careful voice, as if she was pretending that it was quite normal to find me decorating in my nightclothes. I ignored her too. Idiot. I had no use for any of them, no confidence in them at all.
When I had finished the walls, I had a bath. I washed my hair three times, waxed my legs, shaved under my arms, plucked between my eyebrows. I applied new varnish on my nails and put on more makeup than usual, lots of foundation because my skin looked oddly blotchy, a bit of blusher to give me color, eyeliner. My face was a mask. But I couldn’t keep my hand steady. The lipstick kept going outside my lips, which gave me the look of a drunken old woman. I got it right eventually: discreet plum color, hardly noticeable. It was me again in the mirror. Jennifer Hintlesham: immaculate.
I chose a thin black skirt to wear, with black mules and a crisp white shirt. It was meant to look businesslike, chic, cool. But the skirt hung off my waist. I must have lost weight. Well, every cloud has a silver lining.
I told Lena to take Chris to the London aquarium and then buy him lunch. Chris said he wanted to stay with me, but I blew him a kiss and told him not to be silly, he would have a lovely day. I gave Mary a week’s wages and told her she shouldn’t bother to return. I ran a finger over the top of the microwave and showed her the dust there. She put her hands on her hips and said she never wanted to come back anyway; the job gave her the spooks.
I made a list. Two lists. The first was of things to do in the house and didn’t take me long. The second was for Links and Stadler and was more complicated, and I drank four cups of strong coffee while I was doing it. They had said anything I could remember might be relevant, hadn’t they?
Dr. Schilling and Stadler arrived together, looking grave and mysterious. I asked them both to come into Clive’s study.
“It’s all right,” I said to them. “Don’t look so anxious. I’ve decided to tell you everything. Do you want some coffee? No, then do you mind if I have some more? Oops.”
I spilled a large splash on the desk, and wiped up the puddle with a document that was lying near the computer that said “Without Prejudice” at the top.
“Jenny…”
“Hang on. I made a list of things I thought you should know. I tried ringing the Haratounian woman, you know.”
Grace looked at Stadler, stared at him as if she was ordering him to tell me something. Stadler frowned back.
“I’ve met lots of strange men, if you want to know,” I said. “In fact, as far as I’m concerned, you’re all strange. No one sticks out as odd because everyone sticks out.” I laughed and drank some more coffee. “My first boyfriend, in fact my only boyfriend if you don’t count Clive, was called Jon Jones. He was a photographer-still is, maybe you know of him, he takes pictures of models wearing almost no clothes-and I met him when I was a model, only a hand model, of course, so I didn’t have to take my top off, or not in public, but he took loads of pictures of me in private. When we broke up, except that’s not what it felt like, breaking off-it felt as if he just ever so slowly withdrew his interest so that one day I couldn’t be sure if we were going out any longer. Yes, well, when that happened, and that’s about when I met Clive, I asked for the pictures back and he laughed and said he had copyright, so he must still have them somewhere.”
“Jenny,” interrupted Grace. “Would you like something to eat?”
“Not hungry,” I said, taking a violent slurp of coffee. “I was putting weight on my hips, anyway, before all of this. I don’t think I’m a very sexual woman, actually.” I leaned forward and hissed under my breath: “The earth doesn’t move for me.”
Grace took the coffee cup out of my hand. I noticed I’d left a ring on Clive’s desk. Never mind. I’d put that wonder polish on it later and it would vanish, like magic. I’d clean all the windows too, so that it would look as if there was no barrier at all between me and the outside world.
“That’s not what I wanted to say, though, except she keeps on asking about my sex life. I’ve made a list of men who I think act oddly towards me.” I waved it at them. “It’s rather long, I must say. But I’ve put asterisks by the side of the oddest ones, to help you.” I squinted at the list. My writing was rather erratic this morning, or maybe I was just too tired to see straight, except I didn’t feel tired.
Stadler took the list out of my hand.
“Can I have a cigarette?” I asked him. “I know you smoke, even though you don’t smoke in front of me, because I’ve watched you out of the window. I watch you, you know, Detective Inspector Stadler. I watch you and you watch me.”
He took a packet out of his pocket, took out two cigarettes and lit both, then handed me one. It felt oddly intimate, and I jumped away from him and giggled.
“Clive’s friends are odd,” I said, coughing extravagantly. The ground swam when I took a puff, and my eyes watered. “They look respectable, but I bet they all have affairs, or want to have them. Men are like animals in a zoo. They have to be put into cages in order to keep them from running all over the place. Women are the zookeepers. That’s what marriage is, don’t you think, we try and tame them. So maybe it’s like a circus, not a zoo. Oh, I don’t know.
“I tried to think of everyone who had come to this house, even those people who weren’t in my address book or date book. I don’t know where to start. Obviously there’s all the men working in the garden and in the house. Everybody knows the way that sort of men behave. But to be honest it’s the same everywhere I go. I mean everywhere. When I see the fathers at Harry’s nursery school, or when I’ve gone into Josh’s computer club. There are some pretty odd fish there. And… there was something else I was going to say.”
Grace laid a hand on my shoulder.
“Jenny, come with me and I’m going to make you some breakfast,” she said.
“Is it still only breakfast time? Goodness. Well, at least I’ve got plenty of time to clean the boys’ bedrooms. But I haven’t gone through the list properly.”
“Come on.”
“I got rid of Mary, you know.”
“Did you?”
“So now it’s just me left. Well, me and Chris and Clive. But they don’t count.”
“How do you mean?”
“They’re not going to help me, are they? Men don’t, in general. That’s been my experience, anyway.”
“Toast?”
“Whatever. I don’t care. God, this kitchen’s in a mess, isn’t it? Everything is in such a mess. Everything. How on earth am I going to do it all, with nobody to help?”
TEN
Things got a bit misty after that. I said I wanted to go out shopping and I think I even started looking for my coat. But I couldn’t find it and people all around me kept telling me not to. Their voices seemed to be coming in at me from all directions, and also scratching at me from the inside as if there were wasps inside my skull crawling around my brain and waiting to sting me. I started to shout at them to get them to go away and leave me alone. The voices stopped, but I felt them gripping my arm. I was in my bedroom and Dr. Schilling was so close to me that I could feel her breath on my face. She was saying something I couldn’t understand. I felt a pain in my arm and then everything faded very slowly into darkness and silence.
It was as if I was at the bottom of a deep, dark pit. Every so often I would emerge and see faces, which would say things I couldn’t make out, and I would sink back into the comforting darkness. When I woke up it felt completely different. Gray and cold and generally horrid. A policewoman was sitting by the bed. She looked at me and got up and left the room. I wanted to go back to sleep, just be unconscious, but I couldn’t make it happen. I thought of what I’d done and then tried not to think of it. I don’t know what had become of me, but there was no point in dwelling on it.
After a time Dr. Schilling and Stadler came into the room. They looked a bit nervous, as if they were coming into the headmistress’s study. It seemed funny until I remembered that they probably just thought I would carry on
