Free Under Your Skin by Sabine Durrant

ear, causing sudden lurches of imbalance—unilateral vestibular dysfunction, the doctor called it. It wasn’t so much vertigo as a precipitous spinning; the room would shift on its axis. I have this sensation now. I’m staring at the table, at the plastic folder; I cansee the sky and the clouds reflected in its transparent surface, and for an instant or two, I don’t know if I am sitting or falling.
    I manage to say that I have no idea. DI Perivale is asking questions, which I can hardly hear, because, as the dizziness passes, I am left with a roaring confusion in my head.
    “Did she come for an interview?” It’s the first time PC Morrow has spoken. She’s nodding, as if already confident of the answer.
    “I wish I could say she had,” I say eventually, “but she didn’t.” I cast my eyes around the tidy kitchen. “If I could lay my hands on last year’s diary I could show you who came. Oh I know, I’ve got a file with their CVs. I could dig it out.”
    “Just tell us what you remember,” PC Morrow says.
    “I remember everything from that summer. My mother was ill and our old nanny, Robin, was getting married—which was obviously wonderful, but also meant she was leaving us, so that was sad. For us, I mean.”
    DI Perivale looks impatient.
    “Anyway. I had two days of interviews. I saw about six young women. Actually, that’s wrong—five women, one man. Two were English; one was going to university in September, so that was hopeless; the other couldn’t drive. There was an older Armenian woman who wanted to come up by train from Croydon every morning. The man was South African: great if we’d had boys. A nice Portuguese lady: she seemed great, but her English was nonexistent . . . I had a few more to see, but my mother’s health worsened, and on the third day, we found Marta.”
    I am talking too much, trying to give them as much information as I can. Then an idea, an obvious thud of explanation. “I mean, maybe this . . . this Ania thought about applying for the job, if that’s her profession, and didn’t.”
    “Yeah, that could be it,” PC Morrow says. She looks at Perivale. “That makes sense.”
    “You know,” I continue, with relief, “how sometimes you stick things on the fridge and forget about them?”
    “Yeah.” PC Morrow wrinkles up her nose. “I’ve got some all-protein diet stuck on ours. Have I looked at it?”
    “You don’t need to diet,” I say, “and that high-protein Dukan thing—terrible for your breath.” She gives a squeezed hunch of her shoulders, as if she would laugh if she could. I think again how young she is. “Our fridge” is probably her mum’s.
    DI Perivale takes the plastic envelope, puts the photograph on top of it, and lines them up in front of him on the table. I can see specs of dandruff in his part. I wonder if he is married, has kids.
    “Okay. One more question.” He hasn’t looked at me, but he does now—his eyes seem to bore into mine. “I have asked you this before, but I am going to ask again. Did you touch the body?”
    “The body.” I gaze at him. I try and think back. My head is fuzzy. If I can’t bear to think about her body now, how could I have touched it then?
    “No.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “I know I touched her hair.”
    “Did you take anything from the body?”
    “No.” I feel uneasy again. I don’t understand the direction these questions are taking. I feel as if I have forgotten something important.
    “You didn’t take a St. Christopher on a chain from round her neck?”
    “No. Why on earth would I do that?”
    He rubs his face, his eyes, with his thumb and fingers. “Look—Edmond Locard. The Locard Principle: every contact leaves a trace? Have you heard of that? Well, it’s one of the first things you learn at Hendon. Hair, flecks of paint, fibers, makeup—particles travel, move, shift. Every mote of dust has its own identity. Cotton hastwisted fibers that resemble ribbon; linen looks like tubes