Stronger Than Skin

by Stephen May

  ‘Brrr,’ he says, rubbing his hands and blowing on them as he moves into the kitchen that feels suddenly crowded now. ‘Brass monkeys in here. Hey babe.’

  He kisses Lulu and she wraps her arms around him to pull him into a deeper kiss. A public display of affection from which Jake emerges breathless.

  ‘Steady on,’ he says, embarrassed. He catches my eye. ‘And, Mr Chadwick, Sir. Mark. How are you doing?’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘He’s fine, Jakey, he’s had cereal. He’s had beer. He’s told me all about Young Jake – you wee rascal, you. You scallywag.’

  Jake does a theatrical surprised face, hands to his cheeks in mock-horror.

  ‘You didn’t tell her about Kayleigh Harbinson?’ he says. I tell him I concentrated more on the baby owl story.

  ‘What’s the Kayleigh whatshername story?’ Lulu’s eyes glitter. She can clearly guess what kind of story it is.

  ‘Kayleigh Harbinson,’ says Jake. ‘She was a right goer. I’ll tell you all about her later.’

  He doesn’t seem discomfited at all. In fact, Lulu and Jake seem very easy with each other. No stretch to believe that they are in love, that they are ready to become parents. That the ages they are might turn out to be the very best ages for it.

  Jake makes more tea and as he does so he tells us about the irritated detectives who appeared down in the bar fifteen minutes after I had headed off. The detectives who had left the hotel scowling and muttering to each other.

  ‘Proper pissed off they were,’ says Jake as he hands us mugs of strong tea. ‘Gutted.’

  ‘They don’t have you on CCTV giving Mark a warning?’ Lulu says.

  ‘Nah. They did take our tapes but we don’t have any cameras covering

  where we were talking. It’s a blind spot, it’s why I picked it.’

  ‘You’re sure? Because this blinking country has cameras everywhere these days.’

  ‘Yeah, but most of them are bust,’ says Jake.

  Blinking? I think. Blinking? It must be obvious that this thought is flickering across my face.

  ‘Lu doesn’t like to curse,’ says Jake. ‘Not properly.’

  ‘It’s unimaginative,’ she says, her eyes moving over me with an off-centre look that makes me wonder if I have done any unimaginative cursing in front of her. I don’t think I have. Just the one bloody that I can recall. She smiles suddenly as if she can read my mind.

  ‘You worry too much Mr Chadwick,’ she says.

  ‘I swear a lot,’ Jake says. ‘She’s always telling me off.’ They share a look. Both of them smiling again. They really do seem like a great young couple. Lulu’s tiredness seems to have gone. She cups both hands round her mug. Takes a sip. Looks at me.

  I can see that she’s actually got a very striking face. Disquieting with its surprising planes and angles. Now that Jake is back the shadows have vanished and her face has electricity in it, quick and agile, strong cheekbones. Long eyelashes. The red in her hair catches the light and gives her a strange halo. She reminds me of someone, though I can’t think who. She looks like an indie movie star. That French one that’s getting all the press at the moment. Or maybe she looks like a singer I’ve seen profiled recently.

  ‘Of course I don’t know much about it,’ she says, ‘but my feeling is that successful fugitives need money. Quite a lot of money. Money and a place to go.’

  ‘I’ll get going soon.’ I say. ‘Get out of your hair.’

  ‘No need to rush,’ says Jake.

  ‘Where are you going to go anyway?’ says Lulu. ‘I’m curious. You have somewhere to hide out that doesn’t cost? You have friends and family?’

  Not that I can trust, I think. Not that the police don’t know about. But I don’t need long. Only a week and then I can concentrate on the real work of repairing the torn fabric of my life.

  ‘I’ll be okay,’ I say. I’m really hoping this is true.

  There is silence now. I wonder what time it is. The grey light outside seems to be getting stronger. Maybe it is time to get going.

  ‘Anyone want a proper drink?’ I say. ‘Not Steinbrau Blonde – couldn’t bring myself to replace like with like. I got proper beer. Adnams.’

  Jake laughs. ‘It’s seven in the morning, Sir.’

  Lulu raises her head. ‘I’ll have one.’ She opens it with a bottle opener she has on her key ring, takes a swallow. ‘Hm, very nice. Normally you can only get Special Brew there. Maybe even the dossers drink craft beers now. Oh, and here’s a thought. You should stay here.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ says Jake. He forces a laugh as if trying to make us think Lulu might be joking. Her lips twitch. She raises an eyebrow. That’s all it takes to get Jake to subside into silence. There’s a pause.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I say.

  ‘You have a better plan, Mark? What were you going to do? Exactly?’

  Of course I don’t really know. Maybe the universe would provide, send a sign.

  ‘There are lots of cheap hotels,’ I say.

  ‘They’ll want ID,’ Lulu says. ‘And the police can use TripAdvisor too. Simple thing to have some poor community support officers knocking on hotel doors.’

  ‘Might take a while to track me down.’

  ‘It might. But then again they might get lucky on day one.’

  ‘I could get a tent,’ I say.

  Lulu laughs, Jake snorts and I find I’m smiling too. It does sound pathetic I guess. I think about a tent. About finding a suitable pitch, somewhere that avoids the ID problem. Could I even put a put the tent up on my own? Last few years we have taken the kids to those child-friendly festivals like Wilderness or Latitude, and it’s always Katy who takes the lead in tent construction. I am very much restricted to an assistant role. An ineffectual holder of poles, a banger in of the metal pegs when the real work is almost done.

  ‘You should definitely stay here,’ says Lulu. Another pause. The selection of another cigarette. The lighting of it. A deep pull. Smoke coiling and rising around the cheap yellowish sphere of the kitchen light.

  She turns to me again. ‘Don’t forget you’ll also be getting some eyes out in the outside world. People looking out for you.’

  That is true. And it’s important: no one can do anything on their own. You need a team for everything. For little things and big things. We live in a world of partnerships, of networks, of groups and gangs and teams. No world for lone wolves.

  I look at Jake. He’s looking at the floor, hands clasped in front of him, apparently deep in thought.

  ‘Jake?’ I say.

  ‘I think Lulu always gets what she wants.’

  ‘It’s true I do,’ she says. Her dark eyes gleam. I wonder why she’s so keen to get me to stay.

  She shrugs. ‘You’ve got an interesting face,’ she says, ‘perhaps I’ll take your picture.’

  13

  Later, in the bank: waiting. It’s agonising, though my impatience is shared by all the others in the line. Everyone is sighing at the slowness of the one cashier, rolling their eyes at the way people take their time over a simple thing like paying in or taking out money. All of them wishing they’d done whatever they have to do online.

  It’s funny though, each huffing customer, so fidgety in the queue, becomes a dawdler themselves when called forward to cashier number one please. It’s as if they have somehow earned the right for a long heart-to-heart with the bank guy just because they have been kept waiting. As if taking ages in their turn will somehow make up for the lost time. Illogical and infuriating.

  According to the name badge hanging slack from his schoolboyish white shirt, the bank guy is called Ian. Ian is chubby-faced, in his early thirties, with an uneven goatee in which small flecks of grey are already visible. He has the soft, defeated, eager-to-please look of someone still living with his mum. Worried eyes that widen when I tell him I want all £3,212 of my savings out in cash there and then.

  ‘I’ll be half a sec,’ he says.

  I feel the pressur
e of the people behind me shift, a silent, disapproving sigh seems to escape from them all in unison. I have become a dawdler myself, an idler, another man abusing his time at the till. Someone stopping the weekend getting started. Spoiling things for everyone.

  Where is this Ian going? I try not to worry. I imagine conversations with line managers. Ian is just a clerk after all. There’ll be permission to be sought from somewhere. Doesn’t mean anything sinister. Not necessarily.

  I try to slow down my heart rate, to control the urge to bolt. Surely there will be no stops on my money quite yet? Next week it could be different, but right now this £3,212 is still mine to use as I see fit. If I want to take it all out I can. If I want to burn it all I can. No one can stop me.

  I check my watch.

  Ian’s half a sec turns out to be seven long minutes. I fight the urge to apologise personally to those behind me, but I can feel their eyes boring into my back.

  Ian is all smiles when he comes back, but offers no explanation for his absence. Just gives a quick, cheerful ‘sorry about that’ as he slides back into his seat. I think how Ella would have responded. I’m sorry about your face, she would have said. Everything is your face at the moment. You tell Ella her room needs a bit of a tidy, she tells you your face needs a bit of a tidy. You tell her she’s being a bit childish, she tells you your face is a bit childish. Then she thinks for a moment and says yes, you’ve got her on that one, she is childish. But maybe, Dad, that’s because she is, after all, an actual child. Which is when you tell her she’s a strange kid and that it’s a good job she makes you laugh. She tells you your face is strange, that it’s a good job your face makes her laugh. It should annoy me, but it doesn’t.

  I sign the forms and stuff thirty-three bundles of the Queen’s face into my rucksack.

  I always meant to be more prudent. I meant to put away 10 per cent of my earnings ever since I first got a proper job. I meant to tithe myself in order to ensure some cushion against exactly this moment. But there’d always been something to spend money on. A broken boiler, a dying car, a dead dishwasher. A storm-damaged roof. An emergency holiday. An urgent sofa. A vital bathroom upgrade. A baby.

  So the saving thing never really happened. Not properly. Instead I just have this 3K. It is something though. It is definitely that. Shouldn’t need this money to last long. It should be plenty. I had even wondered about just taking out enough for a week, but in the end had decided that I might as well gather all the resources I could while I could. Because you never know.

  Takes me a while but in the end I find a call box and phone Katy. She doesn’t pick up. I spend a pound to listen to Ella and Jack do the voicemail message again. As I twist the payphone’s cord around my wrist, as my children’s voices come through that obsolete wire, I’m aware of faces outside turning my way, of some gum-chewing and hoodied pre-teens pointing through the glass at me. This is clearly no good. I need a proper phone.

  So coming out of the call box I go in search of the cheapest phone on the market. I find it in Cash Converters and these dumb phones are so cheap that on a whim I buy seven of them. One for every day of the week. I can use one, throw it away, unwrap another.

  The salesman, a skinny teenager with an astonishing black and bushy woodcutter’s beard, is quite impressed I think.

  Cashcon has to be the saddest shop in any town. Tablets, phones, laptops, mountain bikes. The massive flat slabs of home cinema systems. You find all of that in there, but that’s not the sad thing. The sad thing is to see just how much musical equipment is on offer. Guitars, keyboards, drums, violins, saxophones. This shop even has a fine Irish harp for sale. A hundred and nineteen pounds, or fifteen quid a week for ten weeks if you buy it that way.

  A lot of creativity ends up stockpiled in the contemporary pawnbrokers – pre-loved dreams offered for sale at a few quid a week. Dreams given up to buy food, pay the rent and get the kids some nappies.

  Outside again and heading for Superdrug, I think how weird is to be doing errands, to be getting stuff, to be poking about in Cash Converters, to be shopping almost as if it were any normal Saturday. I’m drifting. I need to do something more than this. Take control.

  In Superdrug I buy razors, toothpaste and top-end aftershave. The bank clerk – Ian – had smelled of cheap scent. Lot of Lynx going on, depressing in a grown man. Like bottled under-achievement. Distilled essence of low self-esteem. However bad things get I don’t want to smell like that.

  From there I go to M&S and make the menswear department very happy by buying a cheap suit that more or less fits. I also buy two pairs of jeans, half a dozen nondescript shirts, some t-shirts, socks, underwear. Pyjamas. A pair of anonymous shoes.

  Despite being a Saturday morning it is so quiet in there that all three of the sales guys in menswear are serving me. Three tall young lads with well-moisturised faces and shockwaved hair. They do the business of de-tagging and bagging and taking cash as if they were constrained by the rules of some ancient guild, each taking one part of the task. They take almost no notice of me because one of them – the shortest and the blondest – is regaling the others with a story of sexual conquest. A tale of some shit he’s in with the missus because of a piece of accidental adultery.

  ‘One mistake should be allowed, shouldn’t it?’ he says. He has an impish face, and a scruffy five-day beard that makes him look like a bonobo or some other excitable primate.

  ‘Yeah, should be, like, three strikes and you’re out kind of thing,’ says the second guy, smiling.

  ‘Wasn’t with one of her mates, was it?’ This is the third guy, the one who hands the bags to me. He is pulling at his top lip, growing unexpectedly and darkly pensive. Clearly this is his personal line that can’t be crossed. Cheating is okay as long as you leave your missus’s contact list out of it. His buddy is quick to reassure him.

  ‘No. Girl what works in Housing Advice. One of the graduate trainees.’

  ‘Girl from the council? You want to be careful. Playing with fire there matey. Housing Advice sheesh,’ says the second guy. He is obviously impressed though.

  ‘There you go, my friend.’ He hands me the bags. He doesn’t even look at me.

  ‘You just have to deny it and keeping denying it,’ says bonobo-face.

  ‘Yeah. Never apologise, never explain,’ says his mate.

  All three of them are grinning at each other. A conspiracy of cheating bastard men. I want to bang their heads together.

  I am in the store’s cafe when the police arrive. Shocking how suddenly the torpid atmosphere of the shop is ruptured by a shouting swarm of bulky black stab vests moving with surprising grace through the womenswear department, knocking aside racks of lingerie, pushing their way through the LBDs and the yoga pants as they head towards me.

  I take a panicked look around. There’s nowhere to go. I stand, ready for rough hands to seize me, ready for my head to be shoved onto the table amid the scone crumbs, ready for the cuffs.

  Only the police run past me, dodging between the tightly packed tables like side-stepping rugby players. It’s not me they’re after. On one of the cafe’s two faux leather sofas a bloke rises, runs his hands through his hair resignedly. He looks kind of relieved. He’s in his mid-thirties maybe, slight build, clothes just a bit too young for him. Skinny jeans, scarlet hoodie, Converse trainers.

  A girl next to him starts to weep silently, shoulders heaving, as the police surround the two of them. She’s fifteen at a guess. Seventeen at most. I teach several year nines who look older than her. The two of them are led away, as docile as well-trained labradors.

  As I sit again, feeling foolish but with my heart thumping, I hear the man at the next table telling his wife that it’s that RE teacher, the one that run away with that girl. Remember? The one that has been in the papers? That bloke has ruined his life for a shag, he says. What a berk.

  Jake and Lulu are still upstairs when I get back to their place. I know they’re in because, as I lock the bike in the hallway –
better to be safe than sorry – I can hear the murmur of voices, the creak of weight shifting in the bed, canned laughter from some TV show.

  I clear away the beer cans and put the cereal bowls in the sink. I can’t wash them because there is no washing-up liquid. Jake and Lulu need to do a big shop. Maybe I can do it for them. I’ll think about that.

  I pick up the post-it notes that have fallen from their perches and are scattered on the floor like yellow petals. I put them back in their rightful places, only they have lost their stickiness and immediately flutter to the floor again. I write out new ones from the pack that sits by the kettle. Frigo, forno, radiatore and I put them on the fridge, the oven, the radiator respectively.

  I make a cup of tea and settle myself at the kitchen table, and crack on with setting cover work. I know it’s sort of ridiculous, that I have more on my mind than worrying about whether the students of Parkside have enough to do, but that’s how teaching gets you. You have to be a little in love with your kids or you wouldn’t do it. You want the best for them. If you can’t be with them for any reason you don’t want them to be fobbed off with worksheets or DVDs, you want them to do something meaningful. Something that might help them progress. So I spend time writing lesson plans that are achievable, stretching, entertaining and are at the same time easy to deliver by whichever poor sap ends up taking my classes. It feels important to do this. I find it soothing, it’s a way of tricking myself into thinking that things are still normal.

  Jake appears just as I finish. He is immaculate in white shirt, black trousers and thin knitted tie in chocolate brown, the exact same shade as his eyes.

  ‘All right, Sir? Mark I mean.’ He smiles, but you can tell his heart isn’t in it. He opens and shuts cupboards. Sighs. I tell him I’ll go and get more shopping, get some proper food in.

  ‘It’s all right.’ He asks me what I’ve been doing, where I’ve been.

  ‘Oh, you know. Had some things to sort out. Listen, Jake, I really appreciate you giving me a place to stay.’