Free Under My Skin by Sarah Dunant

London.”
    I nodded. “I assumed so. Why?”
    “Because I wanted to see how good you were.”
    “And?”
    “I’m impressed.”
    “I wouldn’t be,” I said. “I couldn’t even get her to tell me why she did it.”
    “You mean the job she didn’t get?” She shrugged. “To be honest I’m not sure it was the right reason, anyway. Lola came to me about eight weeks ago. She told me that she wanted to leave the health business for a job in London, working with my husband. There were no vacancies available, and even if there had been she wasn’t qualified. So I refused. She was upset. But it hardly seems enough to warrant her trying to wreck the place.”
    “Maybe she just got fed up with not being a size ten.”She looked at me, but let it pass. “What was the job, anyway?”
    “Nurse/receptionist.”
    “Nurse?” I frowned a question mark. She took a slug of her drink and put it down slowly in front of her, moving her tongue around the top of her lovely lips. What had Carol called him? A consultant? How come I had assumed business rather than medicine? “Your husband’s a doctor?”
    “Yes,” she said, looking me straight in the face. “I thought Carol told you? He’s an aesthetic surgeon.”
    Ah, ha. The night silence was temporarily disturbed by the sound of a satisfying number of pieces falling into place: the posters in the beauty salon, the emphasis on reconstruction, young Julie’s born-again enthusiasm. And something else. That uncomfortable fact I’d been trying so hard to remember as I studied those fabulous cheekbones. The answer was Marlene Dietrich. It must have been in the same magazine as Barbara Hershey’s lips—an exquisitely gruesome story of how on the cabaret circuit Dietrich later in life had taken to gluing up bits of her cheeks to her ears in a primitive attempt at a face-lift. I remember thinking at the time how it explained why she never seemed to open her mouth wide enough to get the words out properly. But times and technologies have changed. And now there are women who have face-lifts in the family.
    So—was I looking at the results of one of Julie’s beloved chemical peels or something more drastic? Whichever it was, I found myself a little disappointed. Not to mention embarrassed. Olivia Marchant watched me thinking it through. Presumably people always wondered at this point. I have to say it didn’t particularly faze her. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he’d picked her rather than made her.
    When you can’t ask one question, try another. “I’m interested to know why you didn’t call the police?”
    She shrugged. “The police would mean charges, and charges would mean publicity. These are difficult enough times for the health business anyway without making it worse with rumors of sabotage. I couldn’t risk it.”
    “You could just have let her go. You didn’t need to be so generous.”
    She sighed. “I suppose I felt a little sorry for her. And a week’s salary is hardly generous. Anyway, I could say the same about you,” she said with a slight lift of the eyebrow.
    I was absurdly grateful for the show of facial mobility. I frowned.
    “Martha,” she continued softly. “You could easily have got her the sack. Carol’s terribly cross you wouldn’t tell her who it was.”
    I shook my head. “If I’d given Carol Martha, then I wouldn’t have had any leverage to get her to talk to me. It was Martha who led me to Jennifer and from there to Lola. And, I presume, led you, too,” I said, thinking back to the figure on the lawn.
    She shook her head. “No. Martha didn’t tell me anything. I just happened to see you go into the girls’ block. I never saw which room.”
    I wasn’t entirely sure I believed her but I decided to let it go. “So how do
you
know about Martha?”
    “Aah.” She paused and smiled. “Well, I’ve known about Martha for some time.” I waited. “Well, I’d hardly be a good owner if I didn’t, wouldn’t you say?”
    And then I