Stronger Than Skin

by Stephen May

I stand, rub my hands together though I am not cold. It’s just what you do in front of a fire. A reflex. Outside there is a determined rain falling steadily. An aggressive wind is shaking the trees that line the street, but in here it’s going to be pretty toasty soon. I watch the paper around the fake log twist and coil and shrivel in the stove. Small yellow flames begin to dance. I shut the little glass door.

  I will have breakfast and then I will make lists. Making lists is the quickest way to put order back in your life. Or to pretend that you have, which is nearly as good.

  I called the obvious people when I first got back here but no one was talking. Some were friendly, some were distant but they all claimed they didn’t know anything. It was like they’d all signed the same oath. Tell Mark nothing. Give him no clues. Make him work for it. Make him sweat.

  The first people I called were the in-laws. Katy’s dad was coldly adamant. They didn’t know where she was and if they did they wouldn’t tell me.

  ‘If she wants to get in touch she will, Mark. You’ll have to wait.’ Then he hung up. So no help coming from there.

  Maybe Claude is right. Maybe I don’t want to be pushing my wife, wherever she is. Left to herself she might just start to miss me, miss the life we shared. The easy companionability of it. Yes, maybe I should just let them alone. Time might be my ally here. She’ll have our new baby soon. She’ll need me around then. Surely.

  After a few days I went to the school too, endured the frankly curious stares of the kids, the sly glances of the parents. The quick perfunctory nods from people I used to have good old chinwags with. They haven’t seen Jack or Ella either. The deputy-head tells me that the whole school community is missing them, thinking of them, hoping that they see them again soon. The place isn’t the same without them.

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘I know.’

  The house is too quiet. To pretend that a dead house is actually alive, you need noise as well as heat. But not music, not yet. So I put on the radio. Sport. Voices talking earnestly, passionately, about nothing at all. City came back strongly in the second-half, the home side looked distinctly uneasy as the game progressed. Then the whole atmosphere changed with one moment of brilliance. Who gives a shit? Empty arguments, lame jokes, fake excitement, heartiness. Men slapping each other on the back. Meaningless noise. Perfect.

  The kitchen door bangs open. I start. She is suddenly just there, tiny, but somehow filling the room. Something to do with her stillness. Her serious quiet. Lulu. It’s as if I somehow conjured her up just by thinking about her, like she’s a fairy in a kid’s story.

  Now she says, ‘Throwing Muses? Who are they when they’re at home?’

  She’s talking about my t-shirt. I look down at it, tightish now where once upon a time it hung off me. Strange that this tee, never a favourite, should have survived all the moves, all the culls and clear outs. Escaped all the boot sales and charity shop drops.

  ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack.’

  ‘Soz. Maybe I should have knocked politely, only…’

  ‘Not really your thing, I know.’

  She laughs. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Oh I’m all right. It’s the others.’

  Where did that come from? This was always my dad’s standard response to enquiries after his well-being. He must have said it dozens of times a night in the pub. I’ve never said it before.

  Lulu settles carefully into a chair

  She looks at me in silence now. I don’t meet her gaze. In my head I go over my shopping list. Washing up liquid. Olive oil.

  ‘I’ve been calling.’

  Jam. Cheese. A TV.

  ‘Mark?’

  ‘I know. I just…’, I shrug again. Words are increasingly pointless I find.

  ‘Yeah. You’re bound to feel weird.’

  Vegetables, I think. Pulses. Lentils. Chick peas. I could make some nourishing winter soups. Spicy dahls. Stews. Begin to be a bit healthy. My eyes flicker to the recipe books piled high on their shelf next to the cooker.

  Lulu looks around her. I wonder if the kitchen passes whatever audition is being set for it.

  ‘You happy staying here, in this place, on your own?’

  ‘Katy and the kids will be back soon.’

  ‘She’s not been in touch?’

  I don’t need to answer. Lulu nods. ‘You going to offer me a drink or what?’

  ‘Yeah, sorry. Coffee? Tea? Beer?’ I am suddenly aware I have no idea of the time. I have a sense from the radio that the early kick-off is into the second-half, so that makes it, what? One o’clock? Respectable time to start drinking on a Saturday.

  ‘Green tea if you’ve got it thanks.’

  I look at her now. She looks sheepish. She’s not blushing exactly, but there are twin pinkish dots high on her cheeks. Her brow furrows. ‘Got to start looking after myself. I’m getting to that age. Can’t live like a student all my life.’

  Why not? I think. Why the hell not? Live how you like, we’re only here for a minute.

  ‘You want a slice of lemon in it?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, go on then.’ Only turns out there are no lemons. Lulu tells me not to worry, on its own is fine too.

  I turn the radio down. I can still hear the comforting burble if not actual individual words.

  We talk about this and that. We chit and we chat. We are careful to say nothing real, nothing important. She tells me where she’s going.

  ‘Suffolk obviously. Stebbing Bardfield maybe, do my bit for the half-millennium of creativity. Try to make sure people drive carefully through the village.’

  I tell her wherever she ends up, she’ll be fine. She tells me she knows this. There’s silence again. I finish my mental shopping list. Some tins. Some stuff for the freezer. Some new sheets.

  ‘I came to give you this,’ she says.

  She hands me an A4 envelope with my name handwritten in beautiful cursive. Inside a black and white headshot on glossy paper. My own face in close-up. The photo from Felixstowe. It’s a good picture. Lulu has managed to give me a haunted film star quality. Eyes half-closed, sharp cheekbones, a two-day stubble. The camera lying like it does when handled by anyone good. It’s certainly not how I see myself. I put it back in its envelope.

  When I look at her again, she has tears in her eyes.

  She stays maybe half an hour. When she goes to leave we shake hands like wary strangers.

  ‘Stay safe,’ I say. She nods, serious.

  ‘You too,’ she says.

  There’s a pause. She looks at the floor. Then she looks up again. Stares at me hard. Eyes like searchlights through fog, dazzling and smoky at the same time.

  ‘Last chance to come with me. Doesn’t have to be Stebbing Bardfield. I’m open to suggestions. We could go to Italy.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  My phone chirrups perkily. I don’t look at it. Not straight away. Lulu and I embrace and I breathe in the vaguely citrusy scent of her. She’s getting sweat and self-pity in return. Doesn’t seem a fair swap somehow. She seems okay though, she holds me tight. There’s a moment when I think yes, Stebbing Bardfield. Felixstowe. Italy. Talent shows. Twitter even. We could do that. Live like students for the rest of our lives. ‘You smell nice,’ I say.

  She smiles at the inanity of it. ‘Cien mandarin. Lidl. 45p.’

  ‘Bargain,’ I say. We’ll never see each other again, but we’ll always be friends.

  When she goes, I remember the text. It’s from an unknown number and it makes my heart cramp. Love you to the furthest thing in the universe and back x

  I want to text back, want to tell Jack and his sister and his mother that I’m coming to get them, that I’m going to bring them back where they belong. But I don’t. Maybe they don’t belong here. Maybe I don’t deserve to be with them. Maybe I deserve to be alone, just one of the many kinds of ghost.

  I take another look at the photo Lulu gave me, then I place it on the glowing heat log. It’s a curious thing to watch your own face blister and bur
n.

  I turn off the radio. The silence grows around me.

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to all the people and institutions that have helped make this book possible including Arts Council England, Arvon Foundation, Joe Compton, Robert Davidson, Keara Donnachie, Dr Jim English, Keira Farrell, Sue Foot, Moira Forsyth, Helen Garnons-Williams, Caron May, Herbie May, Carole Ockelford, Hannah Procter, Layla Sanai, Catherine Smith, David Smith and Chris Wellbelove.

  The information about the real tensile strength of scars is adapted from Robbins Pathologic Basis of Disease - 6th edn., Kotran et al.