He switched his attention to Rose alone. ‘What made you want to go see that film?’
‘I just wanted to,’ she said, feeling defensive. ‘I like silly plots. Pure escapism.’ But it had been more than that – something to do with bringing two parts of her life together. She had, for the longest time, felt as if there were two halves to her that had twisted in opposite directions, like a cut peach around a stone.
And she had felt something powerful, watching Max with Petra beside her: that was definite. Max had once been all her own, and she had been his carer, his light; it had not been a concoction of the screen. Just as working with Petra was not a fabrication either. She tried to accept that she was all of these things: a bodyguard, a soldier, an investigator, a lover, a hater. Why did it matter? She didn’t know.
The club was busy enough that it felt possible, even desirable, to hold an intimate conversation loudly. Or perhaps that was the margarita. ‘I don’t want to see him again,’ she said. ‘Not in person. But on the big screen, that’s different. I can cope with that.’
‘Whatever works,’ said Petra.
‘Here,’ said Phin, and slid a manila folder across the table.
‘Give that a look. Not here, though. I’ve got something else I want to talk about.’
‘Really?’ said Petra. ‘There’s a first time for everything.’
‘Should I…?’ Rose made a motion to stand.
‘No, it’s about you.’
Here it comes, she thought. The conversation she had been expecting for months, since it became obvious to her that she was no good at this life. She’d have to find a new place to live, new friends, a new person to be.
‘Have you heard of EMS?’
That was a surprise. She shook her head. Phin coughed. ‘Look, it’s — I don’t do personal, okay, but I was reading about this EMS thing and I thought, that’s Rose. Extreme Moult Syndrome. We all know some people have a bad time with it, but doctors are saying if you have to dump it all every single time then maybe it’s a medical condition.’
Petra said, ‘Bloody hell, they give everything a name now.’
‘Look it up, that’s all I wanted to tell you,’ said Phin. ‘Right, I’m done. Give me weekly updates on that one, it’s sensitive.’
He pointed at the file, then left them behind, returning to his usual seat at the bar where three men in white shirts with rolled sleeves – cardboard cutout gangsters – were waiting for him.
‘I swear I don’t understand him,’ said Rose.
‘What’s to understand?’
‘I just mean—’
‘I reckon,’ Petra said, very slowly, leaning in, ‘that he has a wife somewhere in suburbia. That she calls him Graham or Keith, and he has a lawnmower and hanging baskets.’
‘Really?’
‘You think Phineas Spice could be his actual name?’
‘But married?’
Petra shook her head. ‘I’m just kidding. No, he’s not married.’ A change came over her expression – a decision to let the margarita move her into a confessional frame of mind. ‘Listen, when I was on the Starguard books I – I had this thing with the celebrity couple I was guarding. I got attached. They didn’t. He got me out of there when the time came. Sometimes I wonder if, once upon a time, he got hurt so bad that he told himself he’d never go through it again. And that’s how he lives. But when he sees someone else going through it, that nearly hurts as bad, for him.’
‘You think?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s my personal theory.’
‘Is that why he took me on as a trainee investigator, after the Max thing?’
Petra winked. ‘Nope. That was my idea. You think you have this EMS then? Look it up.’
‘Now?’
‘Come on, let’s hear all about it.’
Rose checked it on her phone. There had been a documentary about it on television, a few days ago, and a website had been set up. She found a long checklist, filled with questions about behaviours: did she find it impossible to stay in contact with people after a moult? Had she ever experienced a moult after a personal trauma? Had she ever lost consciousness during a moulting? Petra replied for her as she read them aloud, saying, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ until they reached the bottom, when she said, ‘Well, shit,’ with an air of finality.
‘Yeah,’ said Rose, feeling it sink into her. She had a condition. She had an explanation.
‘So what’s the cure?’ said Petra.
‘I don’t think there is one. It’s just an awareness thing.’
Petra raised a fist of solidarity. ‘Well now we’re aware.’
‘I’ll go see a doctor.’
‘You never saw a doctor about it before?’
‘Of course I did. But I don’t have much luck with doctors.’
‘It’s not their fault being grumpy if they can’t cure it. Imagine having to face a patient that you really can’t help.’
‘It’s not my fault either. It’s the way I’m made.’
‘It sure is. I’m drunk.’ She stated it as a fact.
‘Drink less, then!’
‘But that’s the way I’m made,’ she said, and laughed.
2013. The cost.
‘I can’t help you,’ I tell him. ‘I’m not a proper private investigator. I never have been.’
He’s reserved the whole restaurant, of course. The waitress tiptoes around me, her eyes on Max as she deposits a wicker breadbasket on the table. It’s an old-fashioned bistro with a candle in a green bottle, and a padded menu with a tassle. It offers comfort food, lasagne and lamb shanks, and the promise of a dessert that won’t be deconstructed. Max always did prefer this kind of food, the cheaper places withchecked tablecloths, and I’m glad to see in this, at least, his tastes haven’t changed.
But I haven’t changed either: I always did hate eating out with him.
‘I thought we’d had this conversation,’ he says.
I wait until the waitress reluctantly leaves, then tell him, ‘I thought I could make it work, but I can’t. I was never like Petra. I wanted to be, and I suppose I thought… this time…’
‘You were in love with her? Petra?’
Why would he jump to that conclusion? ‘No, that’s not it. It’s too difficult to explain.’ Impossible to explain, certainly to him.
He shakes his head and takes a white roll, dotted with little black seeds, from the basket. ‘Research shows the only thing that goes with the skin is that form of sexually based attraction we call love. Nothing else. Look at the Stuck Six. They manage to all get along, still. It’s beautiful to witness.’
‘Yeah, I heard about them. Not in my case.’
‘No, with you it’s everything, isn’t it? Everything gets left behind when that skin comes off. Left behind, or thrown away. Other people manage to stay friends, help each other through those dark patches. They even stay together. Why not? We don’t all have to be in love.’
I’ve heard this before, had this argument before. ‘I do. I’ve been diagnosed with EMS. It’s who I am.’
‘It is,’ he says again, but this time with such quiet affection, such meaning, that I can’t bear it. ‘Rosie, you’re unique. You think the EMS is you, and you are it. But that’s not true. There’s so much more to you.’
The wine is good, probably the best bottle in the whole place. I look around the room – an old habit, unnecessary, since Max has a team of three with him tonight courtesy of Starguard – and see a man standing in the alcove behind the bar behind a red curtain, half-closed. For a second I’m tense, and then I see his posture, and I know he’s no threat. The manager, possibly, in deferential mode. He lifts a hand and gives me a thumbs up.
He thinks we’re on a date. Everyone likes to make their own stories, for telling. For reeling out like fishing line.
Soft jazz music arrives through the speakers over the bar. The saxophone grates on my nerves.
‘The Stuck Six,’ I say. ‘You’re basing your film on the autobiography one o
f them wrote? I bet the rights cost a fortune.’
‘It’s fascinating, though, isn’t it? Six people, all in love with each other at once. A miracle, some might say. You should meet Mikhael; he’s the one that’s been helping me with the adaptation.’
‘The one that wrote the book?’
‘No. The last one to fall in love.’
‘The young good-looking one.’ Why do I sound bitter?
‘They were all young. They were all very much in love.’
‘Until one of them wrote a book about it and they fell out over his version of events.’
He grimaces. ‘They haven’t fallen out. That was just the media talking. They’re just living their own lives now. It was real, though it was different for each of them. Have you read Howard Stuck’s autobiography? It’s a revelation. None of us experience love in the same way, do we? I want to concentrate on that. You know their skins are in the British Museum? You can go visit them. Even touch one, if you arrange anappointment. You should. I did. It’s overwhelming.’
‘I’m surprised you didn’t buy the bloody skins and keep them in that uncrackable safe room of yours.’
The starters arrive, just as I was gearing up to getting it all off my chest. We’re sharing a wooden platter of antipasti, with gleaming meats laid next to bowls of olives, peppers, oil and vinegar. Everything on the table must be rearranged to make room for it. The candle in the bottle is moved to the next table along, so the food is in semi-darkness. It makes the music seem louder.
‘Come on then,’ says Max, when the waitress leaves. ‘Give it to me.’
‘What?’
‘The reason. The real reason you don’t want to work for me.’
‘It’s not… Look, I think you should get a proper detective. I never was. Let me go back to Lincolnshire.’ Am I pleading with him now? ‘I’m only good for the shop, I promise you.’
He spears an olive with a wooden pick. ‘You’re so wrong. And you know what? You’ve spent a heck of a lot of my money already. I want results.’
‘I bought a skin.’
‘I know.’
‘I bought my skin.’
‘I know!’ he says, as loud and angry as I’ve ever seen him, flipping the platter, sending the food flying: ham, oil, everything, all over the checked tablecloth. The waitress and the manager arrive quickly, apologising – why are they apologising? They move our glasses across to the next table where our candle still burns. They fuss around, promising a new platter in only a moment. It takes so long for them to leave.
‘You’re an idiot,’ I tell him, when I finally get the chance. ‘My Max would never have done something like that.’
‘It’s the price I have to pay to get you to talk to me,’ he says. ‘For fuck’s sake, Rosie, say it. I know what you bought. How mad do we both have to be before we can have the conversation?’
‘You kept it.’
He flings up his hands. ‘Yes! Hallelujah.’
‘You kept my skin, and you promised. You promised.’ I cannot allow myself to cry.
‘I couldn’t,’ he says. ‘As soon as I touched it, I knew I couldn’t. I kept it – you can say no, I get it, I understand, believe me – can I have it back?’
‘Not ever. Not ever.’
‘Okay. Okay.’
He tries to put a hand over mine and I bat him off. ‘I’m burning it. I asked you to burn it. Now I’m going to do it,
and make sure it’s done.’
‘Okay. Have you got it here? Is it with you?’
It sits in my backpack, next to the leg of my chair. ‘None of your business.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong.’
‘Why? Because you paid for it?’
‘I swear,’ he says, ‘I swear, nobody can get under my skin the way you can. Even now.’
‘It’s not even whole any more.’ Now I’ve started to speak I can’t stop. ‘They cut off the breasts, probably sold them separately, made a fortune. Now somebody out there owns them. Touches them.’
‘What?’
‘The skin, it was cut when I found out, and now I’m owned, that’s owned. Some rich fan of yours is out there wearing what I felt as a fucking bra.’
‘The breasts were gone.’ He says the words slowly, as if inching into new territory.
‘That’s what I’m saying.’
‘But I…’ He puts his hands over his eyes. His body shakes. It takes me a moment to realise he’s crying. Crying over my loss, my skin. Not his.
I can’t watch him feel this as if it happened to him. ‘I’m done.’ I stand, pick up my backpack. ‘I’ll send you a report on what I learned, because that’s what people in this line of work do, isn’t it? But the report won’t contain much, because I didn’t learn much. Get someone better.’
‘So you’re going? That’s it?’ He lets his hands fall away, and the look on his face takes me back, right back, to that bathroom floor.
‘Goodbye, Max.’ I can’t help but clutch the backpack to me as I leave the restaurant. The bodyguards, Taylor included, watch me walk away, and I don’t look back.
I spend the night at a good hotel in Chichester and charge it to Max’s card for no reason I can explain. I order lobster salad, drink most of the stuff in the minibar and watch an adult film, wanting him to see the itemised bill, to hold a picture in his mind of me, on this night: eating, drinking, wanking, being alive. Having a good time. Or not having a good time, depending on how he chooses to play it in his head.
He shouldn’t bother me this much.
He shouldn’t.
2013. Rearranged.
Howard Stuck’s autobiography is a thick book in a large font, with a lot of glossy pictures of the Stuck Six, from their baby photos to their posed contemporary portraits. I buy it in town for the train journey down to Bristol, and I open it at random. As I read I try to understand what Max sees in this story:
One thing I think we should all talk about more is what happens when you fall in love against your wil .
Liz told me one day about the strong feelings she had always felt and rejected for an old school friend, but the attraction never came to anything, and the friend left to live with family in India. Then the friend came back, and that attraction became love. Liz said she knew it was the real emotion ‘right through her skin’ (those are the words she used when she told me – she always did have a beautiful way with words). She cried, I think because of the damage she was doing to us all by trying to repress those feelings, to pretend it wasn’t real. Nothing ever gets improved by pretence, though, does it? That’s been a hard lesson to learn.
It was a rainy Saturday night when she told me. We ordered a takeaway pizza and split the toppings, as usual: half ham and mushroom, half olives and pepperoni. Living together is about making these little compromises. And then we talked about it over a bottle of wine. I was so upset, but determined not to show it because I knew, deep down, that it wasn’t her fault, or the fault of this mystery woman. I kept remindingmyself of that while we ate and drank, like any normal couple would. It seemed wrong to me to have thanked the universe for the love Liz and I shared, and yet then blame anyone for the gift of more love, bestowed upon her. Didn’t it mean that she was, in fact, doubly lucky? I felt certain this could be a blessing, if I could only grow as a person enough to see it in that way. Life is fil ed with chal enges, and this was a huge one.
Liz said she didn’t want to leave me, and I believed her – not just because of the fact that we were comfortable. Yes, I had a good job and it was paying for a house that she would not have been able to afford on her administrator’s salary alone. Yes, if she had left me I would have been distraught, and I would have lost all the self-confidence she had given me by loving me, making me important in her eyes. Both of these considerations were true, but they weren’t why I believed her. I believed her because I trusted her.
So what were my options, real y? I could only see one. I told her to be happy and to be in love with me and with this ot
her woman. And I told her that I wanted to meet this woman, and get to know her, because I was determined that we would not split Liz into pieces, with neither of us getting the best of her. I did not want her to compartmentalise what she felt, and do damage to her spirit by splitting herself into two different people. We could be just like the pizza: many toppings, but all on one base. I remember saying that out loud (I never can hold my alcohol very wel ) and she laughed, and told me I was an idiot. But she was smiling, and I always did love her smile.
At that point I had no thoughts about falling in love again myself.
We finished the pizza and the wine, and went to bed. As we cuddled close I wondered how much Liz wanted this woman sexually. Was I not enough for her? These doubts ate away at me until the next day, when this threatening figure of emasculation turned up on my doorstep and turned out to be… wel . She was not what I had imagined in the least.
Her name was Sunetra. She was arty and confident, with a headscarf that matched her loose, flowing red dress. She worked in computer programming although she said her heart belonged to other pursuits, like knitting, drawing, making things. She was so creative, and optimistic about life. I did not love her straight away. But I could see immediately that she was good for, and good to, Liz. Liz became alive inher presence. We sat round the kitchen table and I listened as they fil ed in the blanks for me, reminiscing about the past they shared. They had so many memories of being girls together, and pooling them seemed to bring them back to that innocent state, when the world was an easier place to understand.
‘Do you remember Aidan?’ Sunetra said to Liz, and Liz blushed and replied, ‘Oh God, yes, he was so cute, we spent an entire year following him around, didn’t we?’
I suddenly understood that Liz’s life was a line of loves, of experiences, and I had no right to claim any of it as my own. When I began to appreciate that fact I began to love her properly, even better than I already did, and to love Sunetra too – Sunetra, a woman with her own line, her own intersections, that only at this time were parallel to my own. We would all go our separate ways again at some point, when we were done with our current skins. But not yet, I told myself. Not yet.
The Loosening Skin Page 5