‘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 an appointment. 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 will.
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 usuaclass="underline" 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 reminding myself 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 filled with challenges, 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, really? I could only see one.
I told her to be happy and to be in love with me and with this other 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 well) and she laughed, and told me I was an idiot. But she was smiling, and I always did love her smile.