When she joined them, their expressions seemed to say to her: if it’s not one thing, it’s another.
How adult they all were, now. How boring it was, to feel.
‘How much longer?’ I whisper.
‘Not long.’
‘I smell.’
Max laughs a little. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘you do. Once we get you out of that old skin you can have a good long bath. How do you feel?’
That’s a difficult question to answer. I understand him better. I’ve seen his desperation to reel back time, to make us what we were again. I care about him, I do. I don’t know if that’s the fault of the process, or of being kept here; could it be some sort of Stockholm syndrome? Whatever it is, it’s making me hate myself a little more every minute.
‘Fine,’ I say. ‘You look tired, though.’
‘I feel like we’re getting somewhere, and I can’t sleep for thinking about it,’ he admits.
‘Do you still hate to be touched?’
‘I don’t hate it. I just prefer to be the one doing the touching. Tell me about Cyprus.’
‘The third moult.’
‘You were twenty-eight years old.’
‘I was in the RAF. But it wasn’t how you think.’
‘Did you see action?.’
‘No, Cyprus isn’t— It wasn’t… I was… I was…’
1998. HEAT.
Rose was a soldier second and an administrator first: working on the logistical side, ordering supplies, marking movements on maps. She knew how to use a gun and could run five miles in forty minutes, but mainly she could use a computer and keep a lot of other people running in the right direction.
The poster behind her desk bore a quote from Frederick the Great:
An Army Marches on its Stomach.
And so she was organised. An organised, proper person.
When she felt the first signs of her time approaching she informed her CO and got signed off for two days, then checked herself into the Moulting Ward.
It was an issue of temperature; the heat could cause problems in moulting for people who weren’t used to it. The ward was temperature controlled, and it was pleasant to sit in the communal area, listening to British Forces Radio, feeling the itch build.
A Flight Lieutenant she didn’t know came in, and they chatted for a while about home and family, but his moult was moving faster than hers. He left for a private cubicle to get the process over with, and then the overhead strip lights kicked in as day dimmed outside the window.
Why was it taking so long?
She was a woman now, grown, doing a job; she was responsible. It had been seven years since the last moult, so the timing was right. The stress of getting accepted into the RAF, training, being posted overseas: none of those had triggered a moult. And this time there was no Steve, no love to be lost. She wanted it done with, gone in a day. She wanted to prove how easy this process could be.
Forces Radio closed down for the night, and still there was only the itch.
At some point during the dark hours a member of the medical staff put her head around the door and looked surprised to see Rose still sitting there.
‘Go get some sleep in one of the private cubicles,’ she suggested, but Rose shook her head. She couldn’t face a small white space, or a medical bed with the sheets pulled tight, if it wasn’t about to happen.
‘It’s a quiet night,’ said the medical officer, and left.
Slowly, the itching intensified.
Rose dozed in one of the new plastic stackable chairs that had been flown out from home; she had put through the order herself. So many things here in Cyprus had been transported, hundreds of miles, to make this recognisable, to ground the troops in familiarity.
A sharp sting pierced her lower back. She jerked up from the chair and touched the sore spot through her uniform. The skin was pouching out, heavy with liquid. Not an insect bite, then, but a new facet of the moult. The thought triggered a realisation: the itching had become pain. She was in pain, all over, but strong on her back and buttocks, and it was growing, this pain; it would eat her up. Wherever it touched the skin puffed, as if injected with it, and the lights were too bright, the uniform too rough. She couldn’t stay here.
Rose walked out of the communal area and passed the medical officer in the corridor, who threw her a quizzical look, but said nothing. She walked on, out of the building, into the night air, so clean – and then the urge swept over her to run.
Running through the dark, quiet base, she imagined running right out of her skin, leaving it behind as a ghostly outline. The green buildings passed by, all the same, big as barns, holding sleeping soldiers, and she accelerated, outstripping the urge to be counted as one of them. She no longer wanted to belong.
To belong – why should that emotion abandon her?
Belonging was a form of love, perhaps.
The perimeter of Akrotiri base was demarcated by a tall fence. Rose reached it, pressed her face to the holes, and willed herself through, as if she could be poured from her skin on to the rocky ground beyond, and from there to the sea. The uniform held her back. She stripped it off, and the night air was so cold, so cold.
Lights swung down upon her; a voice said, ‘Stay still, stay still.’ She reached through the fence but only her fingers would fit. The pain redoubled and her skin was loose upon her. She wriggled free of it, not caring who was watching, then tried to bury it in the dusty ground. She dug with a frenzy.
‘Christ,’ said a thick voice, disgusted by her. She didn’t care. A blanket was placed around her shoulders. More lights arrived, and she was lifted, taken to one of the identical buildings, and a bed.
The next day the RAF began the process of ejecting her from their ranks as a liability. It was fine. Her urge to be there had vanished, and all that was left was shame that she had ever wanted to take part in the first place.
‘I thought you were this hard woman,’ says Max. ‘A killer.’
‘I pushed paper for a while.’
‘Did Phineas Spice know? That you were an administrator?’
‘It never came up in conversation.’
Max laughs.
I can’t help but wonder how he could have known me, held me, and thought me a killer? Didn’t the truth of me shine through?
‘What is it about me that you love?’ I ask him.
How odd it is to be having this conversation. I should scream and cry, and he should say scary things about what he’ll do to me if I don’t at least try to love him back. That’s how captors and captives speak.
‘You want a list?’ he says.
Those wide, playful eyes take me back to the tone we used to stretch between us, like a net in a game.
‘Yeah, I want an actual list. To make up for the list you stole from my bag.’
‘Right then.’
‘Come on then. Don’t tell me you have to think about it.’
‘You’re unique. I’ve told you that before.’
‘You’re wrong. But okay.’
‘You make me feel cared for,’ he says.
I don’t correct him, although he has to know he should say it in the past tense.
‘You’re so beautiful.’
I lie still, sewn up, knowing I am anything but. There’s no need to reply to this one either.
‘You give it meaning,’ he tells me.
‘What?’
He wets his lips, then says, ‘My life. You give my life meaning.’
‘How do I do that?’
‘I don’t know. It’s just one of your many mysterious talents, which now, apparently, include running away from doctors and hospitals, and being an administrator.’