Beneath The Skin Episode 46

Walt didn’t want to find trouble. He wanted to be normal again. Being with Mouse had shown him that normal was still an option. Possibility shimmered all around him as he made the tea, adding extra milk to Mouse’s, because she liked it that way.

He found some chocolate biscuits and arranged them on a plate, picturing her mock disapproval: chocolate for breakfast? He’d kiss her and tell her she was worth it.

He was grinning like a prize fool as he climbed the stairs, taking care not to spill the tea, or let the biscuits slip from the plate. As he passed his bedroom door he noticed it was open, even though he could have sworn he’d closed it.

Faulty catch again? He mounted the attic stairs. Mouse’s door was open too. Had he closed that? The light was on; he could hear voices. Something didn’t seem right and it caught at his heart.

Mouse was awake, sitting up in bed with her hair all ruffled and her T-shirt slipping from one shoulder. William was perched at the end. There was something between them, something more than tension. There on the duvet was a black, ragged, horribly familiar shape.

The rope. His rope. His mother’s washing line. Mouse looked up at him with such coldness he felt something shrivel inside him.

“You have got some explaining to do.” Even her voice was icy. She was formidable, her arms folded tightly across her abdomen as if she was hurting there, and way too calm, staring right into him.

But when she spoke, it was to her son. “William, go and get dressed.”

“But, Mum, I want....” “William!”

“Can I have a chocolate biscuit?” Walt handed him the plate. The kid took one and scarpered. Walt placed the mugs and the biscuits carefully on the coffee table, as if he might need both hands to defend himself.

This was crazy, after the night they’d had; her in bed and him standing like a lemon in the middle of the tiny space. He wanted to close the gap between them. He had a physical need to be beside her, to seize her shoulders, make her listen to him, but she was so brittle he thought she might crack into pieces like cinder toffee.

“William found this rope,” she said. Her voice was so sharp it hurt.

“He didn’t find it; it wasn’t lost.”

“What sort of person carries a rope around?”

Mouse’s face swam in front of him, white and intense. She looked very afraid. The truth began to filter into his consciousness. “You think I...”

“Tie up little boys?”

They were both speaking together, jagged fragments that added up to something so unpalatable he started to laugh. The hollowness of it escaped Mouse; she propelled herself from the bed and slapped his face.

Wincing at the sting of it, he grabbed her by the wrist before she could recoil. There were tears in her eyes, big, unshed crystals. His grip loosened, slid along the soft underside of her forearm, feeling the tension, imagining the blood pulsing beneath the skin.

“Believe me, you don’t want to know why I carry a rope,” he whispered. “But it’s definitely not what you think.”

She dropped her eyes then; he was looking at the top of her head. Her hair sparked in the harsh overhead light. She muttered something that he didn’t quite catch. He thought she said: “I’m scared.”

That’s what she’d said in bed, and he’d kissed the top of her head, breathing in the scent of her, recognising it somehow. He was scared too. What was passing between them, it was life-altering. There’d be no going back, and it was scar y and exhilarating.

“What’s past is past,” he’d whispered then. “Forget about it now.” And he’d made her forget, for a while. And now the bloody rope had been exhumed, a dark relic of a time he didn’t want to think about.

I’m ashamed. That’s what she was saying. I’m ashamed I didn’t see you as a threat.

He felt wounded and pulled away from her. There was no place to go, so he just stood, with his back to her and his face in his hands. Now she was remembering. She was seeing in her head all those things her parents had chosen not to see. He risked a glance at her: her face was stony, the only movement a fat tear sliding down her nose.

“Tell me.” She moved forward and gripped his arm. “Tell me what you’re doing with a rope.”

“No.”

“Tell me, or I’m calling the police.” “No!”

“I’m a single mother with a vulnerable child and a lodger with a rope. What would you expect me to do?”

“Oh, I’m still just the lodger, am I?” He slid into a chair. “Even after last night, I’m just the lodger.”

“Let’s not even go there.”

He recognised her obstinate look, the closed-down mouth that said, I’m not going to discuss that. And anyway, he couldn’t think how to start the conversation he wanted to have. It was special. You’re special.

“If you can’t tell me... if you don’t trust me enough to tell me, then you need to go,” she said finally. “Just go.”

“I don’t want to go,” he said, and the truth. “You’ better sit down.”

“I tried to end it. All this stuff kept coming up, flashbacks, panic attacks. I wanted to make it stop. The things I’ve seen – I can never un-see them. I can’t outrun what happened. I can’t drown it in booze.

“When I got back home from Afghan... it was worse, somehow. Out on the frontline, you’re doing something. You’re being somebody. Back home I was just a guy who lived next to a guy who’d bought it in the desert.”

“Your friend was killed out there?” Mouse had sat back down on the bed, head bowed. She wasn’t making a fuss, like his mam used to do when he talked like this. She was just listening.

The old rope lay coiled, inches from her bare leg, and she’d been giving it the eye, like it was a living thing and she didn’t want it creeping too close.

She cocked her head up at him when he mentioned Tom, and he realised he’d never told her about his best mate, even though he’d mentioned him to William, that day he’d picked him up from school.

More on Monday. it was

Mouse looked up with such coldness he felt something shrivel inside him. “You have got some explaining to do.”

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