Алия Уайтли: The Loosening Skin

‘Do you remember Aidan?’ Sunetra said to Liz, and Liz blushed and replied, ‘Oh God, yes, he was so cute, we spent an entire year following him around, didn’t we?’

I suddenly understood that Liz’s life was a line of loves, of experiences, and I had no right to claim any of it as my own. When I began to appreciate that fact I began to love her properly, even better than I already did, and to love Sunetra too – Sunetra, a woman with her own line, her own intersections, that only at this time were parallel to my own. We would all go our separate ways again at some point, when we were done with our current skins. But not yet, I told myself. Not yet.

Things moved quickly. Within a few weeks I asked if she wanted to move in (she was having difficulties with a landlord dispute, I remember) and she agreed. Liz was overjoyed, and love grows naturally from pleasure.

I say naturally – I know this is a point about which many people have an opinion. How can love between three people (let alone six) be natural? Well, nature is a strange thing. If you let it run wild it strangles itself: haven’t you ever noticed how weeds overpower flowers? I think what I’m really trying to say is that just because a thing is natural, doesn’t mean it should grow untended.

I tended to my love for Liz, and I cultivated it. Because I did that it became easier, not harder, to fall in love again, and again, and again, and those loves never turned into a tangled mess. I made choices in the best interests of my loves, and I know the world would be a better place if we all did that.

After Sunetra moved in we began to rearrange our schedules so that we would still have time as couples as well as a three, which was, frankly, hilarious to try to organise. Looking at our diaries, sitting around that same kitchen table, pencilling in quality time – we laughed but we learned. One morning Sunetra and I got our wires crossed and ended up both turning up to a picnic for two Liz had organised at the—

I stop reading and put the book down. This oversimplified description is not a love I recognise. What kind of film will Max make of this? Is this how he rationalises what we felt for each other, with trite analogies of flowers and pizzas and growing and learning?

When the train pulls into Temple Meads I leave the book on the seat.

I grew up in Bristol. It’s one of those cities that feels individual, personal, no matter how big it gets and how many smaller places it swallows up. From Temple Meads I take a taxi to the suspension bridge, and walk from there to my aunt’s house. It amazes me how the bridge stays the same, no matter how many times the crew of workmen replace every single nut and bolt. The cars thunder over and the bolts shake loose, shake loose, and yet it remains somehow itself.

I suppose finding any hint of permanence in my life will always continue to surprise me.

Listen to me. Maybe deep inside, under all the skins, I’m a stand-up comedian.

The walk gets rid of the remains of my hangover. It’s a bright day, warm, so Alice is probably in the garden. I ring the doorbell a few times and get no answer, so I head around the back. The garden gate is unlocked, and she has her back to it as she weeds the borders to her gravel path, kneeling upon the mat I bought her last Christmas.

‘Hello Rose,’ she calls, without turning around.

‘You should keep this locked.’

‘Why? Only you come around this way.’

‘Burglars.’

‘That’s the job talking.’

I kneel down beside her and watch her pull out the dandelions, digging her fingers deep into the soil to reach the root. They come out white and twisted, and I think of maybe burying that old skin instead, right here. Alice would let me. But I don’t ask her. Instead I say, ‘I’m not an investigator any more, remember?’

‘That’s right. You work in a shop.’ She says it without inflexion, but somehow that makes it worse.

‘People change,’ I say. ‘They change all the time.’

She nods. I look at the pouched skin of her neck, and the way her small quick head sits upon it, as if the two don’t belong together. ‘Well, I’m pleased to see you anyway, even if you have changed. At least the face is the same.’ She lifts her bright eyes from the ground for the first time and scans me. ‘Yep, the same. Beautiful.’

‘Come on,’ I say, and I help her up. She’s so light, as if she’s down to her last skin.

The bungalow has been redecorated: painted, primped, the furniture rearranged. There are framed photographs on every wall, faces cut out in circles and grouped together to make merry collages of emotion over time. I can’t help but think of all the old photos that now have head-shaped holes in them. No doubt she’s kept them somewhere.

‘I moulted about a month ago,’ she says, ‘and that pink and mauve colour scheme had to go. This is nicer, don’t you think?’

I walk the length of the long wall of the living room, behind the sofa, and find some familiar faces. My dad, my mum, together. Alice has cut around them with irregular sweeps of the scissors, giving them strange curves. Dad moulted only a few months after Mum got pregnant with me but I saw them both regularly throughout my childhood. They remained polite, if not exactly friends; I think this is the first time I’ve seen them captured as a couple in an image.

Alice is on the wall, young and free, snipped to stand next to nobody. She has lived in this house for so many years, only feeling the need to change the paint and the position of the furniture when she changes her skin. If she’s had lovers they have come and gone unknown to me.

‘How are you feeling?’ I ask her.

‘Fine. A bit of a sore shoulder. Doctor Whitmore said less gardening, give it a chance to rest.’ She shrugs, and looks cheeky and guilty and shamefaced, all at once, like a child. ‘You can tell me off, it’s fine. I won’t mind.’

‘No thanks. If you can’t be bothered to look after yourself…’ Then I realise that’s just another parental trick, the long-standing alternative to the classic telling off, so I don’t finish the sentence.

‘You’re here for the skin,’ she says. ‘The first one of yours. Aren’t you?’

‘How did you know?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t take it. I can take good care of it. Your mum asked me to, when she got diagnosed. It was very precious to her.’

‘I know, but I can’t. I need to know it’s gone. Done with. What made you think I’d want it?’ It seems such a leap of intuition.

She brushes her cheek with her fingers, an old nervous gesture of hers. ‘Someone phoned, a few hours ago, and they were offering quite a bit of money for young female skins, they said. They were quite insistent about it and the price kept going up, and I just got this feeling, like they knew there was one in the house and they wanted that one in particular. I thought, afterwards, I bet Rose turns up looking for that old skin. I don’t know why.’

‘You got the feeling that someone wanted my old skin and you didn’t tell me, and you’re still swanning around in the back garden with the gate unlocked?’ She’s so unaware at times I could scream.

She gets up from her favourite armchair, which has been moved to the other side of the room since my last visit. ‘You’re here now anyway, aren’t you? You’re going to take it no matter what I say. Here.’ From underneath the television cabinet she pulls out a brown paper package, flat and square and tied with string. ‘See? Nobody would have looked there.’

‘That’s not the point.’ I take the package and am glad it’s wrapped up tight. Who wants to touch their teenage mind once more?

‘Anybody would think you were the grand old lady,’ she mutters, ‘the way you nag.’