The Loosening Skin

by Aliya Whiteley

  Yes, I can sleep. I sneak out, find a cab, and don’t bother to undress once I’m through the door. I fall on the bed, and it all goes away. I’ve let him down, but I’ve done my penance. I’ve got nothing bad left to dream about.

  The phone wakes me up early. It’s Gwen.

  ‘You should have come last night,’ I say, and she says, ‘Mik, can you get here? It’s back.’

  Something terrible.

  I ask her all the right questions, and try to make sense of her answers. I find myself saying ‘Right’ after each reply, as if things are being sorted into the correct order.

  ‘You couldn’t tell me you were having more tests?’ is my final question. The one I have to ask, for my own sake. Gwen looks terrible. This was a fit woman, tall and strong and capable – a bodyguard, for Christ’s sake. All of the qualities I associate with her have been sucked out of her body by this disease. Her skin is the wrong colour and texture. It’s too white and papery on her face, dry and cracked, and blotched with red that has coagulated into purple swellings behind her ears, striping down her neck. When did I last see her? Surely she didn’t look like this.

  ‘You’ve lost so much already,’ she says. ‘I kept hoping it would be—’

  ‘A bad dream? This isn’t about me.’

  ‘You’re the one who’ll get left behind.’

  This cottage. This cottage is too small, I should have bought her a bigger one. I can’t pace in this living room; I can’t breathe with this low-beamed ceiling pressing down on me, the wood painted black, everything about it belonging to some other version of England. I take back what I said last night – screw the past, forget it, it makes no sense. Let’s start again.

  Although the future’s not looking any better.

  ‘Sit down,’ she says.

  ‘Let’s just stay in the present, okay?’ I sit on the sofa, beside her, and feel like a hulking mess next to her new fragility. I shouldn’t have driven after the amount I drank last night. I’m probably still over the limit.

  ‘From the look of you it was a good night,’ she says.

  ‘It really wasn’t.’

  ‘You want painkillers?’

  ‘Yes.’ I rub my temples while she gets up, unfolding with a delicacy that makes me feel ashamed of my mere headache.

  ‘Ibuprofen or one of my personal stash?’ she calls from the kitchen.

  ‘You choose.’

  She comes back with a glass of water and two white oblong pills. I knock them back. ‘So how long?’

  ‘I thought you wanted to stay in the present.’

  ‘I’m asking how long we can stay in the present for.’

  ‘Not long,’ she says, curling back up to her original position, knees tucked in, spine curved against the cushions. Why should she say that so calmly? I want her to rage with me, to challenge it all. We had plans for after I’d done with the film. We were going to go travelling and do things, physical things like climbing and swimming and hiking. It all had a reality to me that is growing more ephemeral by the minute, and I can’t grasp it, or her.

  Gwen doesn’t do television, so the sofa is directly in front of the bay window, looking out over the unkempt garden. The iron gate at the end of the path is ajar – I must have forgotten to shut it properly – and beyond it, on the main road through the village, I can see my BMW and the pub opposite. It’s one of those ones with low, dark windows and dirty white walls. It’s called The Lamb.

  ‘I hate Devon,’ I say. ‘I should have talked you out of living here. Come back to London with me. I’ll find a better doctor.’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘I’ll sell this place from under you if you piss me off. I’m serious this time, Taylor. Move your arse to London and get checked over properly.’

  She doesn’t say anything for a while. Then, out of the blue, ‘Studies show a huge increase in Epidermal Sclerosis in the past five years. I heard rumours that they’re looking at Suscutin as a possible cause.’

  ‘Stop reading tabloids. You’ve spent too long sitting down here, looking out of the window and waiting for shit to happen.’

  ‘Come on!’ There it is: the fire, the heart of her. ‘Mik, it’s the pills, it’s the pills, it’s only what I deserve.’

  ‘Nobody deserves this. And if it’s the pills, they’ll prove a link.’

  ‘And do what? A few adverse reactions against a multi-million pound industry? It won’t change anybody’s mind. It hasn’t changed your mind. You’re still taking your daily dose, aren’t you?’

  ‘You know I am. There’s no proof, Gwen.’

  She nods, and slumps back down. ‘I get it. It’s much better that we’re all free to love each other forever. If we can find anyone to love us back.’

  She’s so bitter. But she knows who I am; she knows the deal. I don’t do love, not now, not ever again. ‘Listen, you’re my best friend, but I—’

  She punches my arm. Once, not too long ago, it would have hurt. ‘Shut up, you moron. You’re so self obsessed.’

  ‘Fuck you!’

  She laughs, then says, ‘Sell the damned cottage. Just pay my hospice bills instead. There’s a nice one with a duck pond just outside Exeter.’

  ‘Seriously? You’re going to meekly accept your impending death because there’s a duck pond to sit by?’

  ‘It’s not treatable, Mik. It’s gone beyond the first layer. It’s all the way through me, now. I smell it. I want to be in a place where we all smell as bad as each other.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that smell is my hangover.’

  ‘Go wash then, you pig.’

  › • ‹

  When I come back downstairs, only ten minutes later, it’s all different. Death is accepted, done and dusted, sitting down to breakfast with us. How can that happen? She’s made toast and coffee in her magazine-standard kitchen, and she’s all business.

  ‘Listen,’ she says, as I butter the toast and layer on marmalade, ‘there’s something you need to do for me.’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘You need to find someone. Someone that I have to apologise to.’

  ‘Making amends time already?’

  ‘No,’ says Gwen. ‘Don’t. Don’t make a joke about it.’

  ‘Is this to do with the day that you left Max?’ I ask. The day we never talk about.

  She doesn’t answer me, exactly. ‘I don’t want to die without having said sorry. You can understand that, can’t you?’

  She knows I can.

  She knows how important apologies have been to me, and how hard I have worked for them: to get them, and to give them. Finishing Max’s film has been one long apology to him, even though he can never accept it.

  ‘It’s not only that.’ Her fingers pluck at the collar of her white shirt – why does she still dress like a professional even though she’s been out of work for years? It’s like she’s never let her guard down; she’s still looking for threats.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Do you remember when you first helped me out? What you said to me?’

  ‘I said, whatever you need.’

  ‘Not that bit. I told you I had to disappear, get far away from there, and you said: Okay. And you said: Nothing is unforgivable, though.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You still believe that?’

  ‘I do.’ I have to.

  ‘Then find Rose Allington for me,’ she says, and she hasn’t looked so desperate since she turned up outside my caravan one morning on Max’s Sussex estate, halfway through filming, and begged me to take her away, hide her from herself.

  ‘Just tell me,’ I say, on an impulse. ‘This one time. It was so long ago. Tell me what you did, and what Max did, and be done with it.’

  She rolls her eyes. ‘One more time, Mik. It’s not about you.’

  ‘Oh that’s right, I forgot for one second. Lucky you were here to remind me. So where do I look for this Rose Allington? I’ve always wanted to play detective.’

  �
�You start by finding someone I used to know. He’s called Phineas Spice.’

  Just a trim.

  It occurred to me to go back to my original name, of course. After we became press fodder, and being a Stuck was literally that – being mired in that role as one of the six happiest people on Earth, just waiting for it to end. Of course it had to end. We all knew that. The six of us, the reporters, the people who were searching the internet every day for updates. And it did end.

  I always intended to go back to my old name. Mikhael Gusin. But when it came to it, I couldn’t. I wasn’t that person any more. I couldn’t find a new name that suited me either. What do people do, sit down and make one up? Is there a list, somewhere, to pick from by your particular trauma?

  No, I’m Mikhael Stuck. It fits. We all took Howard’s surname at first because we wanted to be stuck together, and now it describes who I am with an ironic precision that continues to entertain me.

  Not so for Phineas Spice, who has gone back to his birth name of Alexander Joseph Murray.

  It didn’t take long to find him. In fact, I didn’t find him at all. I paid someone to do that. I don’t think Gwen really had in mind that I would need to get dressed up in a trenchcoat or a deerstalker, and do the legwork. I hired an agency, and they tracked him down in a couple of days. Acourier dropped off a thick file to my flat in Kensington, and I read all about nightclubs and skin fights, gambling and prostitution. And Starguard, of course.

  I know exactly what kind of person is cutting my hair right now.

  The shop is empty. I waited outside in the car, trying to get Phineas alone. Alexander, I should say. He’s a short man in a loud shirt, the collar open, a gold chain hanging loose. He’s bald himself, and shiny under the recessed spotlights of his black and chrome decor. He trims away at my locks with expert fingers; you’d think he’s been doing this all his life.

  ‘Not too much off the top, thanks.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘How did you choose the name?’ I ask him.

  He blinks; I watch him in the large rectangular mirror before us, a slant of the summer sunshine falling across his chest, but he’s perfectly calm as he says, ‘Pardon?’

  The sharp snaps of the scissor blades are loud in my ear. ‘The name of your shop. Nicky’s. Are you Nicky?’

  ‘That was my dad. He owned it. After he died I took over.’

  ‘I’m sorry. When was that?’

  ‘2018? Yeah.’

  ‘You weren’t a hairdresser before then?’

  He stops cutting, and straightens up. ‘I trained as a barber, years ago, out of school. Came back to it late.’

  ‘Wow.’

  The brush is applied to the back of my neck, sweeping away loose strands to the linoleum floor. ‘You’re done,’ he says.

  ‘Thanks.’

  This is a quiet town, barely map-worthy in the depths of Bedfordshire. Shefford has a small supermarket and one cafe, from what I can see. The barber shop actually has competition; there’s another one, three doors down. Why do hairdressers flock together? One turns up on a street and chances are there’ll be two more on the same stretch in no time at all.

  Give me a city any day. Give me anything but little communities with their big mouths. The locals were smiley and pleasant, but keen enough to give the papers a scoop, back when the six of us lived in Cambridgeshire. Not far from here, actually.

  I should have come here with a question in mind, or a way into the conversation I want to have. Instead, I end up standing at the reception desk, credit card in hand once the transaction has been completed, hesitating. I must look like an idiot.

  This man was scary, once. He had things done to people. He was in charge.

  He points a finger at me. ‘You’re Mickey Stuck, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I thought I recognised you.’ He doesn’t say more.

  It’s now or never. ‘Actually, we have a mutual friend.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Gwen Taylor. She used to work for you. Starguard.’

  ‘So she did.’ He reappraises me, straightens up. Hardens. ‘It was a long time ago since she disappeared off. Still, water under the bridge. Max Black, that’s the link, right? I haven’t thought about him in years. You met her through Max?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So how is she doing? Is she finally going to pay me back what she owes me? All that bodyguard training, setting her up in a job, it wasn’t cheap.’

  ‘I’ll pay you back. Whatever, name it.’ I shouldn’t react, I know; he’s just trying to get a rise out of me. Play who’s got the biggest wad.

  ‘Just the eight quid for the trim was enough from you, thanks. We’re done.’

  Now he’s got my back up. ‘Did you get your pound of flesh from most of your girls one way or another, then?’

  His eyes snap to mine. ‘I had a business, they were employees. That was it.’

  ‘So was Rose Allington one of your employees?’

  He walks past me to the door, turns the top lock, and lowers the venetian blind with a swish. How come that action makes the shop feel so much smaller?

  He leans back against the door. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Because right now you look really young. Really young. So what is it? Taylor wants to track down Rose? She wants to finish what she started?’

  ‘She’s dying. Skin disease. She wants to see Rose. That’s all I know.’

  ‘And you said you’d find her?’

  ‘I promised.’ Surely even somebody who was once Phineas Spice can understand that.

  He smiles at me. ‘Really young,’ he says. ‘Come on, come in the back, I’ll put the kettle on.’

  He’s not threatening at all, here, in this small back room; in fact, he’s welcoming to me amidst the shelves of shampoo, conditioner and dye. There’s a plastic chair and I sit, my leg pressed up against a trolley, the top tray of which contains so many pink plastic clips, while he makestea. The smell of wet hair, dried hair, is strong. I suppose you get used to it.

  ‘That’s really disappointing,’ he says, when he asks how easy he was to track down. ‘But I only went back to my roots, really, didn’t I? Roots. I wouldn’t mind some of those again.’ He touches his bald head, runs a hand down its slick curve, then hands me a mug of tea. ‘I used to shave it to look hard, down in London. Get taken seriously. Then I stopped, moved back here, and it wouldn’t grow back. Look at you,you’ve got no worries yet, have you? Does baldness run in your family? My dad was bald at thirty.’

  I think of my father’s thick hair, still curling around his ears and temples – or it was when I last saw him, a year or so ago. ‘No.’

  He nods. ‘You’re really going to go through with this? For Taylor’s sake?’

  ‘She needs my help.’ One of the few things about me that I like is the fact that I always help Gwen when she needs it.

  ‘Sounds like she got lucky when she met you.’

  ‘We’re not together,’ I tell him, although I’m not sure why.

  He digests this information. ‘What was it like? Being with five people at the same time?’

  Does he mean love or sex? It’s not one of those uncomfortable male moments, jokey yet sweaty, that I’m not keen on. I’ve had those before, after a few drinks, where men get drunk enough to ask me what went where or if I was a giver or a taker, all that crap. I answer as if love is all there is. ‘Confusing, but good. Happy, for a while.’

  ‘Sounds like all love stories. You were, what? Nineteen, twenty, when it happened to you? You were the youngest, the last to join, right? The good looking one.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about it already,’ I tell him.

  ‘I read the book. The oldest one wrote it. Howard, was it?’

  ‘Well, see the film. It’s in cinemas now.’

  ‘Max Black’s film.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘No,’ says Alexander, or P
hineas, or whatever. ‘I won’t be going to see that. I don’t want his thoughts in my head.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve seen and heard about a lot of shit, but I don’t want to own the oil paintings.’

  ‘I don’t understand. You knew him? You didn’t like him?’

  ‘Wow,’ he says. ‘Listen, forget all about this stuff. Forget about Taylor. Go your own way.’

  ‘I’m looking for Rose Allington. Gwen wants to apologise to her while she still can. That’s it. That’s all I know. I don’t care what you think you know, or what it matters. I’m just doing a friend a favour.’

  He wets his lips with his tongue, then puts his own mug down in the small sink, beneath a wall-mounted boiler that looks older than I am. He’s a snake; I read his file, I know what he is. He makes money from other people’s suffering. He’s playing me, there’s some angle in this, there has to be. But he’s squeezing past my knees, past the tray with the pink clips. He leaves the room, and I still have no idea what he wants from me.

  I sit there for a while before I feel certain he’s not coming back.

  Eventually I put my mug down next to his, quietly, and walk back into the main part of the shop.

  He’s at the door, hand on the top lock, looking out over the lazy travels of those on the main street. The afternoon sun has moved round to bathe half the room in its light; I have to squint when he swivels around, to see his expression. But I can’t guess how he’s feeling.

  ‘You get started on a path,’ he says. ‘You never start down it yourself. It’s only later you realise – that was the person who pushed me down it. Later, if you’re lucky, someone else – a better person – sets you on a better road. One that leads to a good place.’

  ‘That’s what you’re trying to do for me, is it? Is that what you did in London? In your nightclub? With all the employees of Starguard?’