Under My Skin (12 page)

“Did she see anyone about it?”

“You mean a real doctor, as opposed to a flesh man?”

“Yeah.”

“I think my dad took her somewhere once. But it didn’t help.”

My, I thought. Some people. All I had were parents who aspired too high and set a teenage curfew an hour earlier than any of my pals. And for that I went ballistic. How about you? I wanted to ask. How did you cope? Maybe being sisters helped. Someone to talk to when the going got rough. But I got the impression the question wouldn’t be welcome. “I see. So the operation with Maurice Marchant—”

“Was just like all the others. She got excited before and then depressed when she saw the result. I think she might even have threatened malpractice. She often did.”

“What about your dad?”

“Oh, he just went to work a lot. The weird thing is he really did love her. Or at least what he could remember of her.”

I looked at the pictures scattered over the lawn. How much was caricature? When you really looked, there was quite a sweet face inside all that chubbiness. And that big body would have offered its own warm comfort to a couple of little girls. Except for the fact that in none of the pictures was anybody touching each other.

She saw me looking. “They’re not meant to be realistic,” she said tartly.

“No,” I said. “I didn’t suppose they were. According to my client files your father went back with Muriel to see Maurice Marchant after the operation. Would he have been angry?”

She shrugged. “Well, he’s a businessman, Dad. Likes to get value for money. So he might have been a bit uppity. But he wouldn’t have done anything. I mean he knew her. That one was the last straw for him. It was only a couple of months later that he moved out.”

“And what happened to your mum?”

“She went into a decline. I think that’s the phrase. She killed herself three months later. Swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills.”

“Where were you two?”

“I was at art college in Manchester and Cilla was working in Scotland.” She shook her head. “And in answer to the next question. No. I don’t feel guilty at all. She didn’t really bring me up, anyway. Cill and me spent more time with my gran than we did with her. If you ask me, I think she probably did exactly the right thing. Growing older would have killed her, anyway.”

“How about Cilla? How did she feel?”

“Pretty much the same, I think. She’s not a great one for feelings, is Cilla. She came back for the funeral and we haven’t seen her since.”

“And your dad?”

“I think he was more relieved. He stayed to sort stuff out, then packed his bags and moved to Majorca. He’s started a new garage business there with a couple of his pals.”

“Leaving you two the house.”

“As you see.”

I wanted to ask her how it was for her now. I had a suspicion that the big overalls might be hiding a too skinny body, overcompensation for all that fat. But I could have been wrong. Some people survive the most amazing things, probably do better than if they’d had it easier. On the other hand, in my job you have to believe that.

I took an address for Cilla and her dad, just in case (her handwriting was long and fluid, a real artist’s flourish, not at all anonymous), and left her to the touching-up. When I looked back at the paintings again, I found they didn’t freak me so much. She was busy applying a little extra beige to the line of her mother’s thigh. Oh, Lauren. You and your sort have got a lot to answer for. But I still love ya.

Time to go home. In the front the gnomes were even
more vibrant. And very new. It passed through my mind that they might have been a deliberate satirical commentary on the notion of a happy home. These postmodern days you never can tell.

It was dark by the time I got to London and I was hungry. The evening stretched out before me like an empty Formica tabletop and at home there was bound to be nothing to put on mine. So I stopped at the Malaysian in the Kentish Town Road, where I ate some slices of an indeterminate animal larded with peanut butter and accompanied by some very strange beer.

By the time I had finished it was after ten. Too early for bed, too late for work. Or most work, that is. Had the day been more successful, I might have been tempted to quit while I was ahead. As it was, I didn’t feel tired enough—or maybe I just worried about the idea of sleep and the fat families that might muscle their way into my dreams. I went back to the list in my little black book. And there was one name that stood out in the night silence. A working girl who only came out when the sun went down.

I decided to take a gamble.

R
umor has it London is one of those cities where foreigners come to have a good time when the sun goes down, frequenting the sort of places you find in tourist guides under the heading Nightlife. In retrospect I should have read the chapter on casinos. It would have saved me a good deal of time and aggravation.

According to the address the Majestic was attached to one of the big hotels near to the Aldwych. It didn’t exactly call attention to itself. But then presumably most of its clients knew it was there. I turned off the main road and followed the parking arrows down below.

There was a time when I loved underground car parks, saw them all as homage to Deep Throat and the fall of the Nixon government (now there’s a man who managed serious reconstruction of his image as he grew older). But a million bad movies and conspiracy documentaries have devalued their sense of urban paranoia. Even my local supermarket has one now—now, alas, the only thrill they offer is death by shopping.

I stashed the car radio under the seat and straightened my skirt. I had had a little trouble deciding what to wear. Since my only experience of casinos was a James Bond movie so old that Sean Connery still had hair, I was somewhat ignorant of the prevailing dress codes. There are, however, advantages in having my limited size wardrobe. I went for smart over shiny, but broke out a new pair of Lycra tights
for the occasion. In homage to Pussy Galore I used a lot of eyeliner.

The entrance was modest. A nice pile carpet, a set of racing prints, and a security camera blinking quietly on the wall. I was feeling almost at home. Trouble was I couldn’t get in.

“I’m sorry, madam,” said the man at the reception desk. “That’s the law.”

“What is?”

“That after joining you must wait forty-eight hours before you can gamble.”

“Why?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know the reason. Only the law.” He was about my age, with chiseled good looks and a jaw that looked as if it had come off a wooden puppet. He had a similarly natural way with dialogue.

“If it’s a question of checking out my credit ratings?” I said, confident of Olivia Marchant’s crisp fifty-quid notes in the bottom of my handbag.

“No, madam, it’s not to do with credit. It’s simply the law. First you must join. Then you must wait.”

“I see.” I bet he wouldn’t treat Lady Penelope like this. If only I’d come in the pink car. “So how much does it cost to join?”

“Twenty-five pounds.”

I considered asking if I could just slip in and have a look around, check out whether it was worth the money, but you could see how from his point of view anyone who thought twenty-five quid that important wasn’t the right kind of customer, anyway.

Behind me a small queue was forming. “Well, I suppose I’d better join, then,” I said, though not with quite the grace I would have liked.

In a perfect world I would have preferred to be somebody
else on this form, too, but there’s a limit to how many pseudonyms a girl can handle in any one case. As I fished out my money, I watched the queue growing smaller. They were an interesting bunch of folks, not quite what one would have expected at all. A middle-aged couple, probably Greek or Cypriot; two sharply dressed, tough-looking American women; and a group of what looked like average British businessmen, bored with the idea of going home.

I took my new membership card and hovered by the reception desk. Across the foyer an elderly man in a classy suit was handing his coat to the coat-check girl. He nodded at me. I returned it. Then I went back to trying to charm the puppet.

“I don’t suppose now that I’ve joined I could just slip in to look around? I mean I wouldn’t gamble or anything.”

“Madam—”

“It’s all right,” I said, gaily. “I know, I know. It’s the law. Don’t worry about me. I’ll just go and distribute my hundred thousand pounds inheritance on the homeless instead.”

I moved out of the way, as the old man moved past me and up to the desk.

“Evening, Mr. Aziakis. How are you tonight?” said the receptionist, his head nodding up and down frantically.

“I am well, thank you, Peter,” he replied, and the accent was definitely east of Suez. “But I have a guest with me.” He turned to me and smiled. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch your second name?”

Well, well. Don’t you just love men with manners? “Wolfe. Hannah Wolfe.”

The Thunderbird puppet’s jaw went suddenly slack. Who knows, maybe this was against the law, too. If so, then whoever Mr. Aziakis was clearly was more important than the law. The receptionist gave a “well, what’s a guy to do if he wants to keep his job” type of gesture and waved us through.

Lycra. It does it for a girl every time.

Mr. Aziakis motioned me to walk ahead of him and we went down a flight of stairs past a small dining area and into a bar. Through a set of arches to the left the gambling floor beckoned. I was so excited I had to stop to look. Alas, James Bond it wasn’t.

First impressions presented a ballroom that had fallen on hard times, a big windowless space with a chandelier in the middle and two rows of roulette tables in the center, each lit by its own hanging lamp. I had a sudden flash of those World War II films in which fancy London buildings were taken over by the government and young women push models of ships and airplanes around a pretend battlefield while retired generals sat refusing to contemplate defeat. My companion would have been a young man then. Although I’m not sure whose side he would have been on.

“Well, there it is. What do you think? Worth the membership fee?”

I turned to face him and saw an old man more amused than attracted. Which, of course, is attractive in itself. “I think that depends on how much I lose,” I said, smiling.

He made a tut-tutting sound with his lips. “You shouldn’t think of it in such terms. Gambling is like life. If you expect to be treated badly, that is how it will be. Assume you are going to win, play it to the end, but never risk more than you are able to bear losing. Am I right in thinking you no longer need my company?”

Hmm. Confucius, he say the wise old bird has no need of the morning worms. The night grubs will give themselves up to him instead. “No. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed.”

He nodded (did I imagine the click of the heels?) and turned toward the bar. I watched him till he was out of sight, then got down to business on the floor.

The background noise was less people than machines; the
one-armed bandits along the back wall whirled like the beginning of a Pink Floyd track that had got stuck in the groove. In the middle I counted twelve roulette tables and four semicircular ones at each end, where people were playing a card game that looked like blackjack. There must have been forty, maybe fifty people in there. They came in all shapes, races, and sizes, but the mean age was near to fifty and none of them looked anything like Pussy Galore. Not even the croupiers.

In fact, they were the worst disappointment. I suppose I had been expecting something more outrageously glamorous, a set of sirenlike beauties arranged over the gaming tables with exposed breasts like ripe pomegranates drawing your eyes down to the lucky numbers beneath. Not these girls. They were all dressed exactly the same: a purple chiffon uniform that made British Airways stewardesses’ look well designed. A half a dozen of them were at the tables, and the rest perched on high stools overlooking two or three games at a time. They looked, with the odd exception, like the tellers at a local building society waiting for their morning coffee break. There wasn’t a Belinda Balliol among them. Of course I was at something of a disadvantage, since all I had to go on was a grainy photo of her naked upper torso—“before,” rather than “after.” But even so, I just sort of knew she wasn’t there.

A woman in a velvet cocktail dress, circa 1966, came past me with a pad and pencil in her hand. “Can I get you something to drink?”

I ordered a mineral water and when she came back gave her a big tip. She grinned and stuck it in her pouch. That much at least was like the movies.

“I wonder if you can help me. I’m looking for a friend. A girl I met on holiday once. She said she worked here, and that I should drop in to say hello if I was in London. But I can’t see her anywhere.”

“What’s her name?”

“Belinda Balliol.”

She nodded and looked up. “She’s over there. You probably didn’t recognize her. She’s changed her hair. Do you want me to tell her you’re here?”

“No. No, thanks. I’ll surprise her.”

I gulped down the mineral water and followed the waitress’s finger. Belinda was standing to one side of the tables. And I was right, she hadn’t been there before. She was tall with curly fair hair, and on her the dress looked pretty good. More than that—in terms of the success or failure of the surgery underneath—it was hard to tell. The closer I came the better she got. If her breasts were still giving her trouble, you wouldn’t know it from her face, which was smooth and pretty with a sweet little nose and full mouth. Nice job. Nature or whoever. God, I was even beginning to think like them. “Belinda Balliol?”

She frowned at me. “Yes?”

“I wonder if I could have a word with you?”

“I … I’m about to start work. Who are you?”

“The name’s Hannah Wolfe. I left a message on your answering machine. I’m a journalist, doing a piece on aesthetic surgery. I gather you had some problem with a breast operation some time ago?”

“
What
?” It came out like a long hiss, as if someone had punched her in the solar plexus. “How do you know about it?” she whispered, the horror obvious in her face. “Who gave you my name?”