Beneath The Skin

bottom of the page. Then I looked at them all when they were finished. I took them home. I didn’t exactly spend hours on each picture, but I looked at them all and wrote something.”

“Elinor’s mother came in to see me in tears,” said Pauline. “This is Elinor’s drawing. Take a look.”

She pushed a familiar large-format exercise book across her desk. It was open and I recognized my writing at the bottom of the page. Sleeping Beauty. Elinor had made a pretty dismal attempt at copying the words herself. The p was the wrong way round and the second word dribbled away as if it had run out of energy. The drawing was different, though. It wasn’t like a toddler’s drawing. Actually there were traces of Elinor’s scratchy drawing here and there, but it had been embellished and drawn over and filled out. The girl was now lying in a carefully rendered room. More than that, I could see what Pauline couldn’t. It was my room. My bedroom. At least bits of it were. There was the picture of the cow on the wall that I had lived with all my life and the mirror with a string bag hanging from its edge. I’d always meant to put it away and hadn’t got around to it.

On the bed, Sleeping Beauty wasn’t asleep and she wasn’t Sleeping Beauty. She was me. At least she had my glasses on. The bed looked more like a mortuary slab. I mean that there were huge incisions in the body, with bits of internal organ, guts, trailing out. Parts of the body, especially around the vagina-my vagina-were so mutilated as not to be recognizable. Suddenly I started to be sick; bitter bile came up in my mouth, and I managed to hold it down, swallow it. But it burned the back of my throat and made me cough. I took a tissue from my pocket and wiped my mouth. I pushed the book back to Pauline. She looked at me earnestly.

“If you have done this as some very strange kind of joke, then you’d better tell me straightaway. Just tell me: Did you do this?”

I didn’t speak. I couldn’t speak. Pauline rapped on the table as if trying to awaken me.

“Zoe. Do you realize the position you’re in? What do you expect me to do?”

My eyes were burning. I had to stop myself from crying. I had to be strong, not collapse.

“Call the police,” I said.

ELEVEN

Pauline was dubious and reluctant at first, but I insisted. I wasn’t going to leave her office without something being done. Carthy had given me his card, but my hands were shaking so much that I had to fumble in my purse to get it out. Pauline looked visibly surprised as I laboriously dialed the number while looking at the card. I suppose she thought I was going to dial 999 in some hysterical way.

“It’s happened before,” I said to her in explanation. “In a way.”

I asked for Carthy. He was away. So I was put through to Aldham as a pretty poor second best. I was wild on the phone. I said he had to come over now, here, to the school, right away. Aldham was reluctant but I said if he didn’t come then I would make an official complaint and added to this any threat that came into my mind. He agreed and I gave him the address of the school and quickly put the phone down. I lit a cigarette. Pauline started to say something about no smoking being allowed except in the staff room, but I said that I was very sorry but this was an emergency.

“Are you going back to your class?” she asked.

“It’s not a good time,” I said. “I’d better talk to the police. I need to see what they say. I’ll wait for them here.”

There was quite a long silence. Pauline stared at me as if I were an unpredictable wild animal that needed careful handling. At least that’s what I felt she was doing. I felt I would bristle at the slightest touch. Finally she gave a shrug.

“I’ll talk to Mrs. Tite outside,” she said quietly.

“Yeah,” I said, hardly taking in what she was saying.

Pauline stopped at the door.

“Are you saying that someone else did that? That picture?”

I stubbed out my cigarette and started to light another.

“Yeah,” I said. “Something horrible’s going on. Horrible. I’ve got to get it sorted out.”

Pauline started to say something, then stopped and left me alone in her office. I was hardly aware of the time. I smoked cigarettes one after another. I picked up a newspaper from Pauline’s desk but I wasn’t able to concentrate on it. It must have been half an hour later that I heard voices outside and Aldham came in, escorted by Pauline. She had already told him as much as she knew. I didn’t bother with any greeting.

“Look,” I said, pointing at the art book, which was still open where I had left it. “That’s me. That’s a fucking exact copy of my bedroom. You can’t see that from the fucking pub.”

Maybe Pauline had alerted him to my agitated state, because he didn’t warn me or even snap back at me. He just looked at the drawing, and then muttered something under his breath. He looked stunned.

“Where was this done?” he said, looking up.

“How do I know?” It took an effort to slow myself down, to make myself concentrate. “It was just in a pile of schoolbooks. I had it in school last week on Friday when I collected it from the class.”

“Where were they kept?”

“In the classroom. I took them home last Wednesday and brought them back the following morning.”

“Were they ever out of your sight?”

“Of course they were. What do you think? I didn’t sit and guard them all night. Sorry. Sorry sorry sorry. It’s just-oh Christ. Sorry. Let me think. Yes, I went out to see a film with some friends. I must have been out for two, nearly three hours, I guess. It was the day I found the letter on my doormat. I told you about it. The first letter-or I thought it was the first letter. I threw it away.”

Aldham wrinkled up his nose and nodded.

“So,” he said. He looked baffled and anxious. He didn’t meet my eye. “When did you return the books?”

“I told you, the following morning. I just had it for that evening. I’m sure. Completely sure.”

“And it wasn’t discovered until today?”

Pauline stepped forward.

“The mother only looked this morning,” she said.

“Have any other books been tampered with?” Aldham asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so. I don’t know, though. I…”

“We’ll check the other art books,” Pauline said.

I lit another cigarette. I could feel my heart beating fast. My pulse seemed to be everywhere, in my face and arms and legs.

“So what do you think?” I said.

“Wait,” he said.

He took a mobile phone from his pocket and retreated into a corner. I heard him ask for DI Carthy and then begin a murmured conversation. Clearly there were different degrees of being unavailable. I heard fragments of one side of the conversation.

“Shall we talk to Stadler? Right, Detective Inspector Cameron Stadler. And Grace Schilling?… Can you give her a bell? And send an officer along with the file. Send Lynne-she’s good at this kind of thing. We’ll meet her there… Right, see you later.”

Aldham put the phone away and turned to Pauline.

“Is it all right if Miss Haratounian comes with us for a while?”

“Of course,” Pauline said. She looked at me with a new concern. “Is everything all right?”

“It’ll be fine,” Aldham said. “We just need to go through some routine procedures.” He took a handkerchief from his pocket and used it to pick up Ellie’s art book. “All right?” he said.

It was quite a long drive across London. The permanent traffic jam was even worse on a Friday and a lorry had got stuck turning into a builder’s yard, and Aldham took a shortcut that got caught in a residential traffic system off the Ball’s Pond Road.

“Are we going to the police station?” I asked.