Under Your Skin: A Novel by Durrant Sabine

Author:Durrant, Sabine [Durrant, Sabine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books
Published: 2014-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

SATURDAY

I don’t sleep well. It’s racking up, the lack of sleep. Phrases from my phone call with Philip keep coming back to me: his reference to a missed shower, the indulgent self-importance of this “endless corporate entertainment,” his yawn. Somewhere Ania Dudek’s parents are suffering, and Philip is “forced” into karaoke. I told him to stay away, and I meant it, but he should have insisted on coming home. He should have realized I was in trouble. Or even if he didn’t, he should have wanted to be by my side. Nothing should have kept him away. My longing transmutes to hate. They were never that far apart, it turns out. You think it’s a continuum, a long arc, a process, but it’s just the flip of a switch. I ball up his shirt, the one I slept with last night, and hurl it across the room.

All this anger is oddly soothing, and in the morning, I am up early. Marta’s door is closed. I pack for Millie and we watch television quietly—I don’t want Marta coming down before Millie has left. Clara rings to let me know she’s at the garden door. Millie skips across the grass. I carry her bag. I’m in my dressing gown, and I have to hold it closed because I couldn’t find the belt! My daughter’s bag bumps with each step against my bare leg. I don’t want her to go, but she’s excited. Clara has come all this way—again. She has the train tickets, flapping them in the air as if she has won the lottery. I’m in too deep.

Millie won’t wear her coat; she shrugs it off. I get cross. I pick it up, tell her it’s cold, she’ll need it. Clara says, “We’ll have to run if we’re going to catch that train. We’ll soon warm up.”

When I walk back across the lawn, I catch sight of Marta at the kitchen window, watching.

“What is happening?” she says. “Where is Millie going?”

She is fully dressed, even down to the latex gloves. I feel at a disadvantage in my dressing gown, as if I have been caught out. I close the door and lean against it. “She’s gone to stay with . . .” I pause. I’m worried about hurting her feelings. “With our old nanny, Robin.”

“Why?”

“Just for a couple of days, while the police are getting to the bottom of . . . things.”

I gesture to the coat, thrown over my shoulder like a body. “She wouldn’t wear her coat.”

“It’s cold.”

“I got cross. I wish I hadn’t.”

“Sometimes she is spoiled girl.”

I sit down at the table. Do I mind Marta criticizing my daughter? “She is only eight,” I say.

Marta makes a dismissive noise, a hrumph at the back of her throat.

“So I won’t really be needing you for a little while. You should take a holiday if you like. Go away somewhere.”

She is still standing by the window. “Where? Where do I go?”

“Your friend?” I suggest brightly, “the one in Colliers Wood?”

“No. I think I stay here.

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