Beneath the Skin by French Nicci

Author:French, Nicci [French, Nicci]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780892967261
Publisher: Warner Books
Published: 2000-05-04T04:00:00+00:00

Clive’s study. It had been the first room we made habitable in the new house, which was a bit rich because nobody inhabited it except Clive. Wherever we had lived, Clive always insisted on that: a room that was his private lair, for his own stuff. When we were planning the rooms for the new lair, I remember protesting with a laugh that I didn’t have a sanctum and he said that didn’t matter because the whole house was my sanctum.

The room wasn’t exactly kept locked and bolted, but it hardly needed to be. The boys were strictly forbidden on penalty of torture and death from even entering the room. I wasn’t absolutely excluded, obviously. I’d sometimes go in while Clive was working on the accounts or writing letters and he wouldn’t get cross with me or tell me to go away. But he would turn toward me, take the coffee or hear what I had to say, and then wait until I was finished and started to go. He always said that he couldn’t work if I was in the room.

So there was a feeling of something forbidden when-after checking round the house, getting undressed, and putting on my nightie and dressing gown-I went into the study. I put the light on and straightaway felt guilty, walking across the room and pulling the curtains shut so that I truly felt alone there, at almost midnight.

The room was Clive. Neat, precise, well ordered, almost bare. There were just a few pictures. A small blurry watercolor of a sailing boat he had inherited from his mother. An old etching of his public school that he’d been given as a boy. There was a photograph of Clive with a group of his colleagues at a celebration dinner, all cigars and red shiny faces and empty glasses and arms round shoulders, with Clive looking just a little hunted and awkward. He was never happy being touched, especially by other men.

My husband’s study. What was there here that could possibly be of any interest? I wasn’t going to search through his things, of course. The idea of doing that while he was away at the police station would have seemed terribly disloyal. I just wanted to have a look. It might be important if I had to speak on his behalf. That’s what I told myself.

The study contained two filing cabinets, one tall and brown, the other short, stubby gray metal. I opened them both and flicked through the folders and papers, but they were incredibly boring. Mortgage documents, instruction booklets, endless receipts and bills and guarantees, invoices, accountants’ letters. It made me feel a small glow of love for Clive. This was what he did so that I didn’t have to. He let me do just the interesting, creative part, and he did all this. And it was all done, all arranged. There was nothing pending, no bill unpaid, no letter unanswered. What could I ever have done without him? I didn’t look at the individual pieces of paper.

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