Snakeskins

by Tim Major

  Dodie waved half a sandwich. “See you on the inside, probably.”

  Caitlin hurried to keep up with Dr Scaife. The doctor ushered Caitlin towards the gate. Her dark eyes looked Caitlin up and down.

  A uniformed security guard pointed at Caitlin’s rucksack. “You’ll have to empty that, miss.”

  Caitlin wondered when they would find the kitchen knife hidden in the pot plant. How would they have reacted if she had left it in the bag? She tipped the bag upside down and the guard and Dr Scaife peered down as her clothes, toiletries and underwear spilled out into a plastic tray. The guard leafed through Caitlin’s dog-eared copy of The War of the Worlds. Then he transferred the toiletries to a transparent plastic bag and sealed it. “These will be confiscated. Apologies, miss.”

  Caitlin shrugged and stuffed the rest of her things into the bag. At the guard’s gesture, she stepped through the gate. No beep.

  Beyond the gate, the corridor was glass-walled along its left-hand side. Through it, Caitlin could see annexes and extensions to what must have been the original brick building. She walked slowly, trying to test the patience of Dr Scaife, who seemed determined to hurry. Caitlin had already decided she didn’t like her.

  “What’s your job here?” she asked in a conversational tone.

  “I’m the managing director.”

  “Not a real doctor?”

  Dr Scaife didn’t flinch. “None of us are, at least in the sense you mean. This isn’t a hospital.”

  “Of course. More like a hotel. Residents, and all that.”

  “No. It would be facetious to say that. This is a care home.”

  “So your job is to care?”

  The doctor didn’t respond. She strode in silence along the bright corridor.

  “So why am I getting the VIP treatment?” Caitlin said. Her dad would say that she was in one of her ‘frames of mind’, when all she wanted to do was piss people off. “I’m guessing you don’t have to give the tour to every single visitor?”

  “You’re an originator. Visits by originators are a rarity. This is a courtesy.”

  Something about Dr Scaife’s tone suggested that she regarded Caitlin with some degree of awe. She mustn’t be a Charmer.

  “Because without me, you’d be out of a job,” Caitlin said.

  “Partly that.”

  Caitlin waited for the second half of Dr Scaife’s observation, but it didn’t come. The featureless corridor made it hard to judge how far they had walked. They hadn’t passed a single door. “Where are you taking me?”

  “You’re a visitor. I’m taking you to the visitors’ lounge.”

  “Not a ward?”

  “I told you, this isn’t a hospital.”

  A shudder ran through Caitlin’s body. She had no real idea what to expect. She wanted to run back the way she had come, through the security gate and the revolving door, and gulp lungfuls of air. Whatever was in store was something that normal people would never have to experience.

  “Here we are,” Dr Scaife announced. The parquet flooring ended at a door. Beyond, the corridor continued white-floored, then stretched away in two directions from a junction.

  The glass surface of the door to the visitors’ lounge was engraved with etchings of curled leaves, though for a moment Caitlin thought they looked like paper or even peeling skin.

  “Your duplicate has been made ready for you,” Dr Scaife said as she pushed open the door. “There’s no need to be afraid.”

  Caitlin shielded her eyes against dazzlingly bright light. An enormous, arched window took up most of the opposite wall. Through it, Caitlin could see a lawn encircled by drooping willows. Birds hopped around a stone birdbath in its centre. She could see no doors leading from the building into the garden.

  Her eyes adjusted to the light. Against a wall, between two large vases bursting with flowers of all colours, was a large, crimson armchair. And sitting in the chair, dwarfed by its high back, was Caitlin’s Skin.

  A smaller chair had been pulled up to face the Skin, a few metres away from her. Caitlin edged towards it at the speed of a sleepwalker. The effect of seeing her twin was disorientating – a mirror image that refused to mirror her actions. The girl was sitting very still. She was pale and the air around her seemed to shimmer and sparkle. Was she about to ash, right here, right now?

  Then Caitlin saw what was creating the light effect. A curved wall of transparent plastic formed a barrier between the two chairs. It made a semicircle around the Skin.

  The building was full of invisible walls. Was this one designed to keep the Skin in, or Caitlin out?

  Caitlin glanced at Dr Scaife, who nodded. When Caitlin sat in the chair her knees touched the clear barrier. As well as being smaller than the Skin’s chair, it was lower. The Skin sat on a raised dais, so that Caitlin had to tilt her head up to make eye contact. Perhaps whoever designed this setup wanted visitors to feel that Skins were higher in status, like royalty in the old days. Or perhaps they wanted to make visitors feel uncomfortable so they wouldn’t stay long.

  The Skin watched her wordlessly.

  “Can you hear me?” Caitlin said in a small voice.

  “Yes.” In contrast, the Skin’s voice was clear, though a little higher than Caitlin had expected. She reminded herself that that was natural enough. Her own voice would probably sound higher-pitched without the bass rumble she experienced in her chest when she spoke.

  The Skin was dressed in a pale-blue smock, halfway between a summer dress and a hospital gown. Her red hair was loose around her shoulders; Caitlin never wore her hair that way in public.

  They sat in silence. Caitlin examined her twin, still uncertain whether it felt like appraising her reflection or a stranger. The girl’s freckles spilled from her face and onto her shoulders. Her legs were pale and too thin for her body. Caitlin noticed things other than physical characteristics, too, things she couldn’t be certain she shared. A blink that was fractionally too slow. A mouth that was never quite still. One hand gripping the wrist of the other.

  Caitlin looked down at her own hands. They were held in exactly the same way.

  She had no idea what to say.

  “Could you come closer to the wall?” she said at last. “Your chair is so far away.”

  “I’m fine here. Thanks.” The Skin glanced downwards momentarily. Caitlin saw a thin strap threaded across the Skin’s waist, like a car seat belt.

  “Have they told you anything?” Caitlin said. She hoped she wouldn’t be forced to complete the sentence. About how long you have left?

  The Skin shook her head. “I don’t think they know. It’s a waiting game.”

  “I spoke to Dad,” Caitlin said.

  The Skin’s mouth twitched.

  “It’s okay,” Caitlin said. “I know he’s been here to visit you.”

  The thought that only hours ago she had seriously considered killing her Skin filled Caitlin with revulsion. The girl was calm, on the outside, but Caitlin knew enough about herself to see that she was terrified. And Caitlin was certain that she wasn’t only terrified of ashing, either. The Skin was scared of Caitlin.

  She took a breath. “Dad told me about Mum’s Skins. Some of them lasted. You might too.”

  “He mentioned it. I couldn’t decide whether it was a good or a bad thing.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  The Skin’s eyes became darker, or at least more piercing. “So is that what you think? That me living for a month would be good?”

  “Of course.” But Caitlin could see that the Skin had noticed her hesitation.

  “For you?”

  “For you. And that’s what matters.”

  “Because why?”

  “Because that’s how people are.”

  “I’m not a person. I’m a Skin. I could pretend that I thought I wasn’t, that I was you. But I know what I am. These memories in here—” she tapped the side of her head “—have a certain… I don’t know… flavour. They’re mine but not mine.”<
br />
  Caitlin sensed that she was being tested. Given how much the Skin was able to anticipate her thoughts, had she also guessed that Caitlin had considered murder?

  “But you can think, can’t you?” Caitlin said. “You can feel?”

  “You ask that as if you’re not sure yourself.” The Skin’s hands were digging deep into the arms of the chair.

  It really was like arguing with herself. An internal argument, going around and around. Was she always this hot-headed?

  “So put me right,” Caitlin said. “Tell me whether you think and feel.”

  The Skin turned to the enormous window. Outside, the breeze pushed one of the willows to brush against the glass. “I feel. At least, it feels that way.” She laughed hollowly. “Now, there’s a philosophical conundrum. How can you decide whether you feel, if your only evidence is a feeling?”

  “Stop it.”

  “Sorry.” For the first time, the Skin’s facade fell away. “But I don’t know how else to put it. I can remember things. And I make sense of the world by comparing what I see to the things I remember.”

  Caitlin’s throat was suddenly dry. “Everything? You remember everything?”

  “Who can tell? I think so.”

  “Prove it.”

  Was this what she wanted? To prove that the Skin was just like her – that there was no appreciable difference? She would be happier not knowing. But Caitlin kept prodding, the way she would play with a scab or a loose tooth.

  “You want to set me an exam?” the Skin said. She sounded genuinely angry now. Angry and tired. “I know you’re watching me, sizing me up. But you haven’t for a second considered that I’m doing exactly the same thing. I’m as curious about you as you are about me. And you know what? We’re equally horrified.”

  “I want to understand. I didn’t have to come here.”

  The Skin’s eyes glistened. She wriggled, fidgeting against the restraining belt. “No. And you shouldn’t have come. None of the others do. And we understand it, us Skins. We know we’re abandoned. And you know what? It turns out that you being here doesn’t make me feel one tiny bit better. Now do you understand?”

  “Stop,” Caitlin said, her voice little more than a whimper. “Stop.”

  “You bloody well stop.” The Skin leant forwards in her seat. Despite the distance between them and the barrier, Caitlin recoiled.

  “You want to know if we have the same memories? Let’s see now.” The Skin’s voice became a staccato rattle. “Getting stuck up the oak tree in the garden, then cracking an ankle on the way down. Pushing Mum into the swimming pool in Dorset, while she was still wearing her dress. Losing Little Doggy in that hotel in Blackpool. Dad setting up the old reel-to-reel to record our own version of Alice in Wonderland, with me as Alice and him doing the voices of all the animals. Me and Evie cutting our thumbs and pressing them together, saying we were ‘blood sisters’ at that caravan park in Thirsk. Doing a poo in the bath because I was so scared of Tobe’s wolfman costume at Halloween.” She sat back. “Yeah, I think it’s all there.”

  Caitlin’s chest pounded. She felt utterly defeated.

  “You’re panicking,” the Skin said. There was a cruel tinge to her voice. “You’re not up to this.”

  “I’m not. I—”

  “Go. Don’t come back. Piss off home to your family.” The Skin choked slightly on the world ‘your’.

  Caitlin jerked up from her chair. Suddenly, the Skin appeared dreadfully ugly, sneering with triumph. Nobody should have to see themselves like this. It felt like a nightmare.

  She tried to recapture the sense of what she had lectured Evie about, again and again until Evie rolled her eyes and told her to shut the hell up. Charmers and Skins were as similar to one another as anyone could be. More similar than sisters. More similar than twins. It ought to mean something.

  She took a step closer to the barrier. She forced herself to smile.

  “Don’t you fucking dare,” the Skin said. Her voice trembled with rage.

  Caitlin refused to move away. She watched the girl, her wild red hair, the swollen patches under her eyes. She was almost unrecognisable now.

  The girl writhed against the seat belt. Her fingernails looked as though they might tear through the fabric of the chair. She spluttered and sobbed.

  “I said go,” she croaked. Then, in a sudden roar that shook the barrier and make sparkles dance before Caitlin’s eyes, “GO!”

  Caitlin staggered backwards as if the Skin had shoved her. Her hands clamped over her mouth in a muddled instinctive attempt to stop the other girl from shouting.

  The Skin continued to scream as Caitlin pushed past Dr Scaife, then fumbled at the door and dropped to her knees in the corridor outside.

  NINE

  Ellis Blackwood was one of the few people that Russell knew who possessed a mobile telephone. It wasn’t even one of the ridiculous models with enormous battery packs that he had seen London businessmen lugging around. Ellis’s handset was compact enough for him to slip into a briefcase – something he always did whenever Russell entered the corner office.

  The thing was temperamental, though. Russell listened to the sounds of Ellis’s halting voice (“Can you hear me now?”), then his wrestling with the swivel chair as he tried to find a region with better reception (“And how about now?”), then his tapping of its buttons, before he hung up with a sigh of exasperation.

  Then Russell heard the dial tone hum of the main phone line. He picked up the handset of his extension phone and heard a sequence of beeps – only four of them, which indicated an internal call. Ellis cleared his throat noisily before the call was answered.

  “Yes?” a female voice said.

  “You can hear me now? I have a status update, ma’am.” Ellis sounded like a schoolchild forced to speak to the head teacher.

  “Naturally. That’s essentially all that is required of you.” Russell recognised the voice as Angela McKinney’s. “Go on.”

  Ellis cleared his throat again. “The target radius has widened, ma’am.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “Yes. But more than before. Substantially more.”

  “Greater than the agreed tolerance levels?”

  “Many miles, ma’am. Yes, much greater.”

  “How many miles?”

  Russell heard a faint tapping sound. Recently, Ellis had developed the bad habit of chewing his fingernails. “A little over one hundred miles, ma’am.”

  Silence. For a moment, Russell wondered if the line had cut out. Then Angela spoke again. “That is unacceptable.”

  “I understand.”

  “You understand?” More silence. Then, “There’s something else you intend to tell me. I can tell. Is it conceivable that you have still more bad news?”

  Ellis’s voice was now so quiet that Russell had to strain to hear him. “It’s moved, as well. The centre has shifted.”

  “To where?”

  “Are you sitting down, ma’am?”

  “Spit it out, Blackwood, you fool.”

  “The centre of the target area is now identified as the western outer edge of the capital, ma’am. Close to the M25 at West Drayton, to be specific.”

  A chill passed through Russell’s body. Until now, he had suspected that if the secret related to the prospect of a GBP attack, it must be on some far-away country – something covert, possibly illegal, but relating to the maintenance of world peace. But now the mention of West Drayton, which suggested an external threat that Russell had never in his life considered, and Ellis’s uncertainty about the target… This changed everything.

  The line buzzed. Russell imagined it as the sound of Angela’s impatience.

  “It hasn’t settled, quite,” Ellis continued, gabbling in his haste. “There’s every chance that it will shift again, before—”

  “Then you must track it. And I would advise that all of you get some sleep before you leave, because you sound moronic when you’re tired. You have a little over
a week.” Incredibly, Angela’s voice had become even colder.

  “I’ll do everything I—”

  “I don’t care what you do. Solve this.”

  The line cut out. It was several seconds before Russell heard another click as Ellis hung up his phone. Russell replaced his handset carefully. He kneaded his hands and watched the door to Ellis’s office.

  So he had been half-right. It must be an attack – but not one that Ellis, or the government, could control. An attack on Britain by some foreign country that was supposedly docile and yielding to British supremacy. And somehow, the Party possessed intelligence that proved that it would be soon. Should he warn his parents to leave London immediately, or wait until he had more concrete information?

  The study door opened. Russell stood up.

  Ellis appeared even more defeated than usual. His hair stuck out at the sides in two triangular tufts. Russell imagined him sitting at his desk with his head in his hands.

  “The car is on its way,” Ellis said in a faraway voice.

  Russell glanced down at the desk diary. “I haven’t called the driver, sir. Would you like me to?”

  “Different driver. Jeremy is indisposed. I should expect I’ll be away for a while.”

  Russell’s cheeks flushed. His knee-jerk reaction was to think of Nell and the chance of approaching her – rescuing her – in Ellis’s absence. But there would be no chance of meeting with her while Ellis was away. He had mentioned earlier that Nell and Spencer would be visiting her parents for the half-term holiday.

  “And your other appointments, sir – shall I reschedule?”

  Ellis shook his head. “I’ll take care of it. Time I took a bit of responsibility for myself, yes?” He wavered visibly, on the cusp of saying something else. He shook his head. “Well then. Goodbye, Russell. Please do field calls as best you can. I ought to be back by Friday. Or thereabouts.”

  Before Russell could reply, Ellis had edged out of the office, leaving the door slightly ajar. Russell crept to it. He watched Ellis’s mournful shamble along the corridor to the plate-glass door. Ellis made a slight deviation, tracing an arc around the door to the banner-printers.