Here goes. ‘I have a request. On behalf of a close friend, who wants to apologise to you. In person.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘She’s dying. She just wants to say sorry. I don’t know any more than that. But I promised her I would find you and ask you.’
‘Who?’
‘Gwen Taylor.’
‘Who?’ Then the last name seems to stick, and she doesn’t even bother to say no; she simply walks away from me, taking a random path across the grass and around the back of the church, stepping around the gravestones.
I follow, keeping a little distance, as she circles the church to arrive at the entrance. I think she’ll go inside, but she turns away and strides from the graveyard instead. I keep my eyes on her bobbing backpack as she crosses the main road and squeezes between two parked police cars to take a side street that leads to a car park I didn’t know existed.
It’s full, every space taken by cars with stickers bearing the slogan
displayed in windows. She stops next to one of those new electric cars and produces the key from her pocket.
‘Hey!’ I call, and she freezes in place. She doesn’t look at me as I approach.
‘She’s my friend, and she’s dying,’ I say. ‘Wouldn’t you do the same?’
‘Just like Max was your friend, right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I touched your skin,’ she says, and she looks me straight in the eye, with an intensity, a knowledge, that brings a prickle of shame to my skin. ‘In the British Museum. You helped get Max’s film finished, didn’t you?’
‘I did.’
‘Is it truthful?’
I raise my chin and bear her stare. ‘More so than anything else people have said about me.’
‘I went to see it. It was nothing like the autobiography.’
‘No.’ Honesty compels me to add, ‘Howard is many things, but he’s not much of a writer.’
‘It was beautiful. I don’t understand how Max could have made it, at that time. He was so… damaged. By then.’
‘No, he wasn’t damaged.’
‘And then he just committed suicide out of the blue, is that what you’re saying?’
‘For fuck’s sake.’ My anger, my shame, she’s coaxing it out of me; fine, she can have it. ‘For fuck’s sake! Just tell me. Just tell me.’
She flinches. She’s scared of me. My voice reverberates, then dies away. The march of the protestors is background noise; they must be at the laboratory gates by now. I’m an idiot, a loud one, and this shame won’t go away.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I still don’t understand it,’ she says. ‘That wonderful film. Are you proud of it?’
‘Very.’ I could add, it feels like the only thing I’ve ever done entirely right.
‘And you think you know Max well? Knew him, I mean.’
That’s a much more difficult question. I tell her, ‘There are things that happened. Nobody will talk to me about it. I think I could have helped, if I had known. I could have been a better friend.’ My shame is so heavy now, I squirm under the weight of it, and under the weight of her even gaze. ‘Please, just come with me. Hear her apology, and be done with it.’
‘I can’t be done with it by listening to Taylor telling me she’s sorry. But I’ll make a deal with you. Come with me now, and talk to me. About the Max you knew, and your life. Then you can ask me whatever you want, and I’ll answer it. And if you really still want me to forgive Taylor then I’ll let you try and persuade me.’
This is what I wanted, isn’t it? This is what I’ve really been searching for. Somebody laying out all the things that were hidden.
Why, then, does it take such an effort of will to get into the passenger seat, and stay there while she sits in the driver’s seat and starts the car? The fear I felt in the graveyard returns, redoubles.
She is driving, and I don’t know where we’re going.
This is happening right now. This is out of my control.
PART
FOUR
SATURDAY, 20 JULY 2022, 5:42PM.
MIK: This is your house?
ROSE: It’s not far from the Clifton Suspension Bridge, actually. I have family near here. I run a design business.
MIK: Are you recording this? Is that why your phone’s on the table?
ROSE: It’s nothing. It’s just for my memory. Things have a way of changing when I look back on them. I thought this might help me to keep it straight. In my head.
MIK: I’m not comfortable with it.
<Pause>
ROSE: You don’t have to do this. This is entirely your choice.
MIK: I’m happy to talk to you, just not—
ROSE: It’s for me. I won’t sell it. I won’t play it to anyone else. You’ll have to trust me. Tell me about Taylor.
MIK: She has – uh – epidermal sclerosis.
ROSE: The skin condition? The one that’s being linked to Suscutin?
MIK: There’s no proof of that yet.
ROSE: <laughter>
MIK: You think it’s funny?
ROSE: It’s ironic, I’ll give it that.
MIK: She’s dying.
ROSE: So you said. She’s dying, she’s your friend. Tell me something. Tell me about the first time you met her. Was it through Max?
<Pause>
MIK: Are you sure you need to record it?
ROSE: You can walk away. There’s the door. I’ll even call you a taxi, if you like. Go back and tell her you didn’t find me, if it makes you feel better.
MIK: No, okay. Yeah. I met her and Max at the same time. It was about a year after we broke up. The Sixes, I mean.
ROSE: Okay. Tell me. Tell me like it’s a story.
2012. GIVE THE MAN A CARD.
He was the only other Stuck to make it to the party.
Howard was there, of course, in the centre of a group who were hanging on his words; he winked and waved when he caught sight of Mik, and Mik smiled back. He hadn’t objected to the autobiography, and certainly appreciated even more money. He had become a wealthy man, no longer reliant on his father’s generosity, and he was standing in the centre of an exclusive London venue, high above the city lights.
If he had a misgiving, it was about the way their lives had been presented in the book. The events had gained a sheen of romantic inevitability, every moment foreshadowing the moment of the first moult, rather like one might find in a fairy tale. It all made too much sense, at the cost of reality. But this was an easy objection to put aside, considering the benefits. Frankly, Mik was surprised the others hadn’t seen it that way too.
He suspected they would come around in their own time. They had all said yes to the donation of their old skins to the British Museum; that had been Sunetra’s idea. He thought it a vain, ridiculous gesture but didn’t have the heart to veto it with everyone else in rare agreement.
Living art, she had said down the phone to him.
If he had been in the mood to puncture her enthusiasm for her latest idea he would have pointed out it was merely dead skin, and irrelevant to the living.
He made his way to the free bar, a creation of chrome and spotlights close to the glass wall, and ordered a beer.
‘Not drinking champagne?’ said a voice, on his right, and he recognised the famous, very handsome, profile.
‘It gives me mood swings,’ he said, trying to sound cool and instantly hating what he had just said. He’d met quite a few famous people since becoming a celebrity himself, but this – this was stardom personified.