Original Skin (4 page)

SUZIE’S POSTURE
implies prayer. She is bent forward, elbows on her knees, palms clasped fast, both thumbs pressed hard enough into her forehead to make grooves. Her lips move soundlessly, as though begging forgiveness or benefaction.

Her thoughts are far from divine.

She is lost in memory. Consumed by a recollection that has surfaced unbidden.

For a moment, she is entering the red room, with its glitter ball and its velvet sheets. She is gazing upon naked forms. Is recoiling, spluttering in nervous laughter, drunk and giddy enough to change the mood. She is staring into a mask, leering and lascivious, incongruous atop a fleshy body that makes no concealment of its desire.

She is controlling herself now. Saying yes. Letting go. Feeling a warm, familiar hand in her own. Accepting permission like a blessing.

She is on her back, weight upon her. Light making shadows of a grunting, thrusting face, given over to pleasure that could just as well be pain . . .

She shakes it away. Forces the memory back. Pushes her features into a smile. Hides it. Hides her feelings, even from herself . . .

Suzie is twenty-six years old. Petite. A little fleshier than she would like to be around the middle. Kooky, her bosses call her, when clients remark on her multicolored nails and chunky, homemade jewelry. Today she’s dressed in a short black skirt over footless leggings, a long-sleeved white top, and flip-flops. The fleecy Disney scarf around her neck covers the top end of a tattoo that her bosses at the law firm have deemed unsuitable for exposure. Her elbow-length lace gloves were considered more off-putting than the butterflies they obscured, so she has taken to wearing fluorescent wristbands. She expects to be asked to remove them as soon as one of the senior partners plucks up the courage. Her shoulder-length hair is dyed a color somewhere between copper and autumn, and today is held back from an unremarkable but pretty face by a pink band. Tiny hummingbirds dangle from the lobes of her multipierced ears.

She is fun to look at.

She makes people smile.

The bells of St. Mary’s Church inform her it’s one p.m., although she does not need their help. She has always just reached this stage in her lunch when the hour chimes. She fears she’s becoming a creature of habit.

Suzie wonders why there are not more people here. It’s a pretty spot, and she finds herself surprised on a daily basis to have it to herself. She’s five minutes from work and a stone’s throw from the relative bustle of the Old Town end of the city center, but in the three months she has been eating her packed lunch here she’s had to share this lovely little courtyard garden only a handful of times.

She’s in the only green square to be found in the Museums Quarter, hidden away at the center of this pocket of gorgeous old buildings and cobbled streets, constructed two centuries before in the angle between the Rivers Hull and Humber. Here, between Wilberforce House and the Streetlife Museum, she has found a place of near sanctuary. Here, protected by red brick and sloping archways, she feels delightfully invisible, set back under the protective branches of a tree she has come to think of as her own.

The spitting rain picks up its pace. The larger drops make a pleasing noise on the tree’s burgundy leaves. She spots one leaf bulging under the weight of collected droplets and reaches out with her left leg so that, when it spills the cold water, it will trickle onto her bare toes. The sensation, when it comes, is exhilarating.

Suzie takes the iPhone from the pocket of her bag. It was an extravagant purchase, forcing her to live for a month on sausage rolls and biscuits from the office tin as a consequence of using her food budget for its acquisition.

She logs on to Facebook. Two pokes from old school friends and a new post from her mum.

A song thrush has fluttered damply down to the nearest flower bed. Suzie looks on the bench for a crumb to give it. She finds one in her scarf and chucks it to the bird, who ignores it and flies away.

“Marmite. Either love it or hate it . . . ,” she says under her breath.

She opens her e-mail account. Ignores the messages from the various websites that send her discount codes for music downloads and vouchers for chain restaurants.

“What we got . . . ?”

Two messages.

She finds herself smiling. A tickle of excitement flits between her stomach and chest.

“Still going strong . . .”

He sent one midmorning, and another five minutes before she came out for lunch. A query about whether she touched herself when she woke up, and a one-line missive informing her that he is “so damn hard” at the thought of her.

“Sweet,” says Suzie, hitting
REPLY
.

She got talking to “Dom” last night, halfheartedly at first, distracted by the vampire movie she was watching on the laptop, then later with an enjoyable intensity.

His advert on the website had been straight to the point. “Dominant male seeks under-30 playmate. Must be up for anything. Are you game? Put your body in my control. Be my rag doll.” He had put a little
x
at the end of the posting. She liked that.

“Hey there,” she’d written in reply. “Saw your ad. Think we could have fun. Am twenty-six and Ok looking. Have played this game before. Love to be dominated and test myself to the limit. Am I your sort of girl?”

Dom had replied within a minute. Told her he was “aching” to know more. Said he “yearned” for the taste of her. Was “consumed by a need to lick the tears from her face.” His words had a lyrical quality that Suzie approved of. Suzie likes words. Completed a year of an English-literature degree before her fiancé’s job moved them to Hull and they had decided that his new bumper wages made her continuing on the course a waste of time for both of them. When they split up not long after, she took solace in few things, but words were among them. She enrolled herself on a creative-writing course. Met the skinny, giggly, lovingly absurd little peacock who would become her best friend.

Suzie enjoyed last night’s chat with Dom. He seemed genuine. She has been playing these games for a couple of years now and knows that, nine times out of ten, the blokes begging her to fulfill their every fantasy when they’re texting each other’s brains out will chicken out before meeting up. She has had text sex with countless online finds, but only a handful have had the bottle to say hello in the flesh, and fewer still have been able to deliver on their promises.

“I want you to make me cry.”

Suzie presses
SEND
. Waits a minute. Hopes for an immediate response.

This is the thrill of it. For her, it is not the sex itself. It is the game of it all. The naughtiness. The apprehension and excitement that make her shiver and wriggle as she checks her screen time and again, waiting for a new message, like a wartime bride awaiting a love letter.

Are you a big brave girl? You want to show me what you’ve got?

Suzie grins as she reads the message and takes another sip of her juice before replying. She had half expected last night’s flurry of messages to be a one-off. She is used to the swift curtailment of her cybersex: all too often the result of a spouse coming home early or knocking on the bathroom door.

“I am yours to command.”

She stares at the screen for a moment, and when no answer is immediately forthcoming, she opens up one of the Internet pages stored in her
FAVORITES
section. She looks at the latest tattoo designs and wonders whether she would suit the small posy of dandelion seeds highlighted as the “tattoo of the day.” She isn’t sure. Her tattoos are all designs she has created herself, though it is the lilies and pink cherry blossoms that wind from the backs of her thighs to the nape of her neck of which she is most proud. She and her friend had gone on the same day: he to be adorned with peacock feathers, she to become a Chinese garden. The results were stunning. The tattooist couldn’t stop smiling. Took their pictures from every angle and asked if they would mind him using the images in his promotional material. They had preened and agreed, loving their own prettiness.

Want to see what you can do.

The message flashes up in the corner of the screen. She wrinkles her nose in disappointment. She has a limited amount of time. Wants him to send something not just suggestive, but filthy and obscene.

“Anything.”

The memory of the day of blissful agony in the tattoo parlor brings her down. Such thoughts always do. It is six months since she lost her best friend. Half a year since the boy with whom she giggled and cried and gossiped and played wrapped a cord around his neck and hanged himself in the kitchen of the flat she had one day planned to share.

What you doing tonight?

Simon used to keep her safe. They played these games together. Best friends. True friends. He keeping her safe from herself, and providing a reassuring closeness as she indulged in the liaisons that helped her feel alive. She giving him reasons to feel loved and needed; an escape from the dark thoughts that made him seek out punishment and abuse, threatening to pull him under . . .

You promise you’ve got tattoos?

Suzie sighs, excitement dissipating. “Pink blossoms all over my back. Butterflies on my wrists. A zip on the back of my thigh. All begging for your tongue to trace.”

There is no reply. Suzie wonders if this is where it will end. She will not be disappointed. This is the game.

Her phone beeps.

Tonight. Want to see your blossoms. Want to see you get nasty.

Suzie gives a little grin, crossing and uncrossing her legs as she allows herself to imagine that this one may actually happen.

She has no time to reply before the phone beeps again.

Come alone.

•   •   •

HALF A MILE AWAY,
raining twice as hard . . .

Trish Pharaoh looks her sergeant up and down. Then back up and farther up. She places her takeaway cup of coffee between her knees. Reaches forward. Takes his tie in both hands, and wrings it out as if she were throttling an eel.

“Road-testing a new antiperspirant?” she asks sweetly. “It’s not working.”

McAvoy presses his lips together. Smiles a little, unsure what facial expression to pull, and eventually lets his features settle into a mask of embarrassed gormlessness. It is a countenance he has grown used to wearing in his boss’s company.

Pharaoh lets go of his tie and shakes the water off her hand. Wraps both palms around the polystyrene cup. Points at the rain, which billows wavelike across the deserted square. “You did this,” she says accusingly.

McAvoy sniffs. “It’s coming in off the sea . . . ,” he begins defensively.

“Hush now.”

She turns away from him. Sips her coffee.

“I didn’t get you one,” she says, gesturing at her drink without any hint of apology. “Figured you would file a report about attempted bribery or sexual harassment.”

McAvoy nods solemnly.

“Oh, bloody hell, Aector, you are as much fun as paper cuts.”

McAvoy apologizes. Hangs his head.

They are standing under the awnings of a jewelry shop in Trinity Square. The gray slabs of the piazza have been washed, then varnished, by the downpour, and the great wooden doors of the city’s biggest church, a hundred yards from where they stand, have been soaked to a rich chocolate brown. McAvoy gives the church only the briefest of glances. He cuts this thought dead before he begins to question how much rain it would take to wash away the blood that was spilled within Holy Trinity’s embrace just a few months ago . . .

“Were they bastards?” asks Pharaoh, finishing her drink and pausing for a moment until the bells of St. Mary’s, half a mile away, finish chiming the hour. “The authority? This new bloke as much of a bully as they say he is?”

McAvoy still hasn’t made up his mind. “He’s in your face,” he says, thoughtfully. “Big man. Big personality. Very well informed.”

Pharaoh looks at him, expecting more.

“He’s clued up on what we’re up to. The unit. Seems to read the reports and retain the info.”

“That’s the last thing we need,” says Pharaoh, throwing her cup in one of the bins that dot the square.

“He wants real progress on the drugs, guv. Wants arrests. Busts. A bit of action is what he said.”

Pharaoh rolls her eyes. “He wants to be an MP, Aector. He wants some good publicity so he can bugger off to Westminster.”

McAvoy says nothing. He puts his hands in his pockets. Feels the outline of the mud-caked phone. Presses his fingers over the keypad. Pictures himself sitting at the kitchen table at home, delicately taking the machine to pieces with fragile tools held in too-large hands. Wonders again what possessed him to pick it up, and whether he has any damn right to root around inside.

“Wish I’d brought a brolly,” muses Pharaoh, watching the rain as it scythes down into the square. She looks at McAvoy. “We wouldn’t fit you under it, though, would we? You’d have to hold it. Be my slave for a bit, eh?”

He looks away before she can see him blush. Tells himself that she just teases him for fun, and not for meanness. Reminds himself how many times she has stood up for him. Comforted him. Risked her career to back him up.