Beneath The Skin Episode 11

Walt shoved open the door with his shoulder, nearly tripping over a girl who was unpacking a box of loofahs. She shot him a wide smile. Black-framed, ultra-cool glasses dominated her face.

“Who buys loofahs any more?” she said. As a chat-up line it didn’t work, so she turned to the kid. “Hi, William.” Her expression clearly said: “Who’s your friend?”

William jumped in with the story, polishing it up a bit: the downpipe; the 10tonne drain cover; the thumb that was going green.

His mother appeared suddenly behind the counter, managing to look shocked and annoyed all at the same time. Galen the pharmacist – the beard was neat salt-andpepper – was hovering beside her shoulder, ready to jump in at the slightest hint of trouble.

Walt judged him to be just short of retiring age; a trim figure in a dated brown suit. Mouse was wearing a navy coat over her white uniform. William repeated the tale again, but neither of them seemed particularly interested in an injured thumb.

“We don’t really aid,” said Galen.

“You shouldn’t even be doing stuff like that. Did Alys ask you to do that? You should have said no, and William...” Here Mouse paused for breath. “You shouldn’t be running around the streets. Does Mrs Petrauska know you’re here?”

“Auntie Alys said she’d tell her.” William’s face remained downcast; he was closely examining the floor, burrowing his toe into a hole in the faded lino.

“Ha!” said Mouse. “As if Alys will remember to tell her! I’ll check my phone. Mrs Petrauska is probably tearing her hair out and you are going to school tomorrow.”

“What about Walt’s thumb?” William muttered. The kid had a stubborn tilt to his chin, like his mam. Galen began to stutter something about X-rays, “just to be on the safe side”.

Mouse’s anger seemed

“Show me your thumb.”

“It’s after two, Maura,” Galen reminded her. “You get away and I’ll see to this. You’ll be late.”

But she was have a already protocol to melt for a little. examining first the bruised digit, her touch firm and warm – capable, Walt thought. He gazed at the top of her head.

Her hair was as clinical light, and was late for.

The pain had subsided a little, but the nail was now the colour of charcoal, with a darker line across it where the drain cover had got him. Mouse made a low whistling sound.

“I wouldn’t bother with the hospital. They won’t be able to X-ray it while it’s so swollen. I’d just keep it out of trouble for a while. You’ll lose that nail.”

“I can live without it.”

She pursed her lips and nodded, releasing his hand. “Take some ibuprofen.” She slanted her head towards the medicine shelves behind the counter. “Galen will get you some. I have to go.”

She glanced at William. “Look, Robert – Walt – could you take William back to Mrs Petrauska’s? I have to go somewhere and I’ll be about an hour.”

“Are you going to see

William. “Can I go?”

Mouse looked at Walt, and there was the faintest flicker of pleading in her eyes.

He shrugged. “I’ll take him home. I’ll get him something to eat and plonk him in front of the telly.”

William brightened immediately, though his mother looked nervous. Galen coughed discreetly from behind the counter. Either buy something or go.

“It’s okay. I am babysitter material.” He shot her his special lopsided grin. She was caught. She couldn’t make a fuss here, in her place of work. Although she smiled politely, her eyes remained cold, as if she’d somehow been outmanoeuvred.

“Fine.” She fiddled with her coat. It was a soft blue woollen one with one of those tie belts, and she pulled the belt so tight she must have cut off her breath. “William, behave. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” And she stalked off to wherever she was going.

No doubt William would fill him in on the way home.

Banter

shiny as conkers in the he wondered what she

Granddad?” said

“Families are funny things,” said Alys. She worked in an intense sort of silence, her movements economical and deft. She’d been putting the finishing touches to a toucan, if toucans can ever look finished. Walt, attempting to tidy up around her, admired its glossy beak, which glowed in the spotlight like a Tequila Sunrise.

The bird was destined for a new bar off the Royal Mile, and Walt was glad. It seemed like an escape somehow.

“Families are funny things.” He nodded in agreement, slowly wiping something sticky from the blade of a knife.

Walt’s role had turned out to be very fluid. As well as the endless admin, real live customers sometimes found their way to the studio, and then he would put on his best sales face and enjoy a bit of banter. It was a bit of light relief, actually.

Alys didn’t do banter. She couldn’t stand him making any noise when she was working: no whistling, no humming, no jokes.

When she was prising the skin from a dead carcass, he became a sort of squeamish theatre nurse, measuring solution, cutting wire, handing her the most wicked-looking tools he’d ever seen.

And thinking, time after time, why am doing this? What am I doing here?

Sometimes, when she came to the end of some project, like this toucan, she wanted to chat. It was like turning a pillowcase inside out, all the silky coolness giving way to the fraying, hidden bits.

“We get put in boxes,” she was saying. She ran a finger round the curve of the bird’s beak. “And we behave the way we’re expected to.

“Look at Mouse. She hides from things. That’s how she got her nickname. She hides and watches. She was always getting me into trouble when we were kids.”

He didn’t know what to say, so fiddled awkwardly with bits and pieces on the workbench: a carpenter’s pencil, a pair of spectacles.

He wasn’t sure what had brought this on, or where it was going. Alys had such a good memory. She used it as a weapon, an excuse to fester with old slights.

More tomorrow.

Beneath The Skin, by Sandra Ireland, is published by Polygon, £8.99. Her latest book, Sight Unseen, is out now.

I

It was like turning a pillowcase inside out, all the silky coolness giving way to the fraying, hidden bits