She is wearing cream slacks and a maroon shirt. Her hand is bandaged, and every so often she holds it in her healthy hand, carefully, as if it was a wounded bird. Her hair is pushed behind her ears in a way that makes her face look even thinner, her cheekbones more gaunt. She looks older already. I am putting on the years.

No earrings today. No perfume. Reddish lipstick that makes her face look pallid. Powder too thickly applied, so I can see specks of it on her cheek, her forehead. She walks as if she is in a dream, her feet scuffling the floor. Her shoulders are slumped. Every so often she frowns, as if she is trying to remember something. She puts her hand against her heart. She wants to feel her life beating against her palm. The other one did that too.

She was so carefully held together and now she is coming apart. Bit by bit, the shell is cracking open. I can see her. The bits of her that she never wanted to show anybody. Fear turns people inside out.

Sometimes I want to laugh. It has turned out so well. This can be my whole life. This is what I have been waiting for.

EIGHT

“Does it hurt?”

Detective Chief Inspector Links leaned toward me. Too close. But at the same time he seemed far away.

“They gave me pills for that.”

“Good. We need to ask you some questions.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake.”

The police have been good for some things. They can get you to the front of the queue in the casualty department and they give you a lift to the hospital and back and make you tea. It’s the other stuff that’s been a problem.

“I know it’s a difficult time. We need your help.”

“Why? I’ve had enough of your questions. It seems simple enough to me. There’s a man out there who seems to keep coming to the house. So can’t you just arrest him while he’s posting envelopes through the door?”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Why not?”

Links took a deep breath.

“If someone really sets his mind on doing something, then-” He stopped abruptly.

“Then what?”

“We want to go through some names.”

“Go on, then. Do you want a cup of tea? It’s in the pot.”

“No, thank you.”

“Do you mind if I have one?” I poured myself a cup, but then, somehow, I put the teapot down on a plate and very slowly it toppled and crashed to the quarry-tile floor, shattering. Boiling tea splashed everywhere.

“Sorry. It must be my hand. How clumsy.”

“Let me help.” Links started picking up broken pieces of china. Lynne mopped the floor, making herself useful for a change. Then we sat down again at the kitchen table. Lynne passed a file over to Links, who opened it up. There was a list of names, with photographs attached. There were teachers, a gardener, a real estate agent, an architect, all sorts; suits, T-shirts, clean-shaven, stubble. The pain or the pills or the shock had made me feel slow and dreamy. It seemed almost funny to be looking at this list of drab people I’d never met.

“Who are they? Criminals?”

Links looked uncomfortable.

“I can’t tell you everything,” he said. “For legal reasons. But what I can say is that we’re trying to establish any possible connections there may be between you and, er…” He seemed to be searching for the right word. “Areas where similar problems have been reported. Anything here that rang any kind of bell could be useful. However remote. I mean, this estate agent, Guy Brand. To take just one example. I’m not suggesting anything, but an estate agent has access to many properties. And you have recently moved house after looking in many areas of London.”

“Yes, I met hundreds of estate agents. But I’ve got the most dreadful memory for faces. Why don’t you ask him?”

“We have,” said Links. “They couldn’t find you on their books. But their record-keeping seemed to be pretty haphazard.”

I looked again.

“He might be familiar. But then estate agents have a sort of look in common, don’t they?”

“So you might have met him?”

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “I just mean that if you proved that I had met him, then I wouldn’t think it was impossible.”

Links didn’t look very satisfied with that answer.

“I can leave these pictures with you, if you like.”

I shrugged.

“Why would he do this?” I asked. “Go to all this trouble for something so nasty?”

Links caught my eye and for the first time he looked distressed and unable to conceal it.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I hardly need reminding of that, do I?” I responded tartly. At this very moment there were about eight of them, crawling round the house like ants, taking things away in small boxes and plastic bags, muttering to each other in corners, looking at me as if I were a wounded animal. I couldn’t go anywhere without bumping into them. They were very polite, in their way, but still there was practically nowhere I could go to be on my own. I raised my voice. “What I want to know is what your lot are doing while I’m working away, racking my brains to help you?”

“I can assure you that we are all working hard too,” he replied. Actually, he did look a bit weary, now I came to think about it.

As I went upstairs I passed an officer coming down with a stack of papers. I went into the bathroom and locked the door, leaning on it for a moment. I splashed cold water on my face with one hand. Blood was starting to seep through the muslin wrapped around the other. Afterward I sat at my dressing table and applied more makeup with my inept left hand. I was looking a bit ragged, what with one thing and another. My hair could do with washing. In this heat you almost need to wash your hair every day. I rubbed cream into the smudges below my eyes and put on some lip gloss. I had to admit that this was getting me down. I wished Clive would ring back so I could speak to someone who wasn’t a policeman. I had already told him about my hand and he had been very shocked and insisted on talking to Stadler on the phone, barking questions at him, but he hadn’t come rushing back, as I had hoped, bearing flowers.

Then Detective Inspector Stadler wanted to talk to me about the details of my daily life. We had to retreat into the sitting room because Mary wanted to wash the kitchen floor.

“How’s your hand, Mrs. Hintlesham?” he asked in that soft, deep, insistent voice of his.

On this hot day he had taken his jacket off and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to just below the elbows. There were beads of sweat on his forehead. When he asked me questions, he always looked me directly in the eyes, which gave me the feeling that he was trying to catch me out.

“Fine,” I replied, which wasn’t exactly true. It stung. Razor cuts are always horrible, that’s what the doctor had said when she strapped it up.

“This person,” he said. “Obviously knows that you used to be a hand model.”

“Maybe.”

He picked up two books, and I saw for the first time that they were my appointment book and my address book.

“Can we go through some things?”

I sighed. “If we have to. As I told that senior officer of yours, I’m very busy.”

He looked evenly at me in a way that made me flush.

“This is for your benefit, you know, Mrs. Hintlesham.”

And so I watched my life passing before my eyes. We started with my appointment book. He leafed through each page and fired questions at me about names, places, appointments.

That was my hairdresser, I said, and that was a checkup with the dentist for Harry. That was lunch with Laura, Laura Offen. I spelled out initials, described shops, explained arrangements with handymen and French tutors and tennis coaches, lunches, coffee mornings, reminders. We went farther and farther back, through events I had forgotten, couldn’t even remember when he reminded me of them: all the negotiations for the house, the real estate agents and surveyors and the tree surgeons and planners. The school year. My social life. All the details of my days. He kept asking where was Clive when this happened, when that happened.