats gnawing at my breasts and between my legs.

I hadn’t ever really been scared before. I don’t think I am someone who scares easily. I fall in love easily, and get angry quickly, and happy too, and irritated, and excited. I shout, cry, laugh. These things lie close to my surface, and they bubble up. But fear is deep down and hidden. Now I was scared, but the feeling didn’t obliterate all other emotions the way rage does, for instance, or sudden desire. It felt more like walking out of the sunlight into the shadow: stony cold, eerie. A different world.

As the night wore on, I realized that I didn’t know who to turn to. I thought about my parents but quickly dismissed them. They were old and nervous. They had always been anxious about me, before there was any real need for anxiety. Zach, darling glum Zach. Or Janet, maybe. Who would be calm, strong, a rock? Who would listen to me? Who would save me?

And then, without meaning to, I started to think about the women who had died. I knew nothing about them except their names, and that Jennifer Hintlesham had had three children. I remembered her little son’s belligerent cherub’s face. Two women. Zoe and Jenny. What had they looked like, how had they felt? They must have lain awake in their beds in the dark, as I was doing now, and felt the same icy fear flowing round their bodies that I was feeling now. And the same loneliness. For now of course it was not two but three women, joined together by one madman. Zoe and Jenny and Nadia. Nadia: That was me. Why me? I thought, as I lay there and listened to the sounds of the night. Why them, and why me? And just why?