Ritual

She took the heavy frying pan from the stove and scraped the garlic and onions into the tomatoes. Then she set the pan in the sink, running water on it.

'Flea?'

'Yes,' she said. 'What?'

'What are you doing?'

'What does it look like?'

'Cooking. But you're acting strange.'

She paused, standing at the sink with one hand on her hip, the other on the tap, and watched the yellow circles of fat float to the top of the water. She could hear the crows cawing in the cedars along the edge of the garden, she could feel her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth. She thought about Mum staring at her from the path in the trees, whispering, We went the other way.

'Flea? What is it? You're scaring me.'

She turned. 'Thom, I know you don't like to talk about it.'

'About what?'

'About — about, you know, the way it all happened. The accident.'

There was a moment's silence, while they both stared at each other. Slowly Thom's cheeks went red. The rest of his face stayed pale.

'The accident,' she repeated, more softly this time. 'One day we're going to have to talk about it. About what you remember.'

There were a few more seconds where he didn't do anything, just went on staring. Then he began to drum his fingers on the table. A little humming noise started in the back of his throat. There was a scar in Thom that no one should mess with, things he couldn't bear to think about. Guilt he carried everywhere. He scraped his chair back and got up. He went to the stove and stood with his back to her, looking down at the pan of tomatoes. He shook the pan, moving things around, collecting spoons and spatulas, as if he had purpose. His hair was so fine and blond you could see the tanned scalp underneath, the back of his neck so vulnerable where the hair hung away from it.

'You know what?' he said conversationally. 'I'm not doing well in my job. I'm really not getting on in it.'

'Thom, I just want to-'

'If I'm honest, I'd say it's even starting to affect us. Me and Mandy.'

'Please listen to me-'

'And if I'm telling the truth, I feel trapped. Trapped like I've never been before. All because of the job.'

Flea closed her mouth. She knew people could go into denial, but she'd still imagined, in some corner of her conscious mind, that one day Thom would talk about the accident if he was forced to. She thought that by now he'd have worked the guilt through, rationalized it. But no, there he was, blanking her, as if he hadn't heard a word she had said. She sighed and sat down at the table.

'I can't bear it any longer.' He poked at the tomatoes. 'I'm trapped.'

'Are you?' she said flatly, half annoyed with him, half pissed off with herself for bringing that subject up in the first place. 'I had no idea.'

There was a long silence while Thom stirred the tomatoes and Flea sat watching him.

'Anyway,' he said, after a few minutes. He tore off kitchen towel, put the spoon on it, and cleared his throat. 'Anyway, I think I've got a new thing going.'

'What sort of new thing?'

'Some people I know. They import chandeliers from the Czech Republic. They're beautiful, better than any you've seen in the antique shops round here.'

Flea pressed the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger because she could feel a headache starting. Since what happened in Bushman's Hole, Thom had lost every job he'd had. He'd worked for travel agents and magazines selling advertising space, he'd worked as a telephone researcher for seven pounds an hour. When he wasn't employed he'd used the loan on his insurance money to start businesses. In two years he'd been involved in no less than six failed ventures. From selling slimming pills he'd imported from the US to selling pixels on a web page, to investing in a piece of land for which he later found he couldn't get planning permission. All had gone wrong, leaving him almost broke.

'Thom, we've talked about this. You said you'd stick with a job. You can't keep taking these risks.'

'It's not a risk, it'll be fine. I just need an alibi.'

'An alibi?' Flea dropped her hand. 'What sort of alibi?'

He pushed aside the pan and came back to the table, sitting opposite her, elbows on the table. She could see in his eyes that he had wiped the accident from his mind. It was weird, the way he could do that.

'It's a really good venture but I've kept it from Mandy-'

'Because she'd say exactly what I'm saying and-'

'No, because I want it to be a surprise when it works.' He looked at her anxiously. 'But I need your help. Things have gone a bit wrong.'

'What?'

'I keep going off to meet them and Mandy's starting to think I'm seeing someone else.' Flea raised an eyebrow. 'I know,' he said, and suddenly the pallor had gone and his voice was excited. 'I know — she's even been following me. Brilliant, isn't it?'

'Brilliant?'

'I've seen her sneaking along the road behind me. You know what it means.'

'No,' Flea said. 'I don't.'

'It means she loves me. She's jealous! She really, really loves me.'

Flea shook her head wearily. She looked at the smooth skin of Thom's throat, faintly transparent and white where it covered the Adam's apple. Mandy was his first serious girlfriend. There had been a series of women he'd imagined he was having a relationship with — he'd fall ridiculously, childishly in love and end up devastated when they didn't return the attention. Until Mandy. And, like a child, he mistook Mandy's possessiveness for true love.

'She thinks I don't know she's following, but I do. So, now I've got an important meeting with these people, make-or-break. If I'm not there I can say goodbye to the whole thing.'

'And you want me to lie for you?'

'If I tell Mandy I'm here she'll believe me.'

'Here? No, she'd come and check.'

'Probably. But she'd never knock on the door because she thinks I don't know she's on to me. I'll take your Focus — I'm insured — and leave my car out the front on the road. That way if she follows or drives past I'm covered.'

'When do you want to do this?'

'Monday night.'

Monday was the day after tomorrow. Flea's last night off work. Kaiser had promised her the ibogaine would be out of her system by then.

She stood, picked up the pan and ladled the tomatoes into the pasta. She dropped in some olives, some sliced sausage and left the lid off to let the sauce give up its moisture. Then she spent some time wiping the surfaces.

Thom watched her, his eyes fixed on her. 'Well,' he said eventually, 'will you do it?'

'You know the answer to that, Thom.' She sealed the Tupperware box and put it into the fridge, closing the door hard. She didn't know why but she felt angrier than she should. 'Because you know I'd do absolutely bloody anything for you.'

26

When Flea had gone the office was quiet. He sat for a while in thought, thinking about the word 'muti', wondering why he hadn't thought about it before. He took the time to read the web page carefully. The human skin, he realized with a jolt, wasn't someone's skin but the skin of two people — two teenage boys. They hadn't known each other in life, but in death their existences had been inextricably combined, displayed in a box as an exhibit about smuggling in Dar es Salaam. The skins had been confiscated from smugglers whose trade was to flay people in Tanzania, then export the skins — sometimes to Nigeria, sometimes to South Africa — for huge sums.

He stared at the picture for a long time, conscious of his own skin, of its shape, its inadequacy. Muti. Even the sound of the word was bad. The owner of the Moat, Gift Mabuza, had come back into town without telling the police. He was African, and in some countries it was a superstition to bury hands under the entrances to businesses. A basic equation.