The Loosening Skin

by Aliya Whiteley

  The Loosening Skin is a sensuous, thought provoking meditation on love that deserves not only a second read, but a third as well. This book will cement Aliya Whiteley’s reputation as one of the finest of a new generation of weird fiction writers. More, please.

  HELEN MARSHALL, author of Gifts for the One Who Comes After

  Strange, confounding and satisfyingly original, Whiteley’s new novel is an exploration of relationships and the corrosive effect of time. A speculative enquiry into the meaning of freedom itself, The Loosening Skin will surprise and delight Whiteley’s existing readership and new fans equally. Above all, this is a book that will excite intense discussion.

  NINA ALLAN, author of The Rift and The Race

  Aliya Whiteley’s fiction simultaneously scintillates with ideas, skips back and forth across genre boundaries with an ease and audacity that is glorious to behold, and retains such a sense of immediacy and emotional integrity that her readers are drawn into her worlds body and soul. She has the enviable ability to explore big ideas in the most intimate of settings, and to create wholly original realities that leapinstantly from the page. For me, she is very much at the forefront of the new wave of UK genre writers.

  – MARK MORRIS, author of Toady, Stitch and many more

  Also available from Unsung Stories

  Also by Aliya Whiteley

  The Beauty

  The Arrival of Missives

  Also available from Unsung Stories

  Déjà Vu by Ian Hocking

  Dark Star by Oliver Langmead

  Winter by Dan Grace

  The Bearer of Grievances by Joseph McKinley

  The Speckled God by Marc Joan

  The Dancer by Rab Ferguson

  Metronome by Oliver Langmead

  Pseudotooth by Verity Holloway

  You Will Grow Into Them by Malcolm Devlin

  2084 edited by George Sandison

  This Dreaming Isle edited by Dan Coxon

  The Willow By Your Side by Peter Haynes

  Published by Unsung Stories

  43 Mornington Road, Chingford London E4 7DT, United Kingdom

  www.unsungstories.co.uk

  First edition published in 2018

  First impression

  © 2018 Aliya Whiteley

  The contributors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of their Work This book is a work of fiction. All the events and characters portrayed in this book are fictional and any similarities to persons, alive or deceased, is coincidental.

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-907389-61-0

  ePub ISBN: 978-1-907389-62-7

  Edited by George Sandison & Dan Coxon

  Cover Artwork © Tara Bush 2018

  Cover design by Vince Haig

  Text design by Cox Design Limited

  Typesetting by George Sandison

  Printed in the UK by TJ International

  For Clare Brown

  Part One

  2005. Pills.

  Some people burn love and some people bury it. Some keep it locked up, or push it far under the bed. Some sell it.

  The awards ceremony is over and Max didn’t win.

  That is fine with him. ‘It wasn’t my best work,’ he says into the phone, on the drive to Sussex. He sprawls in the back of the limo, beside me. ‘I can do better. I want to feel like I earned it. I might try directing.’ Then he shrugs, and says, ‘Well, yeah, I know. But I can’t run away from Daddy’s shadow forever.’ He has long conversations on the phone with his psychiatrist about his father, and what it means to be a success in a world where money no longer has meaning.

  When he puts the phone down I tell him, ‘You did deserve it. You just didn’t get it. Different things.’ We squeeze hands.

  Awards. Weights and measures, women and men, prizes and parties and perfection. It’s late, and I’ve watched Max al day in a professional capacity. Now I can watch him in my own time, and he is a sight in that suit, the lines cut sharp over his shoulders, the shirt so white; I want him, and so much more than that. Chemistry is one way of describing it, but underneath that there is love. I don’t care what the science books say; love doesn’t only have to be as deep as this layer of skin. It can survive. When it feels like this it must survive.

  At the house, Max walks ahead of me to the bedroom, and I follow with my eyes on nothing but him. He knows it. He loses the jacket and throws it over the tall Greek vase. He strips the bow tie from around his neck and drapes it on the frame of the Pissarro. The cufflinks he deposits on the neon fish tank. It’s a running joke that this estate of his, decorated by some professional idiot, should belong to a Colombian drug lord.

  He stops at the double doors and raises his eyebrows at me. I put my hands in his hair to muss it, to shake out the public and make a private mess for myself.

  ‘Did you see Billy’s face when Tom won? He’s such a bad actor, he couldn’t even hide it for one close-up. I hope the camera caught it.’

  ‘Your look was good.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Do it now,’ I tell him. He likes me to give him commands, sometimes.

  He makes the losing face, giving it a hint of the best man won, and I laugh.

  ‘You’re too good,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll go shoot the others and get that award for you.’

  ‘I’m so glad I employ you,’ he says. He fiddles with the top button of his shirt. ‘These are so small. Jesus, help, I’m trapped in this thing.’

  But talk of the job has cut through the come-ons. ‘I’ve got to do a sweep first.’

  ‘And bring the meds.’

  ‘Bloody Americans, with your meds. Pills, love, we’ve got to take the pills.’

  ‘So do it.’

  ‘I am!’

  ‘So go.’

  To show him that I can, I walk away, but he knows he owns me. He has since Paris, the city of love, where the skin traders lurk on every corner from the dingy market stalls on the banks of the Seine to the Galleries Lafayette. Love comes in all price ranges.

  No, not Paris in my thoughts now – I need a clear head. I bring out my baton from the inside pocket of my jacket. It puts my brain in the right place to make my sweep. From room to room, quick and quiet. I go outside for a word with the perimeter guard. Mike’s on tonight, monitoring the screens from the booth by the main gate. He’s good; he’s a safe pair of hands. After our conversation I stand on the gravel driveway and look west, out over the Downs, and all the land Max owns. These are protected grounds where a deer herd is managed, and three full-time rangers ride their quad bikes like it’s a racing track. I raised it with Max once and he said, ‘I’m getting an easy ride, so why shouldn’t they?’

  I get it. I really do. But the people that feed on him make me angry. I make myself angry, sometimes, for being yet another parasite. But not tonight. The stars are out and the cold slice of the air upon my lips makes me want him more.

  So I go back into the house and fetch the pills in the bathroom that’s the size of my aunt’s bungalow in Bristol. The pills are orange and tiny; they’re another reminder of Paris. The guy who sold them to us looked over his shoulder the entire time. He didn’t open the envelope to check the money Max gave him. He just pocketed it and scuttled back into the shadows of the Sacre Coeur. I suppose he thought he knew where he could find Max if he’d been ripped off.

  The whole world thinks it knows where it can find Max. Only I know where to find Max right now. Through the cream double doors, and he is laid out on the four-poster bed with black silk sheets. Ridiculous, and mouthwatering.

  I hand him a pill, and we swallow them down together.

  The bodies, bodies together, are not love. Sex is not love, and I am not stupid. But
we were in love before there was sex between us and surely that means something. It had built to something real before there was even that first tentative kiss. The body is just the instrument of the emotion; how can it be only in those cells and nowhere else? I’m overcomplicating this so I take off my clothes and leave the baton on the bedside table. I fold each article carefully before placing it on the ornate chair that must be worth more than a hundred skins.

  ‘Any time,’ Max says.

  ‘You’ll keep.’

  ‘I’m too tired tonight.’

  ‘Yeah yeah.’

  He fakes a snore. His eyes are closed. We know this game. I tiptoe, and pounce. He’s ready for me, he wraps me up, he says, ‘I love you,’ on an exhalation, like the words escape from inside him. ‘Let me,’ he says, and we roll so I’m lying on my front and he can stroke my back. He likes to touch more than to be touched. He makes love, breathes his love upon me. I feel it. As the moments pass, I feel it in every place where he puts his fingers and his mouth.

  ‘Tell me about your first kiss,’ he says.

  I shake my head against the pillow.

  ‘Just give me something. Some piece of you.’

  He begs me on the bad nights, but I won’t ruin this with the past. ‘I do give you everything. Everything that’s right here and now is yours.’

  ‘I feel like I don’t know you.’

  ‘You know me,’ I tell him. ‘You’re in me.’

  Afterwards, he sleeps, and my skin starts to itch.

  My skin is loosening.

  It’s starting to fall away.

  I get up.

  This can’t be happening, it wasn’t meant to happen, the pills – a last hope – to the bathroom, for more pills, and I take one, then two, then all of them in mechanical movements. I don’t know if I’m trying to stop the process or stop myself from moving on.

  I lie down on the tiles, so warm from the underfloor heating. It’s easy to be still. The sensation of itchiness builds as my top layer of skin separates, starting around my stomach until it is a loose flap in which fluid moves, like a blister. It’s so quick this time. The need to scratch cannot be ignored any more. The pills do nothing, I have to face that now; they neither kill me nor save me. What a waste of money. What a waste.

  I rub myself against the tiles in a frenzy of itching until the skin splits, spilling forth fluid, and I can wriggle free of it. Then I know no more until morning.

  › • ‹

  I wake to find Max standing over me.

  ‘The meds didn’t work,’ he says.

  He holds out a hand that I don’t take. I lie still. From the corner of my eye I can see my old skin, beside me, light and delicate as a shroud. I touch it, and for a moment I feel last night, and all the nights back to Paris and before.

  I stop touching it. I look up at Max, naked Max, the film star; so many people would pay for this view. I wish he was wearing some clothes. I wish we both were.

  ‘We should get dressed,’ I say, and that is enough to give it all away.

  ‘Oh shit, Rosie,’ he says. He crouches down beside me and strokes my face while I wonder how long I have to let him.

  2003. In Training.

  Rose, alone, ran after the bobbing ponytail and implacable back of the instructor in the distance. Her breathing wouldn’t fall naturally with the timing of her feet and the pain built quickly in her lungs and calves. Perhaps it was the uneven ground that made it so much harder than it should have been. Squashing the reedy grass underfoot, tramping down nettles, she kept going, wishing she’d worn long jogging trousers rather than shorts.

  When the instructor – Petra – came to a sudden halt, Rose’s pride stopped her from dropping to the ground. She bent over, put her hands on her knees. Her legs were freely decorated with white welts and fine red scratches. She sucked in air, over and over. The day was cold but she didn’t feel it, only the awareness of it, the wind careering around her, unable to touch the warmth inside.

  ‘I thought you said you kept yourself pretty fit?’ said the instructor, through measured breaths.

  Rose straightened up. ‘It’s the ground.’ Back in the direction they had come, the disused airbase was no longer visible.

  ‘City running.’

  ‘It’ll get better.’

  Petra slid a hand along the dark length of her ponytail, pulling the weight of it over one shoulder. ‘You don’t need to do that. Make excuses. I’m not your boss.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Rose.

  ‘This isn’t my job, I mean. I just help Phin out sometimes, and he helps me out. In return.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How does he help you out?’

  Petra shook her head. The ponytail bounced. She looked like the perfect image of a personal trainer: so upright, so together. ‘You’re ex-RAF, right? Then a bouncer.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And now about to become a bodyguard.’ She opened and closed her fingers in bursts. ‘To Max Black, no less. It’s a

  good gig.’

  ‘Right.’ Rose looked along the line of the hedgerow, into the indiscernible distance. It wasn’t a city. That was all it needed to be, right now.

  ‘I hope you like bodyguarding. I did.’

  ‘You guarded Mr Black?’

  ‘No. Some other rich good-looking dream. Then I woke up.’A closer look at Petra’s face showed a hint of age, but she was by no means an old woman. Still, she wore that soft expression when talking of the past.

  ‘You miss it,’ Rose said.

  ‘We all move on.’

  That, at least, was certain. We all move on. Whether we want to or not.

  ‘Let’s get back for lunch,’ said Petra, and was gone, running at a steady, speedy pace. Rose squared her shoulders, sucked in a breath, and set off after her.

  Later, at Petra’s house, Rose took a hot shower and the sensation was of her lassitude being washed from her, puddling around her feet and circling the plughole. She was fully awake for what felt like the first time since leaving the RAF. If she ran again now, she would do better.

  The steam rushed and tumbled from the window as soon as she released the catch, and the cold poured in to take its place. She looked out over the airbase: the empty hangars and the silent stretch of the runway, the encroaching weeds spotting it all with green. So still, and so different from what she was used to. To be without people was good, though. To be separate, and to have space.

  Apart from Petra, who was waiting downstairs in the kitchen with a chicken salad sandwich, the bread cheap and white, the tomatoes overripe and tasty.

  ‘How long were you a bodyguard?’ Rose asked, in between bites.

  ‘Four years. Then I went into business on my own.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’ She had changed into a fresh tracksuit, black and businesslike. ‘Being a bodyguard opens doors to all sorts of worlds. That’s the main thing. You meet people. Just don’t fall for any bullshit.’

  ‘Phineas said the clients were all in the entertainment business.’

  ‘That’s what I mean. It’s all glamour and promises. And you’re never on the inside. Nobody is, really.’

  They ate standing up, with plates on the work surface next to the sink. Petra switched on the kettle, and the soft, building noise filled the room.

  ‘It’s so quiet here,’ Rose said.

  ‘It’s my hideaway. The MOD sold these houses off for next to nothing when they closed down the base. Old military quarters. Plus nobody’s watching the place any more so it’s a perfect location for training. It’s not guarded; I cut a hole in the fence and I come and go as I want. Weapon practice. That stuff. Miles of unused ground. Of course, you’ll know most of it already. That’s why you only get the week-long

  refresher.’

  Rose finished the sandwich. She could have eaten another but didn’t know if she should ask. To what extent was this, the whole thing, a test?r />
  ‘If you could tell me one thing that I should know, what would it be?’

  Petra chewed her mouthful, taking her time, and swallowed. ‘At some point, it will end. Tea?’

  ‘Yes please. Everything does, though.’

  ‘Not like this does. Leaving you sorry you ever got close to it. Almost believing the lie that life is so much better for some lucky, beautiful, chosen people. And then you end up somewhere else, and it all seems like it never happened. So remember who you are, down inside. The thing that is most you.’

  ‘Right,’ said Rose.

  ‘You know what I mean?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘No you don’t,’ Petra said, as she took down two mismatched mugs from a cupboard.

  ‘No,’ Rose agreed. ‘I don’t.’

  2013. Stolen skin.

  There are sad cases and happy ever after stories everywhere, and sometimes there are both rolled up in the same skin. I told Terence, once, about the Grecian vase, the neon fish tank and the awards ceremonies. That life reflected in his eyes, a sparkling dream, and he said, ‘You had it all, then, Rose.’ Then the glitter faded. The smell of second-hand clothes kicked into his nostrils once more, and his mindcouldn’t put the two together. I saw it so clearly, the moment when he decided I was pulling his leg.

  ‘Good one,’ he said. ‘Good one.’ He went back to sorting out the contents of the bin bags.

  The Skin Disease Centre makes a good amount in charitable donations from this little shop. It’s set up in the far corner of the reception area, behind the rows of plastic chairs, and we squeeze as much as we can on to the racks and shelves: clothes, books, trinkets and teacups. The back room is piled even higher with items waiting to be given the chance to sell; my hand gets tired with pricing it all with the ancient sticker gun. Ten pence for this coaster, a pound for that cardigan.

  But hey, it’s just a tired hand attached to a tired body. It’s not fatal. When you fall a long way for a long time and a cushion provides a soft landing, you don’t complain that it smells bad and has had six previous owners. That last job should have been the end of me, but here I am.