Nicci French - Beneath The Skin

“I’m sorry,” said Morris. “I seem to have started something. I should have kept my mouth shut.”

“No,” I said. “Don’t be stupid. It’s worth thinking about. I just can’t believe it. What do I do?”

Morris and Josh just looked at each other and shrugged.

“Just look after yourself,” Morris said. “Keep your eyes open.” He winked at Josh. “We should go,” he said.

I walked with them to the door.

“What do I do?” I repeated pathetically.

“You think about things,” Morris said. “And we’ll think as well. Maybe we’ll come up with something. Remember, we’re on your side.”

I closed the door and I didn’t even sit down. I stood there by the door, thinking and thinking, trying to put it into a shape that fitted. My head hurt.

I am there, right at the heart of things. Invisible. I stand in front of her and she smiles at me in that way she has, that crinkles her eyes. She giggles at my jokes. She puts her hand on my shoulder. She has kissed me on the cheek: a soft, dry kiss, burning into my skin. She lets her eyes well up with tears and doesn’t wipe them away. There aren’t many people she trusts anymore, but she trusts me. Yes, she trusts me perfectly. While I am with her I must not laugh. The laughter builds up inside me, like a bomb.

She is strong, resilient; she bends but she doesn’t break. She has not collapsed. But I am strong. I am stronger than she is, stronger than anyone. I am clever, cleverer than those fools who snuffle around for clues that are not there. And I am patient. I can wait for as long as it takes. I watch and I wait and, inside, I laugh.

“You,” I said.

“Me,” Cameron said. We stared at each other. “I’m Lynne for the day. Orders.”

“Oh.” I had gone to the door wearing a skimpy robe and with my hair unbrushed, expecting Lynne, or Bernice. I didn’t want him seeing me like this. His eyes dropped from my face to my chest, my bare legs. Instinctively I put my hand up to my throat and I saw him give a tiny smile. “I’ll get dressed,” I said.

I put on jeans and a T-shirt, good and plain. I brushed my hair back from my face and tied it up. It was a cooler day; I almost thought I could smell autumn in the air, a sense of freshness. I wanted to see the autumn: trees turning, fast gray skies, and rain in the winds. Pears on the tree out in the yard, blackberries from the cemetery up the road. I thought about walking through the coppice near my parents’ house, boots crunching on leaves. I thought about sitting by a fire at Janet’s house and eating buttered toast. Little things.

I could hear Stadler in the kitchen, familiar with all the appliances. I remembered what Morris had said yesterday, and I thought: Yes, it could be, it could be true. I let myself think about what had happened between me and Cameron, remember it while he rattled the cups next door. He had hidden his head between my breasts, groaning; pinned me down; been savage, brutal, gentle. When he had stared at me with his hungry eyes, what had he seen? What did he see now? Should I be scared of him?

I took a deep breath, went to join him in the kitchen.

“Coffee,” he said.

“Thanks.”

There was a silence. Then I said:

“I’ve arranged to go and see my parents today. They live near Reading.”

“Fine.”

“I’d like you to wait outside. I won’t tell them about you.”

“Are they very anxious?”

“Not about this. They don’t know. I haven’t told them.”

They were always anxious, though, I thought. That was why I hadn’t said anything to them. Every time I’d picked up the phone, I had imagined my mother’s mild and fretful voice with its submerged note of panic. She was always waiting to hear bad news from me. Each time she heard my voice on the other end of the phone, she thought I was going to break some unwelcome event to her and her unfocused fears were going to find a point. She had never been sure about me, I don’t know why. She didn’t trust my capacity to look after myself and make a life for myself. But I was going to tell them today. I had to.

“Nadia, we need to talk…” He put his cup down and leaned toward me.

“I wanted to ask you something…” I told him.

“About us. You and me.”

“I wanted to ask you about Zoe and Jenny.”

“Nadia, we need to talk about what happened.”

“No, we don’t.” I tried to keep my voice businesslike. I concentrated on holding the coffee steadily in my hands.

“You don’t mean that,” he said.

I looked at him. Tall and solid, like a wall between me and the rest of the world. He had strong, thick hands with hair on the knuckles. Hands that had held me, touched me, felt for all my secrets. He had eyes that stared at me, undressed me.

“I’ve fallen in love with you,” he said hoarsely.

“Have you told your wife?”

He flinched, then said, “She’s got nothing to do with this. This is just about you and me here in your flat.”

“Tell me about Zoe and Jenny,” I said insistently. “You’ve never told me about them. What were they like?” He shook his head irritably, but I persisted. “You owe it to me.”

“I owe you nothing,” he said, but he put his hands up in a gesture of surrender, then closed his eyes for a moment. “Zoe: I didn’t know Zoe so well; I hardly got the chance… I saw her first in a huge photograph from a newspaper that was put up on the wall at the station, you know, after she poleaxed a mugger with a watermelon. She was like a heroine to the guys, and a kind of dirty joke too.”

“What was she like, though?”

“I never met her.”

“What about Jenny? You must have known Jenny well.” I watched his face.

“Jenny was something else.” He almost grinned at the memory, then checked himself. “Small, too. You’re all small,” he added musingly. “But strong, energetic, dense, dark, angry. Coiled wire, Jenny was. Clever. Impatient. Seriously insane sometimes.”

“Unhappy?”

“That as well.” He put a hand on my knee and I let it lie there for a moment, though his touch sent a wave of repulsion through me. “She’d have bitten your head off for saying it, though. Bit of a dragon.”

I stood up, to be free of his hand; poured myself some more coffee, to give myself something to do.

“We ought to go soon,” I said.

“Nadia.”

“I don’t want to be late.”

“I lie in bed at night and I see you, your face, your body.”

“Keep away.”

“I know you.”

“You think I’m going to die.”

Before we left, I phoned Links, while Cameron was in the room with me, and told him that Detective Inspector Stadler was driving me to see my parents, and that we should be back mid- to late afternoon. I could hear the note of bemusement in Links’s voice: He couldn’t understand why I should be ringing up and telling him my arrangements. I didn’t care, though. I repeated myself loudly and clearly: So he couldn’t help but hear, so that Cameron couldn’t help but hear, either.

We didn’t talk much on the way there, up the M4 then along small lanes. I gave him curt instructions, and he drove and looked across at me with his heavy gaze. I sat with my hands on my lap and tried to look out my window, but I could feel his head turning toward me, his brooding stare.

“What do your parents do?” he asked, just before we arrived.

“Dad was a teacher, geography, but he took early retirement. Mum did odd things, but mostly she stayed at home and looked after me and my brother. Right here, at the T-junction. You’re not coming in, remember.”

The house was a thirties semi, much like all the others along the cul-de-sac. Cameron drew up outside it.