Beneath The Skin Episode 38

Thank God you were there, said Mouse afterwards. Thank God. It was nothing, he’d said. I’ve got quick reactions. She hadn’t dropped the teapot, Alys. Hadn’t thrown it. She’d just abandoned it. As it fell, Walt reacted. Hypervigilance. He’d grabbed William, hoisted him off the chair. The pot crashed onto the table and split apart, a tide of scalding tea seeping around the laptop and soaking the seat where William had been sitting.

Alys had left the room without looking back.

Mouse had taken up William and hugged him until Walt thought they might both fracture, like the teapot. He watched from the sidelines.

“I’d worry about Alys,” he said eventually, “if I were you.”

Lucky escape

That night, he kept waking up with the past in his head; not the nightmarish parts, just the what-ifs that littered his path like cigarette butts. He kept thinking of Jo. Perhaps he was just missing her. He switched on the lamp beside his bed and lay staring at the cracks in the ceiling.

Jo was with someone else now, according to Steven. In the hospital she’d visited him once, but they’d already broken up by then, so it was more of a courtesy call. She’d had a lucky escape from all the rehab and the medics and the rebuilding.

She’d brought him grapes (original) and a bottle of elderflower cordial. “I love the taste, it reminds me of spring,” she’d said, as she poured him a glass.

It had been spring when he’d proposed to her. She’d picked a clutch of snowdrops and carried them back to their hotel room like a bride in training, and somehow left them lying on the bed. When Walt had seized her and kissed her and urged her down onto the fresh sheets, the crushed white scent of snowdrops had clung to their bare skin for hours.

They’d lain together like two saplings, legs spiralled, talking about the future on the same pillow. They shared the same looks, Jo and himself: both tall and straight, the same unruly dark hair, although his had been cut short back then.

Nose to nose, it was like looking into a mirror, breath misting dark blue eyes. He chose to inhabit a little bubble, not looking forward, trying not to look back. They carried that small patch of woodland around with them for months, intoxicated.

On his next tour, the imaginary wood was his happy place. It was untouchable, a sanctuary, and when he made love to Jo in his memory, those glorious moments smelled always of fresh spring green.

And then Tom got blown up, and the wood became a wasteland overnight.

Somewhere in the small hours, he must have fallen into a deep sleep, because he was jolted out of it by the sound of his door clicking open. He lay rigid, waiting for his body’s manic downloading of data to subside. The light was still on. There was no one there.

Cursing, he heaved himself from the bed on his one leg, leaning on the bedside cabinet for support. He hefted the door shut, displacing a puff of chilly air, which smelled faintly of onions. He got back into bed. There’s no one there, he kept repeating to himself. No one there.

It’s the faulty catch on the door. He kept meaning to wedge the damn thing shut. This was about the third time it had sprung open of its own accord, leaving him in a state of panic.

He dozed for another hour, before finally giving up and swinging his legs out of bed. He reached for his prosthesis, went through the motions of securing it. First the liner, the all-important second skin, which protected his residual limb, then the moulded resin socket.

It was a snazzy blue – matched his eyes, the physio had joked. The foot was carbon: a flexible, all-terrain jeep of a foot. A goanywhere foot.

It was funny how quickly it had become a part of him. He’d assimilated it. His mind, on the other hand, was a thing apart: floundering, ungainly and damaged.

Finally, he stood up tall, worked the kinks from his back, and strode over to the window. The curtains were stained yellow by the streetlights. Drawing aside one half, gently, like a bride’s veil, he gazed down onto the dark street.

He could get dressed, take up his pack and simply walk out. It was easy done. Sighing, he rested his brow against the cold glass. He’d tried so hard to make a clean break. They would never have traced him. He could have remained here, concealed, for ages, or travelled north, inflicted himself on some other unsuspecting family. But now it was all messed up.

He’d gone viral. How long before one of Steven’s sprogs, swiping through his iPad, came across Uncle Robert on Facebook? How long?

He walked over to his pack and began to check it. Light things at the top: boxers, T-shirts. Heavier things at the bottom: jeans. Rope.

Should he leave a note?

They always did, in films. It would be better than a half-empty Scotch bottle. More dignified. He had a note already, didn’t he? The death letter, the one they make you write, saying goodbye to your nearest and dearest.

He hadn’t needed to use it before. Maybe it would find its purpose now. He’d find a place for it, propped up against the sugar bowl.

It hadn’t travelled well: there was a coffee ring across the corner, which seemed a bit cavalier. If your mother was to receive a goodbye note, it should be pristine, like a well-starched handkerchief.

Walt takes a last swig of whisky; places the tumbler beside the bottle. Next to that he leaves his keys and his mobile phone, arranging them carefully for no obvious reason, trying not to imagine his mother picking them up, turning on the phone to ring him in that muddled way she acts around technology.

He takes a last, long look around the kitchen: at those awful curtains with the big sunflowers, as familiar as his own clothes; the drawer with the missing handle that Dad has never fixed; the spice jars lined up in a special pine rack, even though Mam only ever uses salt and pepper and maybe the odd bay leaf.

Realisation seeps through his fuddled brain. This is the end of the road, my friend. The End.

He gazed down onto the dark street. He could get dressed, take up his pack and simply walk out. It was easy done

More tomorrow.

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