Beneath the Skin

by Nicci French

  “Well, it's nice that someone appreciates your skin, Jens.” Then: “I'm sure it's just some crank. I don't want crowds of policemen running all over the house.”

  “No. Mad, isn't it?”

  FOUR

  I never go downstairs before I put my makeup on, not even on the weekend. It would be like going down without clothes. As soon as I hear Clive leave in the morning, the front door clicking behind him, I get out of bed and have a shower. I scrub my body down with a loofah to get rid of any dead skin. I sit at my dressing table, which Clive says looks like something in a starlet's trailer. There are pitiless lights all the way round the mirror, and I examine myself. I found a few gray hairs in my eyebrows yesterday. There are lines I didn't have last year, horrible little ones above my upper lip, ones that run down toward the corners of my mouth and give my face a droopy, depressed look when I am tired, slight pouches under my eyes. Sometimes my eyes ache; probably it's from all the dust in the house. I have no intention of wearing glasses yet.

  My skin no longer has the bloom of youth, whatever that stupid man wrote in his letter. I used to have beautiful skin. When Clive first met me, he told me I had skin like a peach. But that was a long time ago. He doesn't say things like that any longer. I sometimes think it's more important to say things like that when they're not true. Looking in the mirror I sometimes feel my skin is more the texture of a grapefruit now. The other day, when I put on my green dress to go out to the school fete, he told me to put on something that the children wouldn't be embarrassed by.

  I make sure there are no stray hairs between my eyebrows or, God forbid, on my chin, then I start with foundation, which I mix with moisturizing cream so it goes on smoothly. Then I put this wonderful wrinkle concealer round my nose and under my eyes. My friend Caro told me about it. It is unbelievably expensive. Sometimes I try to calculate how many pounds I'm wearing on my face. In the day, everything has to be invisible. A tiny smudge of beige eye shadow, the smallest trace of eyeliner, mascara that doesn't clog the lashes, maybe lip gloss. Then I feel better. I like the face that looks back at me, small and oval and bright, ready to face the world.

  Breakfast was awful as usual. In the middle of the chaos there was a knock on the door. Officer Lynne Burnett, except today she was in her ordinary clothes. She was wearing a gray skirt, blue blouse, and woolen top. She looked quite smart, in a drab kind of way, but for some reason I was irritated by the idea that this was what she had worn for hanging around with Mrs. Hintlesham. To blend in with the landscape, no doubt. “Call me Lynne,” she said. Everybody says that. Everybody wants to be your friend. I wish they'd just get on with their job. She told me that her first task was to look at my mail when it arrived.

  “Will you be tasting my food as well?” I asked sarcastically.

  She blushed so her birthmark became livid. The phone rang and it was Clive, who was already at work. I started to describe what was going on but he interrupted me to say that Sebastian and his wife were coming to dinner on Saturday.

  “But we haven't got a dining table,” I protested. “And we've only got half a kitchen.”

  “Jens, the documentation we're preparing for next month's merger is over two thousand pages long. If I can coordinate that, I think you can organize a dinner party for a client.”

  “Of course, I'll do it, I was just saying . . .” Mary came in through the door with a mop and started ostentatiously cleaning round my feet. By the time I'd started speaking again, Clive had rung off. I put the phone down and looked around. Lynne was still there, of course. Well, obviously, but it was a bit of a disappointment all the same. There was a part of me that hoped she would have gone away, like a headache. But now, after that phone call, I had a headache and I had Lynne.

  “I'm going out to talk to my gardener,” I said frostily. “I suppose you'd like to come and meet him.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  With his long plaited hair down his back, Francis may look like he should be in a caravan heading for Stonehenge, but in fact he's an absolute genius. His father was actually something grand in the navy and he went to Marlborough. If you look at him with narrowed eyes you could sort of imagine him working in the city like Clive, except that apart from his three-foot-long hair he's also an alarmingly deep shade of brown and has those strong sinewed arms you get from lugging heavy things around all day. Some people would probably say that he's rather good-looking. I don't want to know about his personal life, which I gather is rather busy, but he's one of the few people I trust absolutely.

  I introduced him to Lynne, who blushed. But then she seems to blush all the time.

  “Lynne is here because someone's written me a mad letter,” I said. Francis looked puzzled, as well he might. “And Francis is here full time for the next month at least,” I said.

  “What are you doing?” Lynne asked.

  Francis looked at me. I nodded and he gave a shrug.

  “First we dumped concrete and rubble into a skip,” he said. “We've brought soil in. Now we're doing some landscaping and laying paths.”

  “Are you doing this on your own?” Lynne asked.

  Francis smiled.

  “Of course not,” I said. “Francis has got his collection of lost boys who come and work for him when he needs them. There's a whole subculture of gardeners drifting around London. They're like the pigeons and the foxes.”

  I gave a nervous glance at Francis. Maybe I'd gone too far. People can be so touchy. Lynne actually got out her notebook and started asking about working hours and firing questions about the fence and access to the house. She wrote down the names of all the casual workers he used.

  All in all, it was a relief to leave the house, however late. Or that's what I thought, until Lynne told me that she would be coming with me.

  “You're not serious.”

  “Sorry, Jenny.” Yes, she calls me Jenny, although I haven't told her she could. “I'm not sure about the level of support we're providing, but for today I've got to stick with you.”

  I was about to get cross when the doorbell rang. It was Stadler, so I protested to him instead. He just gave me his smile.

  “It's for your own safety, Mrs. Hintlesham. I'm just here to touch base and make a couple of routine checks. Do you have any objection to us monitoring your telephone calls?”

  “What does that involve?”

  “Nothing that you need bother about. You won't even notice it.”

  “All right,” I grumbled.

  “We want to compile a register of people you have dealings with. So over the next day or so, I'd like you to sit down with Lynne and go through things like your address book, appointment book, that sort of thing. Is that all right?”

  “Is this really necessary?”

  “The more effective we are now, the quicker we can wind all this up.”

  I'd almost stopped being angry. I just felt a mild disgust.

  First stop was at the reclamation center for the brass hooks. I nearly bought a round stained-glass window that had come out of an old church but at the last minute changed my mind. At least Lynne didn't come into the shop.

  She did come into the shops in Hampstead, or at least stood just outside staring neutrally into windows full of women's clothes. God knows what the shop assistants made of her. I pretended to ignore her. I needed something for Saturday. I took an armful of clothes into the changing room, but when I came out wearing a beaded pink top, wanting to see myself in the long mirror, I caught sight of Lynne's face, staring through the window at me. I left empty-handed.

  “Find what you wanted?” she asked as we left. As if we were friends on a spree together.

  “I wasn't actually looking for anything,” I hissed.

  I popped into the butcher's to buy the sausages the boys like so much, and then wandered round the next-door antique shop. I had my eye on a mirror there, with a gilt frame. It cost £375, but I thought I might be able to get it for less. It would go perfectly in the hall, once we had it painted.<
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  I had arranged to meet Laura for lunch, so after I had picked up Christopher's name tags for all his Lascelles school clothes, I drove down the hill, Lynne's car in my rearview mirror. Laura was already waiting. It should have been fun, but it wasn't. Lynne sat in the car outside eating a sandwich. I could see her as I fiddled with my arugula and roasted red pepper salad. She was reading a paperback. If an axman came into the room she probably wouldn't even look up. I couldn't quite concentrate on anything Laura was saying to me. I cut the lunch short, saying that I had to dash.

  Next stop, Tony in Primrose Hill. Normally I love having my hair done. It makes me feel cosseted sitting in the little room full of mirrors and steel, trolleys laden with colored lotions, the smell of steam and perfume, the lovely crisp sound of scissors cutting through locks of hair.

  But today nothing worked. I felt hot, cross, out of sorts. My head banged and my clothes stuck to me. I didn't like the way I looked after the cut. The new shape of my hair had a peculiar optical effect that made my nose too big and my face too bony. In the traffic on the way home a kind of road rage engulfed me, so that I revved impatiently at traffic lights. Lynne kept patiently behind me. Sometimes she was so close that I could see her freckles in the mirror. I stuck out my tongue in the mirror, knowing she couldn't see it.

  For the rest of the day, she followed me like a faithful dog—the kind you want to kick. She followed me when I took Chris to play with a chum of his down the road, a scrawny little boy called Todd. What kind of parent calls her child that? Then I had to collect the boys, because it was Lena's night off. Wednesdays are always a nightmare. Josh was at the school after-hours computer club, which was always held in a trailer that stank of boys' sweaty feet. Usually when I come to collect him he is paired with another boy called Scorpion or Spyder or whatever stupid nickname they've chosen. Josh used to call himself Ganymede, but last week he decided that was too effeminate and changed it to Eclipse. That's his password. His best friend is called Freak, spelled with a Ph: Phreek. They're all madly serious about it.

  But this evening Josh was sitting slumped in a chair and the rather sweet young man who came in to teach them every week was crouched down beside him, talking to him intently. I remember that when I'd first met him a few weeks earlier, he told me that everybody in the club called him Hacker. I think I'd pulled a face and he'd said that that wasn't his real name and I could call him Hack. “Is that your name?” I'd asked, but he only laughed.

  All the boys were still in their uniforms but Hack was wearing ancient torn jeans and a T-shirt with lots of writing in Japanese on it. He was pretty young himself, with long, curly dark hair. He could almost have been one of the sixth-formers. At first I thought Josh must have had an accident, or a nosebleed, but as I drew nearer they both looked up and I saw that he had been crying. His eyes were red-rimmed. This startled me. I couldn't remember when I last saw Josh actually cry. It made him look much younger and more vulnerable. How bony and pale he was, I thought, with his bumpy forehead and his protruding Adam's apple.

  “Josh! Are you all right? What's wrong?”

  “Nothing.” The tone was cross rather than miserable. He stood up abruptly. “I'll see you next term, in September, Hack.”

  Hack. Honestly. No wonder Josh was such a mess.

  “Or lose you. To a summer love,” said Hack.

  “What?” I said.

  “It's a song,” he said.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “What, that?” he said, gesturing at Josh. “It's no big deal, Mrs. Hintlesham.”

  “Jenny,” I corrected him, as I do every week. “Call me Jenny.”

  “Sorry. Jenny.”

  “He seemed upset.”

  Hack looked unconcerned.

  “It's probably school, summer, all that stuff. Plus he just got whipped on-screen.”

  “Maybe his blood sugar's low.”

  “Yeah, that's right. Give him some sugar. Jenny.”

  I looked at Hack. I couldn't tell if he was laughing at me.

  Harry was round the other side of the school, in the large and drafty hall that doubled as the theater once a year for the school play. When Josh and I went in, he was standing by the side of the stage with a yellow dress over his trousers and a feather boa round his neck. His face was scarlet. The sight of him seemed to cheer Josh up considerably. Up on the stage was a motley crew of boys, a couple of whom were also wearing frocks.

  “Harry,” called a man with a small mustache and a bullet-shaped head with hair cut brutally short. Probably gay. “Harry Hintlesham, it's your entrance. Come on! ‘Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.' You should be walking on as Roley says that.”

  Harry struggled onto the stage, tripping over the dress. “ ‘What jealous Oberon,' ” he muttered under his breath. His hair looked sticky with sweat. “ ‘Fairies, skip off, I have long—' ”

  “ ‘Skip hence,' ” roared the mustache-man. “Not ‘off,' boy, ‘hence'—and speak louder for goodness' sake. Rehearsal's over anyway, can't have parents seeing it in this state. It won't be ready till Christmas. And speaking of parents, your lovely lady mother has arrived, Titania. Skip hence. Good evening, Mrs. Hintlesham. You light up our dingy hall.”

  “Jenny. Good evening.”

  “Try and get your son to learn his lines.”

  “I'll try.”

  “And get him to wear deodorant, will you?”

  She's dead. Of course. As I wanted. Of course. And I feel cheated of her. Of course. Forget it. Another one. Another she.

  She wears too much makeup. It is like a mask, smoothed over her face. Everything about her face is glossy and cared for—shining lips, dark lashes, creamy skin, neat and glossy hair. She is a picture that is constantly being touched up and polished. An image presented to the world. She can't hide from me. I imagine her face stripped down. There would be lines round her eyes, her nostrils, her mouth; her lips would be pale, soft, nervous.

  Walking down a street, she glances constantly at her reflection in the shop windows, checking that everything is still in place. And it always is. Her clothes are ironed, her hair fits her like a cap. Her nails are manicured and painted a pale pink; her toenails are pink too, in their expensive sandals. Her legs are smooth. She holds herself straight, shoulders back and chin up. She is clean, neat, bright with energy and purpose.

  Yet I have watched her. I see beyond her smile that is not a real smile, and her laugh that, if you listen carefully, very carefully, is forced and brittle. She is like a string on a violin that has been tightened to the thin screeching point. She is not happy. If she was happy, or wild with fear, or with desire, she would become beautiful. She would be liberated from her shell and become her true self. She does not realize she is not happy. Only I realize. Only I can see inside her and release her. She is waiting for me, sealed up inside herself, still untouched by the world.

  Fate smiles on me. I see that now. At first I did not understand that I had become invisible. Nobody can see me. I can go on and on.

  FIVE

  It's very late, almost midnight, but it's still almost indecently hot. Even though I've opened the windows upstairs, the wind that blows in is warm as well, as if it had blown across a desert. Clive isn't back. His secretary, Jan, phoned and told Lena he wouldn't be back until very late and now it's very late and indeed he's not back. As usual I left him some sandwiches in the fridge and had one of them myself, so that's all right.

  The house is quiet now. Lena's out doing God knows what until God knows when. The boys are asleep. Just after eleven I went round and switched their lights out. Even Josh was asleep, exhausted by the rigors of an evening spent on the phone. Everything's done. I've started to pack for Josh and Harry, who are catching the plane tomorrow. It's going to be quiet in the house over the next few weeks, for various different reasons.

  I'm not in general especially keen on alcoholic drinks. Clive's terribly clever about wine, but it's not something I would ever bother about if it were
just me. But that night it was so incredibly stifling and I felt a bit on edge so that suddenly the idea of a gin and tonic came into my head as if it were in a magazine advertisement. I imagined a beautiful sultry woman, darkly tanned, in an exotic location with a drink that was so cold the glass was glistening with moisture. She would be sweating in a sexy way and in between sips she would press the cold glass to her forehead. She would be sitting alone but you would know that she was waiting for some pretty amazing man to arrive.

  So I had to have one, of course. Unbelievably, there was no lemon in the house except for a rather dry leftover slice in the door of the fridge, which would just about do. I made the drink and I felt I needed a snack. All that I could find was one of the packets of cheese puffs that I put in Chris's packed lunch. So I sat and nibbled my way through the packet, which took only a minute, and I was almost shocked to discover that the drink was finished. I had made it with very little gin, so I thought I could manage just one more to take upstairs to the bath.

  I wasn't sweating prettily and sexily like the girl in my magazine advertisement. My blouse was wet in the back. My bra was damp, there were dark patches of moisture around the edges of my knickers. My skin was clammy everywhere. I could smell myself. I thought I was going to rot.

  The bath was warm and foamy and blurry. By the time I was halfway through the second drink, nothing seemed to matter as much as it had. For example, although I had mixed this rather pungent bath foam into the water, I then washed my hair as well and then rinsed it out in the bathroom without even showering separately. That's not the normal way I behave. Did I mention that a second note had arrived?

  Just after lunch today there was delivery after delivery: the right kind of paint, kick-space heaters that should have arrived a month ago. It was like a rugby team marching in and out, and at the end of it all, Lena found an envelope addressed to me lying on the doormat. She brought it to me. I knew what it was straight away but I opened it anyway.