The Loosening Skin

SATURDAY, 20 JULY 2022, 5:42PM.

MIK: This is your house?

ROSE: It’s not far from the Clifton Suspension Bridge, actually. I have family near here. I run a design business.

MIK: Are you recording this? Is that why your phone’s on the table?

ROSE: It’s nothing. It’s just for my memory. Things have a way of changing when I look back on them. I thought this might help me to keep it straight. In my head.

MIK: I’m not comfortable with it.

ROSE: You don’t have to do this. This is entirely your choice.

MIK: I’m happy to talk to you, just not—

ROSE: It’s for me. I won’t sell it. I won’t play it to anyone else. You’ll have to trust me. Tell me about Taylor.

MIK: She has – uh – epidermal sclerosis.

ROSE: The skin condition? The one that’s being linked to Suscutin?

MIK: There’s no proof of that yet.

ROSE:

MIK: You think it’s funny?

ROSE: It’s ironic, I’ll give it that.

MIK: She’s dying.

ROSE: So you said. She’s dying, she’s your friend. Tell me something. Tell me about the first time you met her. Was it through Max?

MIK: Are you sure you need to record it?

ROSE: You can walk away. There’s the door. I’ll even call you a taxi, if you like. Go back and tell her you didn’t find me, if it makes you feel better.

MIK: No, okay. Yeah. I met her and Max at the same time. It was about a year after we broke up. The Sixes, I mean.

ROSE: Okay. Tell me. Tell me like it’s a story.

2012. GIVE THE MAN A CARD.

He was the only other Stuck to make it to the party.

Howard was there, of course, in the centre of a group who were hanging on his words; he winked and waved when he caught sight of Mik, and Mik smiled back. He hadn’t objected to the autobiography, and certainly appreciated even more money. He had become a wealthy man, no longer reliant on his father’s generosity, and he was standing in the centre of an exclusive London venue, high above the city lights.

If he had a misgiving, it was about the way their lives had been presented in the book. The events had gained a sheen of romantic inevitability, every moment foreshadowing the moment of the first moult, rather like one might find in a fairy tale. It all made too much sense, at the cost of reality. But this was an easy objection to put aside, considering the benefits. Frankly, Mik was surprised the others hadn’t seen it that way too.

He suspected they would come around in their own time. They had all said yes to the donation of their old skins to the British Museum; that had been Sunetra’s idea. He thought it a vain, ridiculous gesture but didn’t have the heart to veto it with everyone else in rare agreement.

Living art, she had said down the phone to him.

If he had been in the mood to puncture her enthusiasm for her latest idea he would have pointed out it was merely dead skin, and irrelevant to the living.

He made his way to the free bar, a creation of chrome and spotlights close to the glass wall, and ordered a beer.

‘Not drinking champagne?’ said a voice, on his right, and he recognised the famous, very handsome, profile.

‘It gives me mood swings,’ he said, trying to sound cool and instantly hating what he had just said. He’d met quite a few famous people since becoming a celebrity himself, but this – this was stardom personified.

‘I thought maybe it was because you weren’t celebrating.’

‘You’ve read the book, then?’

‘I’ve done more than that,’ said Max Black. ‘I’ve already bought the rights.’

‘The rights?’ Mik said, then realised what it meant. ‘Fuck, really? A film?’

‘That’s the plan. I’m getting into directing.’

‘Fuck.’ Howard hadn’t even mentioned it. Maybe he thought there would be no objection from him; it was yet more money. Probably a vast amount of money. But it was uncomfortable in a way he couldn’t immediately process. It had something to do with the difference between words on a page and images on a screen; there was less room for interpretation of events, perhaps.

‘You’re not pleased,’ Max said. ‘Listen, I’m sorry. How come Howard holds all the rights?’

‘It was easier to give control to just one of us, back when it all kicked off. Plus – and I’m aware this is a trite line – we were in love.’

‘If it makes you feel any better, he’s making you rich.’

‘Actually, it does,’ said Mik. ‘Beats the hell out of not being rich.’

Max laughed. ‘I bet it does. This is Taylor. She’s a fan of yours.’

The tall blonde in a severe suit, standing just behind Max’s shoulder, said, ‘Shut up, Max,’ in an even tone, and went back to surveying the room.

‘She’s a keen bodyguard, but an even keener Stuck-Chick.’

‘I hate that phrase,’ Mik said. There were as many male fans as female fans of the Six phenomenon; Mik had no idea why only the women got that derogatory nickname, and seemed to revel in it.

‘Me too,’ said Taylor. ‘Use it again and I’ll break your nose.’

‘She’s new,’ said Max, ‘but I really like her already.’

‘Listen, the book is true, I mean, it’s correct about a lot of stuff that happened. But it’s from Howard’s point of view.’

Max raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re saying it’s different from your point of view?’

‘Everything is different from every point of view, isn’t it?’

‘True. That’s difficult to film, though.’

Mik shrugged. ‘Isn’t it a perfect subject to try with?’ He finished his beer, and ordered another. ‘Drink?’

Max shook his head. ‘I have to get going. It was good to meet you, though.’

‘You too.’

‘Maybe – I’d like to get some thoughts about the direction the film will take – we could get together and talk it over? If you’re interested in getting your point of view up there as well.’

‘Sounds good.’

‘Taylor, give the man a card.’

The blonde reached into her suit pocket and produced a cream-coloured business card. Mik pocketed it, and she wrinkled her nose up at him, just for a moment; it was an endearing bunny-rabbit gesture at total odds with her persona.

‘See?’ said Max. ‘She only does that with the cute ones. Not with me.’

‘You’re not my type,’ she said to her employer.

‘You should talk to the others,’ said Mik. ‘Get their perspectives too. I can put you in touch, if you’d like.’

‘No thanks,’ said Max. ‘I’ve already tried them. They all said no.’

So it was a set-up, the whole thing; Max was there to meet him, to engineer a response in him, and he had the feeling Taylor was there for that reason too: to reel him in. And it had worked; it had flattered him, intrigued him. He had already made up his mind to phone the number, and get involved.

Later, after Max and Taylor had gone and Mik had given up trying to be social in favour of getting drunk and staring out over the lights of London, Howard came up behind him, and softly said, ‘Hey you.’

They hugged. Mik clung on to the familiar cushiony form of his old lover, feeling a deep nostalgia for that house they had shared on the edge of Grafham Water, and the way Howard had taken him, cherished him, managed him.

But after a brief, petulant conversation about the film rights it became obvious that everything they could say to each other would lead to disagreement at best and a shouting match at worst. If he was going to shout at any of them, it would be Howard, who always thought he was in control but cried easily and satisfyingly. Mik said goodbye, and left the party. It looked like it would happily go on all night without him.

SATURDAY, 20 JULY 2022, 6:57PM.

MIK: I should find a hotel or something.

ROSE: I told you, stay here. Can you concentrate now, please, because I’m recording again.

MIK: You were his bodyguard? Max’s?

ROSE: For a while.

MIK: You were lovers?

ROSE: For a while.

MIK: He told me once you were the love of his life.

ROSE: He told me that too.

MIK: You didn’t believe him? He didn’t seem to be a womaniser.

ROSE: I don’t know what love is any more.

ROSE: Tell me what love is. To you.

MIK: To me? That’s impossible.

ROSE: Tell me how love starts. Can you do that? How does love between six people start? It was all for the papers, wasn’t it? It couldn’t have been real. I touched the skins. They felt… artificial.

MIK: Didn’t you read the information sheet before you went in? The museum had all the skins treated with a fixative, to preserve them. It can alter the way it feels.

ROSE: No. I didn’t see that.

MIK: It was real. I promise you. It didn’t happen all at once, though. I fell for them one at a time, and they accepted me into their lives. Quite quickly, actually.

ROSE: So which one was first for you?

2009. FAST LEARNER.

‘Speak Russian to me,’ said Nicky.

They had grabbed the two seats just in front of the luggage rack, being quick to board the stopper train, and with the aisle now filled with standing students there was an illusion of privacy in their position. She had her hand on his knee; it was difficult to concentrate.

‘I think maybe I love you,’ Mik said, in his old language, enjoying that she wouldn’t understand it.

She shivered, an accentuated jostle of her shoulders, for effect. ‘It’s a beautiful language.’

‘You’re weird, did I tell you that?’

‘Do you miss speaking it?’

‘Not really. But I’m glad to speak it to you if it makes you happy.’

She held a fascination for him. It was the grace of her, the languid nature of her movements juxtaposed with that sharp brain, and her ability to win any verbal argument in minutes, particularly when it came to English literature. And yet, perhaps because of his Russian birth, she submitted to him when he spoke, and never contradicted him directly. If she did disagree with something he said, she did it with a light touch of humour. He felt such touches as marks upon his skin, and was beginning to think they were sinking through the layers to impregnate him.

‘I hope I like them,’ he said, in Russian. ‘And I hope they like me.’

‘More,’ she said.

The train slowed, and stopped at Five Ways. Students streamed from the aisle, down on to the platform. Five more stops to go.

‘Do you think they’ll like me? Isn’t this sort of an affair?’

‘Don’t be nervous. They’re fine about it. It’s not a possessive thing.’

‘It feels creepy.’ A group of five, living together in love. She had asked him not to tell anyone, and he hadn’t, but he felt as if it might have helped to describe it to somebody else. What words would he use? A commune? A gang-bang? A live-in orgy? Years in a British boarding school, sent there on the behest of his rich Anglophile father after his first moult, had given him enough language to have a few descriptive alternatives for Nicky’s arrangement, but none of them quite seemed to fit.

‘Mik,’ said a voice from the aisle; in the shuffling after the first set of departures from the carriage, a fellow student from his Business Management course had ended up standing beside him. ‘Did you take notes for Clark’s two o’clock on Organisational Behaviour?’

‘Yeah. I’ll be in the library tomorrow morning, if you want to have a look.’

‘Great, thanks.’

He wanted to get Nicky to run through all the names and personalities he would be meeting again, but the presence of the student – whose name he couldn’t even remember at that moment – stymied him. It was only after the next stop, and the desertion of another raft of bodies while others fitted themselves into the freed seats, that the aisle was clear and Mik felt able to ask.

She rattled the names off, and provided neat little descriptions that amused him, including exact details such as a favourite film or a predilection for olives. They passed out of his head upon the instant of hearing them.

‘And you really love all of them?’

‘Yeah. I can’t explain it. We all bring something different to it. I don’t have to be everything to one person. It relieves the pressure.’

‘But would you love them if they came as individuals?’

She thought about that for a while, her hand still on his knee. ‘I don’t know. I met Howard and Liz first. They were a couple, and I rented a room from them in my second year at uni. Sunetra was already living there, and then I realised they were all together, and I guess I fell for Sunetra, and it grew from there. Then Dan came to mend the boiler one day.’

‘That is bizarre,’ said Mik. ‘It’s amazing, though. I’ve never heard of anything like it before, not in Russia, not here. Does it happen a lot, do you think, secretly?’ He often felt that life was not exactly how it was represented to him by the older generation, and suspected one day he would discover the real facts that everybody else was already in on.

She shook her head. ‘Only in romantic literature. But all those stories end in tragedy.’

He changed the subject after that. The next three stops passed through Birmingham’s centre; the students left and the shoppers boarded, and by the time they got to Erdington he felt a little ashamed of his long, loose hair and tight, ripped jeans. Nicky, in a flowing skirt and sky-blue top, swept slowly from the train, and she left a trail of lavender for him to follow.

He had complimented her on her perfume when they first met. It had been at a drama club audition for roles in a turgid play of skin atrocities and pornography written by one of the postgraduates. The declamatory style insisted upon by the director got them both giggling, and later, in the Union bar, she had told him that she took a bath every night, dropping lavender essence in the water. If it had been a deliberate come-on, it had seriously worked. He had pictured her alone, soaping a leg in her tiny student-rental bathroom, but now he wondered – does she bathe alone? Perhaps they had an enormous decadent tub and washed each other’s backs.

But walking through Erdington, in Nicky’s aromatic wake, it seemed to Mik that it was not the kind of place to hold a vast palace in which the five of them lived. She stopped on the street outside one house in an unremarkable row of tall houses with steep sloping roofs, and squeezed between two cars parked close, bumper to bumper, in a long line of cars that all faced the same way.

‘Here we are,’ she said, and took his hand to lead him inside.

The immediate impression was of unseen activity. ‘Want a drink?’ called a man from the end of the hallway, and a woman immediately shouted, ‘Tea please!’ from upstairs. The man appeared, a blue mug in hand. He was dressed in a business suit and wore a gold tie, loosened at the knot. He was heavy-set, his fingers meaty around the mug, and his sandy brown hair was unkempt. Mik felt a surge of awareness. I know him. I will know him.

‘I wasn’t talking to you!’ the man called back up the stairs, but he was smiling. ‘Right. Coffee, Nick?’

‘Yep,’ said Nicky. ‘And Mik drinks coffee too.’

‘Milk? Sugar?’

‘Both,’ said Mik.

‘I’m Howard.’

‘He knows that,’ Nicky said, rolling her eyes, and the dynamic of the house felt so clear to Mik in that moment, sketched perfectly in this first meeting with daily life, small actions given and taken, teasing and talking, knowing each other so well. Surely this was the ideal way to have a relationship; it was so different from his parents’ dry silences, long after moulting had taken place but they had made the decision to not ask for anything further from love. But here was an excess of love, and it was risky, and beautiful for that. When their skins loosened it would fall away.

It would be worth it, though. To have felt so cherished, and to have that memory. Yes, it would be worth it.

‘We’re just popping upstairs,’ said Nicky.

‘Cool,’ Howard said. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, but he acted like a much older man. Perhaps it was the suit. ‘I’ll leave the coffees outside the door. Don’t let them get cold.’

‘Right.’

‘Dinner at seven,’ he called, as she pulled Mik up the stairs, and another smiling face craned around a door on the landing, and murmured something that he didn’t catch; this woman’s eyes were bright, calculating, and her close-cut black hair caught his attention.

‘Hello,’ she said.

He felt the same pull to her, too – as if he already had knowledge about her, about what was going to happen next.

Before he could speak Nicky pulled him up the next flight of stairs and into the first room on the right. It was wood-panelled, the ceiling sloping, a skylight letting the sun pour through on to the double bed, giving it a hot, close feeling like a sauna.

She took a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign from the small bedside table and hung it on the door before closing it.

‘Is this your room?’ he asked. It was impersonal, undecorated.

‘We don’t have rooms. We just have signs when we want to be left alone. Like, right now. I want to be left alone with you.’

She undressed him, pulled down his tight jeans before he had removed his shoes, and left him in an awkward tangle, which seemed to take ages to sort out. It was, crazily, the first time he had been alone with her. It felt to him that she and her companions, fate included, were rushing him along to a preordained destination.

But it felt good. The speed of the journey, and the hands that wanted to hold him, bring him along, as they travelled.

She finished removing his clothes and then reached up under her skirt to remove her knickers, placing them on the bedside table.

‘You’re mine for now,’ she said, ‘just for now,’ and knelt on the bed, gathering up the folds of her skirt to her waist.

‘I don’t know if I can—’ he said, but it was a lie and he was already hard. He knelt face to face with her, crushing the material of the skirt between their upper bodies, and found her so eager for the taste of his skin, her lips finding his shoulder, sucking at his neck, moaning without shame of being overheard.

When he heard Howard’s steps on the stairs, measured, deliberately loud, he timed his strokes to each footfall. And the placing of the mugs, and the soft knock on the door – that was when he came, his senses filled with the house, the presences who were listening to their fucking, who would be part of it if he let them, and if they wanted him. He was desperate for them to want him.

SATURDAY, 20 JULY 2022, 7:31PM.

ROSE: So it was about the sex, for you?

MIK: Of course it was about the sex. I was nineteen years old. We were all under twenty-five. Sex was a huge part of it. It was also the part that got the press hot under the collar. That’s how we came to their attention, actually. One of Nicky’s conquests had a brother who worked for a newspaper.

ROSE: Nicky had other lovers?

MIK: She was in love with us. She fucked other people on a regular basis. She used protection and we understood it, as a need. Sex is just sex. It was the least interesting thing about us, in a way.

ROSE: The film glossed over that part.

MIK: I said, it’s not that interesting. Plus the other producers wanted a 12 rating. What is it you want to know? We rarely did it as a big group. That stuff just looks good for porn movies but somebody always ends up feeling left out. Usually we did it in twos or threes, depending on who we felt close to. That changed all the time. Personal preferences are none of your business, no matter how much you threaten me over Gwen.

ROSE: You make me sound like a monster. I thought this was give and take. I help you, you help me, you know. I’m not, you’re not—

MIK: I know. I can leave at any time.

ROSE: So that’s it. I’ve become a monster now. I get it. Perhaps it was bound to happen. But I need to know, it’s been years of not knowing, I didn’t realise how it would feel, and then Petra died because of me, because of my problems—

MIK: She tried to stop Suscutin production because of you?

ROSE: Did you know Max was one of the original investors in Suscutin? He took it for years. Long before it passed regulations. He gave it to me too. As an early guinea pig.

MIK: Why you?

ROSE: That’s difficult to explain. Love does strange things to people. Perhaps the easiest way to explain it is to say that I have Extreme Moult Syndrome.

MIK: EMS? I heard Suscutin cures that.

ROSE: I didn’t want to be cured. I still don’t. Max thought I should be whether I liked it or not.

MIK: He didn’t want you to suffer.

ROSE: There are worse things in life than suffering. You fell in love, all six of you. You knew it would hurt when it ended. Knowing hurt is always coming, is only ever one layer of skin away, is not some evolutionary mistake. It happens for a reason.

MIK: I’ve heard that argument before, but it sounds a bit too close to a religion for my liking.

ROSE: Losing your skin is not the tragedy at the heart of the human condition. Feeling the same way forever, that’s the worst.

MIK: So Petra agreed with you, about the tragedy of the human condition, as you call it. She tried to burn down the Suscutin laboratories because of it.

ROSE: No. I don’t know what she felt about Suscutin. I asked her to burn it down, and she tried. She’d done it before. She was good at getting rid of things and people that shouldn’t be allowed to exist.

MIK: Who are you to make that call?

ROSE: She burned down empty office blocks that were being used to hold skin fights between trafficked slaves, and she burned down houses where teenaged girls were being groomed to fall in love with men who would then flay off their skin in videos. She burned down factories that specialised in clothes made from— look, however young and untouched you are, you can’t claim there’s any grey area here.

MIK: I, I— Yes, the world can be a horrible place, I know that, I know that. I’m sorry you’ve seen stuff like that.

ROSE: That’s not the point. Don’t make it about me. This is about you. You helping Taylor, when she deserves some sort of justice.

MIK: Is that what your friend Petra provided? Justice?

ROSE: Petra tried to help me, just as you keep trying to help Taylor. What makes her so special? What makes her worthy of your help?

MIK: I made her a promise.

2013. FLUSH.

‘You’ve just insulted the love of my fucking life,’ said Max, and smiled. He dealt the cards, flicking them across the green baize of the tabletop.

Mik smiled back, although he didn’t know why. Was it a joke? Nothing Max said could ever quite be believed; working together on the script and now spending time together during the shooting process had taught him that. Max liked to manufacture moments, saying or doing things for effect, even when there were only the two of them present. The mystery of him – the idea that somewhere under the Hollywood persona there was something more meaningful and less pretty that stayed smothered under the unrelenting need for personal perfection – was one of the things Mik liked best about his new friend. It was a battle he had fought himself, when the papers started to construct their own narrative of him as the toy-boy of the Stuck Six.

But it did make Max difficult to trust. Mik couldn’t spend long periods of time with him, in case he lost his own reality, so hard fought for. So he had refused the offer of a room of his own in Max’s Sussex mansion, and had instead opted for a trailer on the grounds once filming started. It gave him distance, and a space of his own. He found he needed that so much more after living as one of the Six. He struggled with concepts of his own possessions, and what sorts of embellishments he should make to his own living area; it was difficult to be totally responsible for himself and his surroundings, but necessary.

Friends were also necessary. Uncomplicated friends, if such a thing existed. If not – fuck it. Beer and poker, and a damaged superstar for company.

The third hand of cards sat next to a beer, before the seat Gwen always took, facing the door. Max regularly dealt her in whether she was present or not; he seemed reliant on the idea that they came as a team and her protection extended over him. She, in turn, insulted him in public, and was an attentive, maternal figure when it was just the three of them. Mik couldn’t imagine what they were like when they were alone – soulmates who discussed everything, or an old married couple who rarely exchanged words?

They played a few warm-up hands until Gwen arrived, her cheeks red.

‘It’s all clear,’ she said.

Max checked his watch. ‘That usually makes it – yup. Time for meds.’ He left the games room as she unbuttoned her jacket and draped it over the back of her chair. He took medication every night, and often sent Gwen out to fetch it. Mik never raised it as a subject. If it was an ongoing illness, a skin condition maybe, it wouldn’t have fitted with Max’s carefully guarded self-image and he never would have told the truth about it to another person anyway.

Gwen took a sip of her beer. ‘It’s really warm in here.’

‘No, it’s just cold outside tonight.’ But she was right, the room was very warm, the windows shut up tight and the green silk walls oppressive. It was not to Mik’s taste, but he supposed it was a traditional take on a games room, with a snooker table, and its own bar in matching mahogany with a row of optics to match. Above it, there was a painting of a chestnut horse with a sturdy body and elongated legs that Mik found disturbing, as if reality had skewed.

‘I’m really tired,’ Gwen said.

‘You okay?’

‘Yeah. Fine. I could have done without the cross-examination over my working methods today, that’s all.’

‘Who was that? The woman who was asking you about stuff earlier?’

‘Forget it,’ she said, and took another sip from her beer. ‘Listen, we get on well, right?’

‘Yeah.’ She was matter-of-fact, always serious with him, giving lots of eye contact in a way that seemed to him to be a plea for honesty on his part. It led Mik to think that she was very honest with him, as an act of reciprocity.

‘Do you think we only get on because of Max? Like, he’s the linking factor?’

‘If that was true,’ Mik said, ‘it would be really awkward every time he left the room. Which he does a lot. And, to be honest, I quite look forward to those moments.’

‘Me too,’ she said.

‘Okay, so what is it?’

‘Do you think love is very different from friendship?’

‘Wow. I wasn’t expecting that. Um… Yeah. It’s different. You can feel it. In the skin.’

‘I’ve never been in love,’ she said.

‘I’ve been in love a lot.’

‘I don’t want to be in love. Ever. It causes so many problems.’

He took a swallow of his beer, and said, ‘That sounds like a bad childhood talking.’

‘Not at all. I just— I’m content. As I am. I wish everyone could be.’

‘Do you mean Max?’ said Mik.

She nodded, and leaned back in her seat. ‘He’s my responsibility. He’s so desperate to try to understand love. Through the Stuck Six, through his own experiences. I wish I could get him to give up on the whole thing. All his plans and projects.’

‘What, like the film?’

‘Yes, like the film. Like anything do to with love. All his crazy ideas. He spends so much money, he wastes so much time.’

‘We should start a celibacy club.’

‘Are you celibate?’ she asked him, all astonishment.

‘Aren’t you?’

‘God, no. I just don’t ever confuse love and sex.’

‘You get laid? What, a lot? When? With who?’

‘That’s my business.’

He didn’t believe it. ‘Well, you’re not responsible for Max, or his happiness.’

‘Maybe not, but when I took this job I decided I was going to do the best I can. And that involves doing whatever it takes to help him.’

It was a ridiculous statement, casting herself as his nurse, mother, friend and manager. What a pairing they were: the handsome actor/director who lived in a land of his own imagination, and the very serious bodyguard who was determined to let him.

And what did he bring to it all? He couldn’t think of a thing, apart from being there when the pieces inevitably needed to be picked up. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘how about in that case I’ll do the best I can to help you, if you ever need it. Deal?’

‘Deal.’

‘I thought I already dealt,’ said Max, from the doorway, and Gwen said, ‘Oh, shut up and sit down.’

So Max did, and the game began.

SATURDAY, 20 JULY 2022, 9:14PM.

MIK: —understand why there was no trace of you. I had investigators on it.

ROSE: Petra had some talented friends in… unusual lines of work. After she died they came to me, told me she’d asked them to change my name and alter my records if anything went wrong. I think she was worried the Suscutin lot would come after me.

MIK: Seriously?

ROSE: You’re sweet. Weirdly innocent about life. Which bit don’t you believe? That people would want to protect a multi-billion-pound industry, or that other people would be able to protect me from them? Well, maybe you’re right. I’m not sure anybody ever did come looking for me. Until you. Why should they bother? I’ve learned my lesson.

MIK: So… why are you recording again?

ROSE: Another question for you.

MIK: And then you’ll tell me what I need to know?

MIK: That was the deal, right?

ROSE: I know, I just… Are you sure you want to know? I find I’m reluctant to destroy that innocence.

MIK: If it’s not a deal then stop recording.

ROSE: No. It’s still a deal.

MIK: Okay. So what else can I tell you about Gwen to make you realise she’s not the devil? She likes disco music. She’s rubbish at poker because she always looks delighted when she gets a good hand. She reads a lot of books, big fantasy books, you know, thirty-eight in a never-ending series-so-far books.

ROSE: Not about Taylor. About Max. Tell me about the last time you saw him.

MIK: No, I don’t think so.

ROSE: Why? Did you argue?

MIK: No. It won’t give you what you want, that’s all. Nothing happened. It was a normal conversation about filming, and you don’t want that, do you? I’ll give you what you want. What will satisfy you.

ROSE: No, I don’t want—

MIK: Listen.

2013. THAT’S WHAT FRIENDS ARE FOR.

‘I’ve done something terrible.’

She stood back from the steps that led to the door of the trailer; Mik could look down on the crown of her blond hair, for once. Her arms were crossed, and her shoulders raised, defensive.

‘What’s up?’

‘I have to get out of here.’

‘Is Max all right?’ His first thought was that she’d had to confront an intruder, maybe even tackle them personally. But the more Mik looked at her, the more he could see that it was not adrenaline running through her, but some deep emotion she was trying to contain.

‘He’s fine, he’s not— The best thing for everyone is if I get away from him, and stay away. I shouldn’t be near him. I make everything worse.’

The other trailers were dotted about the long flat section of grass in this part of Max’s estate, but as work had been halted for the last few days most people had taken the opportunity to go home or go to London. Still, Mik felt self-conscious, standing above her, meeting her eyes at this angle. ‘Come in,’ he said, and quickly threw the remains of the ready meal he’d had for a late Sunday lunch into the bin in the cupboard under the sink.

He had discovered a fondness for trailer living, which enclosed him and yet demanded no permanence from him, but he hated others to see it, pass judgement on him because of it. Gwen looked around the small, messy space – his film magazines and dirty crockery – but didn’t seem to care. She sat on one side of the padded bench that ran around the tabletop, and he closed the door quietly, then sat opposite. ‘Tell me what’s wrong.’

She didn’t even respond to that. ‘Look, I wouldn’t ask, but you said…’

‘I know, I know. I meant it, you were right to come here. What do you need?’

‘A ride. Don’t ask me what happened. Don’t ever tell Max where I am.’

‘Fuck,’ he said.

‘Can you do that?’

He heard a different question underneath. The question of whether he really was her friend.

It was Dan who popped into his head. Dan, and his decision to help Mik leave when all the others were determined to make him stay. It’s still love, Howard had said, over and over, just in a different form, not in the skin, but we can make it work, if you’ll only try harder. It had been Dan’s money, Dan’s contacts, Dan’s understanding, Dan’s unconditional help that had saved him.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can do that.’

He grabbed his phone, wallet and car keys and took her hand as they left the trailer, heading back across the grass in the afternoon sunlight. Her palm was clammy, her grip strong – what couldn’t Gwen, amazing Gwen, possibly face? Didn’t she know she could overcome anything? What had Max done to rob her of her control? She stared up at the house as it came into view, her gaze fearful; he thought she was looking at the windows, checking to see if Max appeared.

She was afraid of seeing him.

That couldn’t be right.

‘Did Max… touch you?’ he said, grasping at straws.

‘Do you think I’d let him?’ she said, and he saw a trace of the Gwen he knew well, and was relieved.

‘In that case, surely we can sort it out. It’s probably just a miscommunication. Nothing could be that bad. Nothing is unforgiveable between friends, right?’

She didn’t answer.

They veered off to the left, to Max’s enormous car park with its painted white lines and gleaming vehicles. Mik unlocked his BMW, and Gwen tucked herself into the passenger seat, sliding down low as they pulled away. He drove them out of the estate with only a perfunctory wave from the security guard at the gate.

‘Where do you want to go?’

‘Devon,’ she said.

‘Really?’

‘I went there a few times as a kid. The north coast. I know it, a little.’

‘You got enough money for a hotel down there? Until this blows over?’

‘It’s not a whim, Mik.’

‘No, I meant – I’m sorry. You will need money, though, won’t you? Think it through.’

‘Okay. Yes. I’ll need money. But—’

‘Well then. I have money.’

‘No, I don’t want…’

‘Shut up. It’s just money. I have it, more than I need. I always wanted to get into property. Listen, I’ll buy a house down there and you’ll live in it for me. You can help me choose it. Think investment potential. From a bodyguard to a live-in housekeeper and portfolio manager in one day. Come on, let’s do it.’

‘You’re mental,’ she said, but she was smiling, and she didn’t say no. It was a wild gamble, an attempt to make an adventure, but why not? That was the great blessing of money. And when she was ready to make up with Max, and for it to be the three of them again, he would know exactly where she was. He would keep her safe.

‘What kind of house did you stay in before? In Devon?’

‘It was a rental cottage in a village. Just a pub and a post office. No television. We stayed in the same place every year. I used to read so many books. Stories I could escape into. Then go and walk along the cliff paths. It never changed. I hope it still hasn’t.’

‘Cottage. Pub. Post office. Cliffs. Room for books. Got it.’

‘Mental,’ she said, again.

Mik’s phone rang. The dashboard displayed the name—

‘Don’t,’ she said.

‘Gwen, I should just—’

‘No. No.’

‘Okay,’ Mik said. ‘Okay, okay,’ until she was calm again.

Max rang four more times on the journey to Devon, and then fell silent.

There was a B&B in Lynmouth that was, Gwen said with great emotion, just the same. He gave her what cash he had in his wallet and then handed over one of his credit cards. He told her he’d be back in a couple of days to start house hunting with her.

‘Are you going back to Max’s?’ she said.

‘Of course. I won’t mention you.’ Max would, no doubt, tell him everything. But with a gloss upon it. An argument? A hare-brained scheme that had backfired? Mik had considered all permutations. Nothing fit.

The room in which they stood had a large bay window that looked out over a valley; he crossed to it, and was rewarded with a view of a fat, slow river winding through boulders below, and an astonishing mass of greenery – an explosion of natural beauty. Gwen came to stand beside him.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘I can see why you like this place.’ But it would have been too quiet for him; he already knew that.

‘It’s not fair,’ she whispered.

‘What isn’t? Tell me. Just tell me.’

‘The last time we came here I was thirteen. We had a brilliant week. My mother, my stepfather and me. When we got back home he moulted. He left that night. We never saw him again. End of happy families. Then I moulted for the first time the week after, the week after, God, everything was suddenly so different. I was different. I couldn’t bear it. I wanted it all back, to have it back, to have that one thing and for it to last.’

‘You’re my friend. Friendship lasts. It’s not love. It’s not even the Bond.’

‘You chose me over Max. I know how much that will cost you,’ she said, and then told him she was very tired, and wished him a safe journey back, so formally, like a grand lady saying her goodbyes at the end of a party.

‘Gwen,’ he said, before she could shut the door on him. ‘It’s okay. You’re still you and I’m still me.’

‘Not really,’ she said, and then he left her, and began the long drive away from a magnificent sunset over the sea.

He tried to reach Max, ringing every half an hour. There was no answer.

Back at the estate, the gates were standing open, unattended, and there were so many people, uniforms, at the top of the gravel driveway, with the blue lights of the police cars and the ambulances flashing, flashing, flashing.

SATURDAY, 20 JULY 2019, 10:05PM.

ROSE: You couldn’t have known. You didn’t know a thing about it. Why he took all those pills. You still don’t know, do you? Taylor never told you. It’s not your fault.

MIK: He called me. I didn’t answer.

ROSE: You did your best. You couldn’t help them both.

MIK: I don’t get it. Why I had to make a choice between them. But I made it, and I’ve stuck to it. Whatever Gwen did, I didn’t falter. That’s a good friend, right?

ROSE: Yes. Absolutely.

Rose turns off her phone. ‘I’m done recording,’ she says. She wears a deep frown. I get the sense she’s profoundly troubled by the things I’ve told her.

I get up from the sofa, stiff from sitting still for so long, and take a slow walk around her living room. On the mantelpiece, above an unlit wood burner, there are matching candlesticks holding white tapering candles. They look like they’ve never been lit. There are two silver-framed photographs, too. One shows the Eiffel Tower. The other shows Rose, not much younger than she is now I’d guess, with a toddler on her lap. There’s a sky-blue background behind them both; it looks like a happy holiday memory.

‘You’ve got a family?’

‘Just Ethan,’ she says. ‘My late miracle. He’s six now. He’s with his dad this weekend.’

‘You’re on good terms with his dad?’

‘Yes, fine. I was never in love with him, so that simplifies things. I’ve learned how to stay friends with people over the years.’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Friends.’

How pathetic these words are: sex, love, friend. How little they describe.

‘I’ve spent years trying to understand myself,’ she says. ‘I’ve even tried writing it down. I described myself in the third person, past tense. She did this. She did that. She fell in love. She became a student. An administrator. A bodyguard. An investigator. A designer. It never all adds up to one person. One complete person, not in the way Max was complete. But now I’m beginning to think that’s how it’s meant to be. To be otherwise is either a lie or insanity.’

‘I don’t know. All I know is I keep looking for the truth.’

‘You think it will make a difference?’

‘How could I ever know that until I hear it?’

‘All right then,’ she says. ‘I’ll tell you my truth. I’ll tell you what they did to me, and you can decide what they are, and what I am.’

It’s getting late. I could easily tell her to leave it until the morning, or even later still. Or never. I’ve lived life in the easy territory of not knowing for so long.

I return to the sofa. She’s composed, and ready to speak.

‘Just tell me,’ I say. ‘Tell me now.’

2022. BUSINESS.

Gwen’s right. The duck pond is restful. Insects skim across the surface, and the ducks dally, dive, resurface to create concentric circles, radiating out from their activities. It’s a sunny afternoon in Devon, and she’s picked a good place to wait to die.

Her pain is managed, but her papery face is still lined with it. I watch her nod as Rose talks to her.

They sit on a bench together, opposite me, the pond between us. I have been keeping my distance, pretending to look at the view, or to smell the roses that line the path. I have been taking very small steps around the paths to give them time.

There are many sufferers of Epidermal Sclerosis here; I have greeted some on my walk, and tried not to wince in sympathy at their diseased skin, crumpled and hanging, losing its shape.

I understand now how Rose could say there was a certain irony to Gwen’s condition. I also see how she could refuse, even after all I told her, to provide forgiveness on demand.

In the end I didn’t ask her to. Some things really are unforgiveable, but whether Gwen’s decision to help Max commit those acts of violence, of horror, is one of them is up to her, not me.

I only asked her to come with me to this hospice, that’s all, and to set eyes on Gwen. To breathe the same air as her.

Rose made the move, made her own decision, to sit beside her on the bench.

I’ve done something terrible, Gwen said, and she was right about that too. I was arrogant to assume she was incapable of a terrible act. I robbed her of an essential part of herself, and she spent years living on my money, in my house, trying so hard to be the person I wanted her to be.

Enough.

I walk back to the bench, and Rose makes eye contact with me. She stands. ‘I’ll go,’ she says. ‘We’re all done. Bye.’

‘Bye,’ Gwen says, softly.

I follow Rose a few steps from the bench, towards the house, and she turns in a quick movement and offers me her hand. I shake it. It’s a fitting end to a business deal, and that’s what this is. An exchange of information. I couldn’t even claim to like Rose, with her devotion to her own illness when it could so easily be cured, and her certainty that some people deserve to die. But I’m prepared to accept that she is what life has made of her. Just as life is working its magic on me.

I’ll never be totally true, unflinchingly loyal, to another friend again. Not even if I find one who I think deserves it. We are all unworthy of devotion that does not ask questions and demand answers before acting, and that is how it should be.

Gwen. Max. The Six. I should have asked questions of all of them.

‘I’ll keep the recordings safe,’ says Rose. ‘And in return you won’t reveal to anyone where I am. Particularly if you go through with your idea.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘That’s fine.’

‘You really want to do this?’

‘I want to try.’ Enough of funding films about the Stuck Six and other fairy tales. I’m going to use my money to make a film about Suscutin. A film that looks at the story from all angles. The kind of film Max might have made, if he’d not been given everything he ever wanted. I know Rose thinks they’ll try and stop me. Personally, I think they won’t care less. Everybody will still use their product anyway, even if it causes skin disease and death, and has its roots in other people’s suffering.

Everybody except me. I haven’t taken a Suscutin pill since that night at Rose’s house. I’ll moult sometime soon. I can feel it building.

I watch Rose leave, then take my seat next to Gwen, who says, ‘My favourite duck is the one with the little white spot on his chest. See him? The other ducks never spend any time with him. I reckon he’s an outcast.’

‘You don’t know a thing about him,’ I say. ‘He might be perfectly happy on his own. He might shun other duck company. He might not even realise he’s a duck, and be wondering why he’s sitting in a pond all day.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘Did she forgive you?’

‘No, but she allowed me to ask for her forgiveness. That was the important bit. She let me ask. Can we go back inside now?’

She keeps refusing to use a wheelchair, so she leans heavily on me as we return to the big double doors of the hospice. ‘So,’ she says, when we’re about halfway there, ‘now you know me.’

‘No, I don’t. I don’t know anybody,’ I tell her. I take her weight, and keep on walking.

2011. FROM THE OUTSIDE.

The usual paparazzi were waiting for him, the three of them parked on the grass verge opposite the house, sitting separately in their cars, training their lenses upon him. Mik gave them a wave as he retrieved the shopping bag from the back seat. They didn’t wave back, and that was usual too.

Grafham Water was choppy in the spring breeze, and Mik hadn’t worn a coat to the supermarket. He hurried around the side of the house, and used the side door that led directly to the kitchen.

‘Who’s up for lunch?’ he called.

Cheese, bread, salami, olives, lettuce, and a tin of tomato soup for Nicky who had been grouchy lately and needed comfort food: he had shopped to provide lunch options for everyone. He laid the purchases out on the counter, stacking Sunetra’s timetable for night school and Howard’s appointments diary to the side, then fetched six plates.

‘Food,’ he called, and the silence of the house struck him. ‘Guys?’

He heard footsteps on the stairs, recognised Howard’s heavy tread, and moved to meet him in the hallway.

‘You’d better come upstairs,’ Howard said.

‘What’s happening?’

‘It’s easier if you just come upstairs.’

He followed Howard to the largest of the bedrooms. The purple curtains Sunetra had made during a sudden sewing obsession were half-closed. Everyone was sitting on the king-sized bed, in a circle, and Nicky was at the head of the bed, cross-legged, in one of their shabby unisex robes with frayed sleeves.

‘It just happened,’ she said, and stretched out her arms to him. Dan and Liz shifted apart so he could reach her. As soon as he touched her, he knew what had taken place. Her skin was not the same. It felt so soft, so spongy. He felt immediate revulsion, but controlled the urge to pull away.

‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘It came off cleanly. Really quick.’

Howard, still in the doorway, coughed once, twice, and then keened, high and long, covering his face with his hands. Dan got up from the bed and took him in his arms; Howard sobbed. His face, visible over Dan’s shoulder, was horrifying. This is what great pain looks like, Mik thought. This is the terrible pain of loss. I will feel it too, just as soon as this numbness ends.

‘It really is okay,’ said Dan, to everyone, over Howard’s head. ‘This was always going to happen. We’ve talked about this. We’ll stay together, won’t we, for as long as we can.’

‘Yes,’ said Nicky. ‘You don’t get rid of me that easily.’

Sunetra leaned over to Liz, and stroked her hair. Mik fought against himself, made himself cradle Nicky, until the quality of sunlight through the gap in the curtain had changed, as time moved on.

Nicky patted his hand until he disengaged, then reached under one of the pillows and produced a folded white sheet. She shook it out upon the bed, and it took on human shape. She smoothed it out with her fingertips, using small, tentative movements.

‘Here it is,’ she said. ‘Touch it.’

Sunetra, always so curious to have new experiences, placed her palm upon the ankle. She surprised Mik with a laugh, warm and deep and loud. Dan and Howard came closer, and touched it too, and then Liz, her hand trembling. Mik, his eyes on their revelatory expressions, touched it and felt—

Love.

Love reflected. The love Nicky had felt for him, for them all, for what they had made together.

She had loved him perfectly. She had cherished him, believed in him, felt no jealousy or fear of his love in return. She had taken such delight in him.

He met her gaze. She was altering before him, moving away from love, rewriting herself and leaving him behind.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘For having loved me like that.’

‘You’re welcome.’

What a gift love was. For a moment, as a memory, floating free from time and meaning. What a wonderful, willing gift.

‘Did you call for lunch earlier?’ said Nicky. ‘I’m starving.’ She got up from the bed and wandered from the room, while Howard started talking about keeping the skin safe and drawing up some sort of contract, an agreement to preserve all their skins for the future.

‘To remind us of why we need to stay together, forever,’ he said, as they ate, later.