Beneath The Skin Episode 18

His parents meet him at the station. His mother is pale, sobbing into a tissue. “I can’t believe it,” she says in the car for the tenth time. “He was part of the family.” She’s sitting in the back, allowing Walt the honour of riding shotgun, the returning hero. He keeps his eyes on the road, on his father’s dependable fists curled around the steering wheel.

His mother has always stated the obvious. It’s one of those endearing little quirks that irritate the hell out of him, like the way she explains the ending of every movie even though you figured it out halfway through, and the way she repeats telephone conversations when you’ve been right there in the room listening.

It’s irritating and he doesn’t need it, not now. Losing Tom is like losing a brother, but he doesn’t want to keep hearing it. When he closes in on himself Mam gets all the more upset, hissing to his dad in the hallway: “He’s very quiet, do you think he’s in shock?”

They hang their coats on the newel post as they always do, and dad makes tea. He’s itching to get back to his shed, you can just tell. He’s never been much of a talker and too much emotion really makes him clam up.

He asks a few safe questions about the weather and the flight and, when that angle dries up, they sit at the table, listening to the dull tick of the kitchen clock. Mam has a turkey defrosting on the draining board.

“Life must go on,” she says fiercely. “Steven and Natalie are coming over for tea, but I haven’t said anything.” She nods her head towards the wall. He knows what that means. No family gathering is ever complete without Tom’s elderly parents making the short walk from next door.

Even when Tom had moved away to start a family, Bert and Maureen had always been included. Bert has a fondness for a good malt or three, and Maureen can talk for Britain, but nobody minds.

“I’ve been round to see them, of course.” Mam sniffs. “But it’s so hard. I feel so guilty.” The tears overwhelm the tissue and Walt doesn’t quite know what’s expected. He could do bear hugs. Bear hugs are friendly and safe, but if he clings to his mother now, he will come apart like the tissue. He knows all about the guilt. He reaches over and pats her shoulder.

Redundant

“L e t ’s do some thing normal,” he announced at the weekend, although he hadn’t meant to stress the “normal” quite as much. When Mouse turned to look at him – she was elbow deep in the kitchen sink again – he could see the word had found her.

“Normal? As opposed to what?” Her tone wasn’t particularly friendly. She turned back to the sink to rinse the cutlery under the tap. She had on jeans and sloppy slippers and a grey cardigan that sagged at the back. She didn’t look like someone desperate to escape.

He sighed. “I just feel... redundant, I suppose. Alys told me to b****r off. She’s been holed up in that basement for the last three days.”

She glanced around again with that little hitch in the corner of her lips, like when William said something funny.

“I thought she was quiet. Has she started on this wren thing?”

“Yup. She took delivery of a glass case the size of a kid’s coffin and the gallows are all set up.” Mouse winced at the description.

“I was glad to get out of there. I get claustrophobia in that bloody basement at the best of times. Aye, I was glad to get out.”

He looked at William, sitting at the table with colouring pencils and paper, enjoying a Saturday morning breakfast of pop tarts. On school days Mouse cooked porridge, the comforting smell of it warming the kitchen for hours, but routine came undone at the weekends and Walt wanted a bit of that too. “She’s always like that when she’s got a project on the go.”

Mouse turned back to the sink, shook water from a mug and placed it upside down on the drainer. “She’s driven. You learn not to take it personally.”

“I wasn’t. How about a nice cappuccino on the Royal Mile?” Mouse switched off the tap and turned all the way around, narrowing her eyes at him.

“Too far.

“Rose Street?”

“Full of pubs.”

They both glanced at the kid. It would have to be a threesome, of course. As Walt searched frantically through streets in his brain, Mouse said: “Ooh, I know somewhere with great cake, across the road.”

Walt grinned. Across the road would do. “Great. Are you ready?”

“Some of us can’t just drop everything and take off, you know. I have chores to do. And another thing... ”

He hated sentences that began like that. Jo used to throw that one at him when they were arguing: And another thing, that girl you were flirting with on Saturday night. Weird that he should start thinking about Jo now. He’d been doing a good job of blocking her out.

“...so it’s not a good idea, with all the cats about and...

Robert, are you even listening?”

“I am listening.”

“You’re not. What did I just say?” She glared at him with a touch of triumph. He hated that too.

They traded looks. He felt his face crease into a grin, and suddenly she was smiling too, although she tried hard to hide it.

“You were going on about takeaways. You thought I’d had a takeaway and not cleaned up after myself.” He stood his ground, laughing at her expression. “Ah, you see, I don’t miss much. But you’re wrong, bonny lass, I would never leave a mess. The army knocks that right out of you.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but there was a truth there that she couldn’t ignore.

“Seriously, there were open containers all over here.” She gestured to the worktop. “And the cats were up licking at them. Disgusting.”

He lifted his shoulders in an exaggerated gesture. “Maybe it was Alys?”

“Oh no.” She shook her head. “Alys would only eat Chinese if I ordered it. She won’t talk on the phone.”

“Really?”

“Really. It’s one of her things.” “Maybe she had a change of Whatever. It definitely wasn’t me.”

She glanced around again with that little hitch in the corner of her lips, like when William said something funny

More tomorrow. heart.

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