Max’s face, when he learned about the removal of the breasts. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so surprised.
There it is.
The thing I should have worked out straight away.
I know who took my skin, and Max’s skins. But I don’t know why.
We reach the front of the queue and the open mouth of the incinerator chute is on the driver’s side of the car. Alice winds down her window and holds out her hands.
‘Come on, then.’
I shake my head.
‘Are you doing it or not, Rose?’
‘Not,’ I say, sounding like a child. Like nothing more than a baby.
‘Right.’ She sets off, through the gateway, and I can’t tell if she’s pleased or not. We travel for a few miles before she says, ‘So what will you do with them?’
‘Would you keep the old one? My first one?’
‘I was doing that anyway.’
‘I know. Thanks.’
She hums along to the latest song on the radio for a moment. It’s a ballad I’ve not heard before about how the shortest love is the sweetest love, and a day together is better than a lifetime alone. Then she says, ‘Do I still need to make sure the back gate is locked to protect your precious skin?’
‘You should do that anyway. But no, I don’t think anyone is bothered about it now. Or, at least, they won’t be. I’ll sort it.’
‘I don’t like the sound of that.’
‘I’m sorting it,’ I repeat. ‘Then I’ll come visit. For longer. When it’s done.’
She considers this, her eyes on the road, then says, ‘Don’t end up like me, Rose. Don’t end up alone. I know you have this thing, this moulting problem and it makes you want to leave everything behind because it hurts so much, but try to hold on to something. You don’t always have to be the one that leaves.’
I don’t say anything. I feel her words sinking into me and I hate it, I hate it. If it was a choice I would have already decided to be different. I would scratch this out of my skin myself if I could.
‘Can you drop me at the station?’ I ask her.
‘I thought we were going home! The station’s in the other direction.’
‘Then I suppose it’s time to perform a U-turn,’ I say, and I catch, on the side of her face, the flicker of a smile.
PART
TWO
2008. SPOONFUL.
Petra’s car was one of those contract jobs, set up to be changed every seven years or with a new skin; some customers liked that freedom, although it sounded more like a flashy extension to an existing jail block to Rose. This car or that car: the deal remained the same.
But Petra said she liked her green Volvo, and had felt no need to change it after her last moult. The back seat was piled high with discarded bottles and wrappers, and the large boot was crammed with electronic devices and more traditional methods of applying brute force. The camera zooms and the hammers, all mixed up together; it was a wonder nothing got cracked.
As they drove along, silent in the early morning, it occurred to Rose that this was a car worthy of Mary Poppins, and it amused her to think of Petra, so capable, so practically perfect in every way, in that role. She hummed ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’ under her breath as the low sun began to gain in strength.
‘Really?’ said Petra, ‘Musical numbers? You kept that quiet.’
They stopped at a service station, drank lattes in tall glasses and ate doughnuts, choosing one table at random from a sea of them. It was early enough to feel that the place was theirs, and the few people who came and went were just passing through their territory. Men in suits, mainly, getting ahead of the game. Rose watched them stride to and from the blue signs of the toilet block, or order takeaway coffee from the dark wood and chrome counter, and wondered if each one was neck deep, drowning in some terrible form of business. Skin business.
All skin business was terrible, she had decided, from the creams and salves to the cutting and slicing. Inescapable and everywhere, looking like a quiet man in a suit, going about his day, until she looked closer.
‘We’re just checking this place out,’ said Petra, skimming the milk foam from the rim of the glass with her finger and licking it clean. ‘It’s off all the books. I reckon it’s a holding place for skins this guy is trying to move on the side. We get a few photos of the product and the setup, give them to Phin, and then Phin has leverage.’
‘Right.’
‘It’s straightforward.’
‘Yep.’
‘Great,’ said Petra. ‘So you can do it then. I’ll wait in the car.’
Rose had suspected it was building to this. ‘What if I get caught?’
‘Easy answer to that one: don’t get caught.’ The foam had been licked clean; Petra picked up the glass and drained it. ‘Look, it’s a warehouse on the outskirts of Slough at six in the morning. There’s going to be nobody there. You keep your hood up in case of security cameras, you take a few photos, you leave. You don’t take anything, and if it doesn’t feel right you walk away. I wouldn’t drop you straight in the deep end. This is a long-term training process. One step at a time.’
Rose sipped her coffee. ‘But why train me?’
Petra sighed. ‘I keep telling you, I fancied some company.’
Recently she had begun to feel a vexation building in the older woman, transmitting itself in the way Petra moved around the office, asking questions and seeming unhappy with the answers. Rose suspected she was disappointed in her.
‘I am trying,’ Rose said.
‘I know. It’s fine.’
‘I enjoy the work.’ Which was true, although the part she enjoyed was the moment when each case could be called over. The burning of the manila file, the ritual of it, pleased her beyond words.
‘Do you ever wonder if you would have been better off staying with Max?’
‘How could I? You know about my condition.’
‘Yeah. Your condition, I know. But people do, all sorts of people. They just pretend to still love someone, after that skin comes free. Not just for a comfortable life, although in your case I could have understood it. To live in that world.’
‘That’s world’s not real.’ Honesty prompted her to add, ‘Nothing is, though, is it?’
‘This is,’ said Petra, and pinched her hand.
‘Ow!’
‘Snap out of it. I know you still check up on him. You read the gossip columns. You watch all the movies. You still have feelings for him.’
‘I really don’t.’
‘That’s you all over. It’s only real when you say it is.’
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘I want you to really commit to this life,’ snapped Petra. ‘I’m going to the loo. Think about what you’re going to do. You’re going to get into that warehouse and take those photos, and when you come out of the warehouse you’ll be a tiny amount closer to being a proper private investigator.’
After she had gone Rose took a sugar cube from the bowl and crunched it. The sweet shards of the cube dissolved in her mouth to nothing, so quickly, so she ate another and sucked it this time, trying to make it last.
2013. SEWN UP.
Back at the Sussex mansion the weather is not right for filming, so Max has given everyone the day off. The gate guard – not Mike this time but an unfamiliar face – tells me that lots of them organised themselves into cars and left for London. Others are ensconced in their trailers, no doubt moaning or playing cards or swapping tips about skin treatments, as actors do.