Beneath The Skin

“Now?” he said warily. “We’re in the middle of a job. I can’t just stop.”

“That’s nothing to do with me,” I said. “I just wanted to say to you face-to-face that I was sorry you’re being dragged in.”

He seemed suddenly unyielding.

“What’s all the fuss about?”

I gave him a potted version of what had happened at school, but he didn’t seem to be taking it in. He was like one of those awful people at parties who glance over your shoulder at a better-looking girl over by the drinks. In this case Fred kept looking at Aldham, who was hovering over at the other end of the garden by the door into the house.

“And so she said I should stay away from my flat for the next few days.”

There was a pause and I looked at Fred. I waited for him to speak, to commiserate, to say that of course I could stay with him until all of this had been sorted out, if I would like to. I waited for him to put his arms round me and tell me everything was going to be all right and he was here for me. His face, under the sheen of his sweat, was like a mask. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking at all.

Then his eyes dropped to my breasts. I felt myself beginning to flush with humiliation and the first stirrings of a hot anger.

“I…” he began and then stopped, looking around. “All right. I’ll talk to them for a minute. Nothing to say, though.”

“Another thing,” I said, without even knowing I was going to. “I think we should stop seeing each other.”

That stopped his wandering, mildly lecherous eyes; his vague and disconnected air. He stared at me. I could see a vein throbbing in his temple, the muscles of his jaw clenching and unclenching.

“And why would that be, Zoe?” he said at last. His voice was icy.

“Maybe it’s not a good time,” I said.

He unstrapped the huge trimmer and laid it on the grass.

“Are you breaking off with me?”

“Yes.”

A flush spread over his handsome face. His eyes were completely cold. He looked me up and down, as if I were on display in a shop window and he was deciding whether he wanted to buy me or not. Then he allowed a little sneer to twitch at his mouth.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” he said.

I looked at him, his sweaty face and bulging eyes.

“I’m scared,” I replied. “And I need help, and I’m not going to get it from you, am I?”

“You cunt,” he said. “You stuck-up cunt.”

I turned and walked away. I just wanted to get out of here, to be somewhere safe.

Her hair is hanging loose on her shoulders. It needs washing. The parting is dark, a bit greasy. She has aged in the past week. There are lines running from the wings of her nostrils to the corners of her mouth, dark shadows under her eyes, a faint crease in her brow as if she has been frowning for hours on end. Her skin is looking slightly unhealthy, pale and a bit grubby underneath the tan. No earrings today. She wears an old pair of cotton trousers, oatmeal I think you would call the color, and a white short-sleeved shirt. The trousers are loose on her and they need pressing. There is a button missing on the shirt. She chews the side of her middle finger on her right hand without realizing. She looks around a lot, eyes never resting on one person for more than a second. Sometimes she blinks, as if she is having trouble focusing. She smokes all the time, lighting one cigarette from another.

The feeling inside me is growing. When I am ready, I will know. I will know when she is ready. It is like love; you just know. There is nothing more certain. Certainty fills me up, it makes me strong and purposeful. She gets weaker and smaller. I look at her and I think to myself, I did this.

TWELVE

I banged at the door. Why didn’t she come? Oh please come quickly, now. I couldn’t breathe. I knew I had to, everyone had to breathe, but when I tried, I couldn’t, not properly, though an unbearable pressure was growing in my chest. I took some shallow gasps, sounding as if I had been on a desperate crying jag. There was a tight band of pain round my head and everything was out of focus. Please help me, I couldn’t say, couldn’t shout. There was a boulder in my throat, in my lungs, stopping me from taking a breath. I couldn’t stand up any longer; everything was going blurred and gray-black. So I sank to my knees at the door.

“Zoe? Zoe! For chrissakes, Zoe, what’s happened?” Louise was on her knees beside me, wrapped in a towel and with wet hair. She had her arm around my shoulder and the towel was slipping away but she didn’t mind, darling Louise, and she didn’t mind that people were passing and giving us very strange looks and probably crossing the road to avoid us. I tried to speak, but I couldn’t get any words out, just a strange, stuttering sound.

She took me in her arms and rocked me. Nobody had done that to me since Mum had died. I was like a little girl again, and someone else was taking care of me at last. Oh, how I’d missed that; how I’d missed having a mother. She was whispering things that didn’t make sense, and telling me that everything was going to be all right, everything was going to be just fine, there, there, sssh, that’s right. She was telling me to breathe in and out, calmly. In and out. Gradually I started to be able to breathe once more. But I couldn’t talk yet. Just whimper, like a baby. I felt warm tears slide under my closed lids, onto my hot cheeks. I never wanted to move, not ever again. My limbs felt heavy, too heavy to stir. I could sleep now.

Louise lifted me to my feet, holding her towel round her with one hand. She led me up the stairs into her flat and sat me on the sofa and sat beside me.

“It was a panic attack,” she said. “That’s all, Zoe.”

The panic was gone, but I was left with the fear. It was like being in a cold shadow, I said to Louise. It was like looking off the edge of a tall building, so tall that I couldn’t see the bottom.

I wanted to curl up, sleep until it was over. I wanted someone else to take charge and make everything all right again. I wanted to go put my hands over my ears and close my eyes and it would all go away.

One day, said Louise, trying to be reassuring, you’ll look back on all this and it will be something horrible that happened and went away. You’ll be able to turn it into a story that you tell people about yourself. I didn’t believe her; I didn’t believe it would ever go away. The world had become a different place for me.

I stayed with Louise at her flat in Dalston, near the market. There was nowhere else for me to go. She was my friend and I trusted her and while she was around, small and sturdy and kind, I felt less scared. Nothing would happen to me while Louise was with me.

First I had a bath, much better than if I had taken it in the bathroom in my flat. I lay in the hot water and Louise sat on the toilet seat and drank tea and washed my back for me. She told me about her childhood in Swansea, her single mother and her grandmother, who was still alive; rain, gray slates, massed clouds, hills. She always knew she’d come and live in London, she said.

And I told her about the village I came from, which was more a straggle of houses with a post office. About my father driving cabs at night, sleeping in the day, dying in a quiet, modest kind of way, never wanting to draw attention to himself. And then I told her about my mother dying when I was twelve; how for the two years before she died she had drifted farther and farther away from me, in her own land of pain and fear. I used to stand by her bed and hold her cold, bony hand and feel that she’d become a stranger to me. I would tell her about the things I’d done during the day, or give her messages from friends, and all the time I’d be wanting to be out with my friends, or in my room reading and listening to music-or anywhere that wasn’t here, in this sick room that smelled odd, with this woman whose skull poked through her skin and whose eyes stared at me. But as soon as I’d left her I’d feel guilty and odd and dislocated. And then, when she died, all I wanted was to be back in her bedroom, holding her thin hand and telling her about my day. Sometimes, I said, I still couldn’t believe I would never see her again.

I said that after that I’d never really known what I wanted to do or where I wanted to be. Everything became