Алия Уайтли: The Loosening Skin

‘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.

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.’

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?’