Beneath The Skin

your children?”

I couldn’t suppress a smile.

“A state primary school in Hackney? Are you serious?”

The two men exchanged glances.

“Or maybe you’ve met one of the teachers. A woman called Zoe Haratounian, for example.”

“No. What can the school have to do with this letter?”

“There were… er, incidents associated with the school. There may be a connection.”

“What sort of incidents?”

“Letters like the one you received. But can we continue with our questions? Has this letter come out of the blue? You don’t connect it with anything else, or any other person, no matter how remotely?”

“No.”

“I would like to assess how many people have access to this house. I see that you’re having work done.”

“That’s right. It’s like Waterloo Station here.”

He smiled.

“Which estate agent did you use?”

“Our house was sold by Frank Dickens. Bunch of sharks.”

“Have you ever used Clarke’s?”

I shrugged.

“Maybe,” I said. “I was looking for ages. I must be on the books of almost every estate agent in London.”

They looked at each other again.

“I’ll check it out,” Stadler said.

One of the officers came down the stairs. Yet another woman was with her. Tall, with long blond hair, some of it up on top of her head, looking as if it had been pinned up by a blind man in a dark room. She was wearing a business suit that looked as if it could do with a run-over from an iron. She was carrying a case and had a raincoat over one arm. She looked harassed and out of breath. Both detectives looked round and nodded at her.

“Hello, Grace,” said Links. “Thanks for coming so quickly.” He turned back to me. “This may seem strange to you. Somebody has picked on you. We don’t know why. We don’t know who this person is, or anything about him. But we have you. We can’t look at his life but we can look at your life.”

I felt suddenly alarmed and irritated. This was becoming tiresome.

“What do you mean, look at my life?”

“This is Dr. Grace Schilling. She’s a very distinguished psychologist and she specializes in the psychology of, well, of people who do things like this. I’d be very grateful if you’d talk to her.”

I looked at Dr. Schilling. I expected her to be blushing or smiling at Links’s flattery. She wasn’t. She was looking at me with narrowed eyes. I felt like something stuck to a card with a pin.

“Mrs. Hintlesham,” she said. “Can we go somewhere quiet?”

I looked around.

“I’m not sure there is anywhere quiet,” I said with a forced smile.

THREE

“Sorry about the mess,” I said as we tiptoed across the room between packing cases toward a sofa. “This is going to be a drawing room in about twenty years.”

She took off her crumpled linen jacket and sat down in the uncomfortable old basket-weave chair. She was tall and slim, with dark blond hair, long thin fingers. No rings.

“Thank you for giving me your time, Mrs. Hintlesham.” She put on a pair of spectacles, the kind with no frames at all. She took a notepad and a pencil out of her bag and wrote something at the top. Underlined it.

“As a matter of fact, I haven’t got a great deal of time to give. I’m very busy, as you can see. I’ve a lot to get through before the boys get back.” I sat down and smoothed my skirt over my knees. “Do you want coffee or tea or something?”

“No, thanks. I’ll try to be quick. I just wanted us to meet.”

I was feeling agitated. I wasn’t quite sure what was going on, why she seemed so serious.

“Quite honestly, I think the police have got themselves in a bit of a sweat about it all, haven’t they? I mean, it’s just a stupid letter. I wasn’t going to call them at all and then suddenly it’s like Piccadilly Circus in here.”

She looked thoughtful. So thoughtful that she hardly seemed to be paying proper attention to what I was saying.

“No,” she said. “You did the right thing.”

“I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t remember your name-my mind’s like a sieve. Early senility, I expect.”

“Grace. Grace Schilling. This must all be strange for you.”

“Not at all, actually. I told the police, I just thought it was a joke.”

Dr. Schilling was the one with the suit and notebook; she was the doctor. Yet she was shifting uncomfortably in her seat as if she didn’t know quite what to say. Of course that wretched chair is enough to make anybody uncomfortable, but I still didn’t know what she was playing at.

“I don’t want to give you a psychology lecture. I just want to do anything I can to help you.” She paused as if she was trying to make up her mind. “Look, as you know, there are men who just attack women at random. This letter you received is obviously something different.”

“I can see that,” I said.

“He’s seen you. Chosen you. I wonder if this person has been close to you. He says that you smell nice. That you have beautiful skin. How does that make you feel?”

I laughed a bit self-consciously. But she didn’t. She leaned closer and looked at me.

“You do have beautiful skin,” she said.

She didn’t say it as if it was a compliment but just as if it were an interesting scientific observation.

“Well, I try hard enough with my skin, for goodness’ sake. I have this special cream.”

“Are you often aware of people finding you attractive?”

“What a question. I can’t think how this is going to help you. Let’s see. Some of Clive’s friends are awful flirts. I suppose there are men who look at me, you know the way men do.” Grace Schilling didn’t say anything, just gazed at me with that calm and mildly anxious expression on her face. “I’m nearly forty, for goodness’ sake,” I said, to break the silence. My voice came out louder than I had intended.

“Do you work, Jenny?”

“Not in the way you mean,” I said, almost belligerently. “I don’t have a job the way you do. I have children, and this house.” Take that, I thought to myself with some satisfaction. “I haven’t worked since I got pregnant with Josh, fifteen years ago now. Clive and I always agreed that I would give up. I used to be a model. Not in the way you probably think. I modeled hands.”

She looked baffled. “Hands?”

“You know, in posters for nail varnish and things like that, consisting of nothing but a giant hand. In the early and mid-eighties lots of those hands were mine.”

We both looked at my hands, lying in my lap. I try to keep them nice. I have a manicure once a week, and get the cuticles seen to, and I rub this expensive lotion on them that I’ve always used, and I never wash anything up without wearing gloves. But they’re not like they were. They’re plumper, for a start. I can’t take off my engagement and wedding rings any longer, not even when I use butter. Dr. Schilling smiled for the first time.

“It’s a bit like someone’s fallen in love with you,” she said then. “From afar. Like in a story. Or someone close to you. It might be somebody you’ve never seen before or someone you see every day. It would be useful if you could think about men you meet, if any of them act strangely, inappropriately, towards you.”

I gave a grunt.

“The boys, for a start,” I said.

“Maybe you could describe your life to me.”

“Oh dear, you mean a day in the life?”

“I want to get an idea of the things that are important to you.”