Original Skin (7 page)

Lilah wakes again. Reaches up and grabs her father’s ear. She holds it, as if deciding whether there is anything to be gained by giving it a yank, and then lets go as she feels the backs of his knuckles stroking her jaw.

McAvoy props his daughter up so she can see the screen.

“I think this might have worked,” he says softly in her ear, as if sharing a secret. She looks at the screen wide-eyed, puzzled but fascinated. McAvoy smiles, starts to read. “What have we got?”

He clamps a hand over Lilah’s eyes. The movement is unexpected and Lilah gives a gasp of fright that turns into the motorbike rev that signals her intention to cry.

On the sofa, Roisin sits bolt upright. She sees her husband with his hand over their daughter’s eyes, blushing furiously and signaling at the laptop with frantic nods of his head.

“Jaysus . . .”

Yawning, exhausted, too tired to sugarcoat, Roisin rolls onto the floor and crosses to him on her knees. She pulls Lilah from his grasp and holds her close, managing to croak a few words of song. With some rocking and a few soft shushes, Lilah settles, and Roisin achily maneuvers herself upright.

“I’ll take her up,” she says, and there is more honey on her tongue than before. She meets her husband’s eyes and manages a bone-weary wink. It’s her apology for her sharpness, and McAvoy, never truly convinced of the source from which she draws her love for him, wishes she did not feel compelled to give it.

When the door closes, he looks back at the laptop screen. At the handful of legible messages he can make out among a fog of scrambled numbers, letters, and computer code. The blush is getting redder. He feels the need to lock the door and pull the curtains tight.

“Bloody hell . . .”

A minute later Roisin slips back into the room. Her eyes find his and she raises her arms wide, indicating that she is all ears.

“The phone . . . ,” says McAvoy.

“You got it working? Well done.”

“Yeah, but . . .” He stops. Pulls an impish face.

“What?”

“‘I want to take you inside me. Want to arch my back like a yawning cat, pushing back against your hardness, your manhood so deep inside me that it feels as if I am breathing for you . . .’”

“Fecking hell!”

Her tiredness momentarily forgotten, she all but runs across the room and throws herself over the arm of the chair and onto his lap, knocking loose the lead that connects the phone to the laptop. McAvoy doesn’t care. This is fun.

“Is there more?” she asks, looking at the laptop.

McAvoy raises a hand to point at the screen and then stops himself. His wife, bright, witty, beautiful, and gifted, had a traveler’s upbringing. Her schooling was sporadic and disjointed. She is not a comfortable reader, despite the patience with which he has helped her develop a love of words. Instead, he picks another phrase at random and reads it to her.

“‘I am yours to abuse. I am a toy for your pleasure, a piece of meat to be pounded, clay to be molded—a waiting receptacle for your frustrations and rage . . .’”

Roisin giggles and presses herself against him. They are two teenagers reading a friend’s diary; naughty, wrong, and loving it.

“‘Want your breath against me, the cord biting into my skin . . .’”

“She’s good,” says Roisin appreciatively. “Bet he bloody loved it.”

“‘Want my mind to sculpt your face; your identity to remain the desperate fantasy that first brought your tongue to my shoulders, your hand to my cock . . .’”

McAvoy stops short, and Roisin catches her breath. She gives a snort.

“It’s two blokes?”

McAvoy catches himself pulling a face, and a guilty blush thunders from his brow to his neck. His liberal self-loathing grabs a handful of his guts.

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with . . .”

Roisin is giggling. “You were loving it,” she teases.

“So were you,” he protests, and then accepts there is no way to escape this with any dignity, so just starts laughing and buries his face in her chest.

“Did it get you going?” she asks seductively, trying to get a hand inside his shirt.

“No!” Then, sheepishly, “A bit.”

“Me too,” she says, and presses her face to his.

“SLUTTY,”
he’d texted, when pressed for a preference on how she should dress. “A dirty girl.”

Suzie hadn’t really known how to interpret the instruction, but figured it didn’t include her Disney scarf or Care Bears rucksack.

Still, she has enjoyed playing dress-up, and her reflection pleased her when she looked in the mirror on the back of the wardrobe door. She has managed to find an outfit in her explosion of clothes that, to her at least, qualifies her as vaguely whorish.

She is shivering in a short blue dress and a secondhand leather jacket that reaches to her bare knees. Her hair is tied back and her makeup is thick enough to ensure there will be no facial damage in the event of a sudden fall.

The high heels her new playmate had insisted upon are on the passenger seat of the Fiat Panda. The stiletto points kept getting caught in the mat when she pressed the accelerator, so had been whipped off at the last set of traffic lights. She is now driving barefoot, unsure whether or not she likes this sensation of damp dirt and metal on the soles of her feet.

It is a miserable night. The rain is a damp net stretched across the black road. It does not seem to fall, but instead hangs, ghostlike and bone-soakingly omnipresent, in the chill, oil-dark air.

Suzie wishes Simon were here. She can picture him with no effort of will; can see him now, smoking a roll-up in the passenger seat and telling her she looks beautiful.

Such a wish is nothing new. Suzie’s yearning for his return has become almost a prayer. But tonight it is more through some vague sense of unease over her safety than her usual eagerness to giggle and chat with her best friend.

It’s almost nine p.m. This is her third visit to this location, but the first time she has driven here alone.

She remembers Simon’s message when she first told him she had heard there was a popular spot for couples and singles on the coast road up to Bridlington.

“Coniston rest stop—where dreams are made.”

Ten miles from the city center, between two midsize villages, a little side road has become, in certain circles at least, notorious. Though she does not particularly like the word, it has made the papers as a “dogging spot.” Here singles meet, and couples put on participatory shows for the handful of guys who like to spend their spare time sitting in their cars in the dark: each hoping the next set of headlights in the rearview mirror represents a blow job rather than the police.

“What are you doing? Seriously, Suze?”

She asks herself the question as she slowly maneuvers the tiny, battered car into the isolated pitch-dark of the entrance to the rest stop.

It is at least a mile from the nearest house.

There is a nervousness, an excitement, in Suzie’s stomach and thighs, but to call the feeling arousal would be inaccurate. In truth she does not do this for the sex. Not really. It is perhaps just to prove herself alive. It is to be somebody who does not just fantasize, but who makes things happen. She does it because she thinks it is weak to deny oneself excitement.

In her years with her fiancé, sex was simplistic and routine. Life was okay. Middle-of-the-road. Safe. When her heart was broken, Suzie lost herself. Did things she could never have previously imagined. Found reserves of lust and rage in equal measure, and made mistakes that catapulted her into a new way of being. She engaged in one-night stands and office flings: sweaty unions in nightclub toilets and in the backs of cars. She read and watched erotica. Bought herself toys with which to pleasure herself when she could not find a partner. Made it clear when starting conversations that she was not just a tease. That she was willing to play.

One such rendezvous introduced her to an attractive older man, who spotted in her a hunger for the unknown. He had introduced her to the websites and forums where like-minded people were able to enjoy grown-up fun. And she had thrown herself into the life. Had quickly come to view ordinary sex as somehow lukewarm and insipid in comparison. Had so grown to love the sordid nastiness of these couplings and triplings that she found herself turning down nights out with potential boyfriends in exchange for late-night assignations with strangers.

Simon was the only friend who knew about it all. Something had happened, shortly after they met, that bonded them together in a friendship without judgment. Both were free to be themselves, whatever that might be. They joined in each other’s games and laughed about their adventures. She could not talk to her other mates about such things. Could not stand to be judged or, worse, analyzed. Would not want to hear their aghast musings on what hole in her heart or bump in her brain forced her to subject herself to such abuses and degradation. She does not really want to think about any of that. Just knows that it makes her feel as if she were living life in color after so many years in black-and-white.

“Wish you were here, Si. What am I bloody doing?”

There are two cars in the rest stop. A large estate car is parked up to Suzie’s right in the shadow of the mound of shingle and earth that blocks the area from view and gives it such appeal. Its lights, and engine, are on.

In the distance she can spot the shape of another car. It is dark and bulky, lights off, its occupant obscured.

Suzie has been halfheartedly listening to the radio. There has been some sort of accident down at St. Andrew’s Quay. A police van has been petrol-bombed and two officers have been taken to hospital. She wonders if it was the speed-camera van and rather hopes that it was.

She takes a deep breath. Parks up on the opposite side of the rest stop to the estate car. Wonders who she is about to fuck.

In the beam of her headlights she can make out that the driver is quite tall. From this remove she guesses he is middle-aged, but cannot be sure. In truth, it doesn’t really matter.

She closes her eyes and tries to calm herself. She has done more devilish things than this. She has played more daring games. But in the past Simon had been there to hold her hand.

“God, I miss you.”

The first few weeks without him she had had no appetite for such things. She didn’t log on to any of the websites that used to bring her such fun. Didn’t send a filthy message or put a single kiss at the end of an e-mail. But as grief became bearable, so desire began to return. There were tears when she attended her first swinger party without him, but they had not flown so freely as to inhibit her. The night had gone well. She had enjoyed herself. Had made new friends. Had promised to return for the next gathering. Had even told today’s playmate how much she hoped he would join her.

The phone on the passenger seat beeps and Suzie jumps. She picks it up and reads the message.

“Go and make him happy.”

The thrill of it all brings goose pimples to her skin. She reaches across for her high heels and slips her cold feet inside them, noting how her fingers tremble as she fastens the buckle. With a quick glance at her reflection in the too-dark mirror, she steps from the car.

A gust of wind pulls at the tails of her leather jacket, and her legs feel unsteady as she totters across the tarmac on her high heels, closing the distance between herself and the vehicle in only a few strides.

The man in the car watches her approach. His head almost reaches the roof of the vehicle. He has a thin, pinched face and rimless glasses. He is dressed in a nice suit, with his tie unloosened almost to the middle of his chest. He is red-faced, and a sheen of sweat is visible on his thinning scalp. As he winds the window down, Suzie is hit by the smell of booze. Bending forward to talk through the glass, she sees the man already has his trousers undone.

“Want to play?”

The line sounds silly and false as she says it, but she can think of nothing better.

The man looks taken aback, and Suzie wonders if he had genuinely expected to find sex here tonight, or had just driven here to see if the rumors were true.

“What you got in mind?”

His voice is slurred, but whether through drink or nerves she cannot say.

“It’s cold out here,” says Suzie, trying to sound sexy.

“Do you want to get in?”

Suzie remembers her instructions. Wonders if her new friend is watching. Whether he is sitting in the distant car, smiling as she fulfills his fantasy without ever having seen his face.

“You can join me out here. The bonnet of your car looks soooo comfy.”

The man fumbles with the car door. He steps from the vehicle, and a half bottle of Jack Daniel’s falls onto the road. The man kicks it under his car and stands up straight. He has to reach out to steady himself, and his eyes slide halfway shut.

He is a good foot taller than Suzie, and twice the age.

She looks up at him. Decides they will not kiss.

She wonders if this is turning the watcher on. She is feeling only the slightest frisson of arousal, but that is to do with the sensation of being commanded, being watched, rather than by any desire to have sex with this man.

She goes straight to work. Reaches out and squeezes his groin. He moans and she wonders how long he has been turning himself on, here, alone, in the dark.

“Can I lick it? Lick you? Down there?”

She does not want him to, and tonight’s architect had not commanded her to accept any such pleasures.

She shakes her head. “Do me. Now.”

Suzie walks as sexily as she can to the front of the car. It is warm and throbbing as she lays herself upon it, face-first, listening to the hum of the engine. Without a word she pulls up the hem of her dress. The cold night air and faint mist of rain feel wonderful on her bare skin.

A moment later, he is behind her, pressing his still-clothed hardness against the backs of her thighs.

She wishes she had her phone in her hand. Wishes she could text him to ask if he is enjoying the show.

She hears the rustle of trousers falling to the wet ground. Feels rough and inexpert fingers between her legs, and then a hand in her hair.

Suzie presses her face onto the wet metal of the car. Feels him fumbling, trying to find the way inside . . .

“Get it over with,” she mumbles into the back of her hand.

The sound of a car.

Big, powerful engine roaring into life. Fat, expensive tires on wet tarmac. The sudden scream of a foot stamping on gas.

Suzie turns around. Stares past the grunting, thrusting man. Her eyes widen. It is a sensation of genuine terror.

The other car is screaming toward them, mere feet away and getting faster.

The noise she makes is a strangled squawk. It is an unnatural sound, gargled in her throat.

Desperately, she pushes back against the man, who pins her to the bonnet of his car. Hears him grunt and stagger as he tries to hold her where she lies.

“Get off me!”

Suzie knows she is about to die. Wonders if this is how Simon felt as he gave himself up to the noose.

And then she is squirming, shrieking, slipping out of his grasp: the roar of the car engine drowning out her shouts to “Move!”

She slips free. Throws herself into the dirt at the side of the road.

Turns, just in time to see the four-by-four crush the man, half turning, against the bonnet of his own car in a crash of metal and flesh.

He is pinned between the cars, legs and buttocks still bare, shirttails comically parted like stage curtains to reveal a dying erection.

Suzie cannot make a sound. Her throat has squeezed shut. Her eyes will not close. She stares, unable to yank her gaze away from the man’s gulping, gasping mouth, opening, as if with the dying gasps of a fish, as his head falls forward onto the bonnet of the vehicle, which pins him where he stands.

Beneath where Suzie lies, semi-sprawled, the ground is cold. Wet. Her knees are bleeding where she landed on stone. Her mouth is open as if in mimicry of the dying man.

Finally, she is able to raise her dirty hands to her face. To momentarily block it out. To stop her memory from absorbing any more.

She looks up again only when she hears the larger vehicle move. She watches as the four-by-four reverses, pauses, and then turns in a semicircle. It does not pause again. The sound of a boot stamping on the gas rings in Suzie’s ears.

A moment later, she is alone, sitting in a ditch at the side of a rest stop, watching a stranger slide to the ground as if made of damp paper; his legs a ruined mess of skin, blood, and bone.

She forces herself to move. Pulls down her dress as if suddenly terrified of being seen. Moves, in jerky increments, to where the man lies.

“I’m sorry,” she says, though the sounds do not come out.

She staggers back to her own car. Fumbles with the door. Cries. Tries a dozen times to get the key in the ignition. Breaks a heel as she presses the accelerator to the floor.

She has driven five miles with trembling hands before it occurs to her to call 999.

It is another two before she can find a phone box.

She is nearly home before she has the presence of mind to go back and wipe her prints from the receiver.