Beneath the Skin Read Free

hand I found a tissue in my pocket and carefully wiped the blood and other stuff off my fingers. My melon. I didn’t have my melon. I wandered back in search of it. The man was sitting up now, with two police officers, a man and a woman, looking down at him. I saw my blue plastic bag.
    “Mine,” I said, picking it up. “I dropped it.”
    “She did it,” a voice said. “She stopped him.”
    “Fucking KO’d him,” someone else said, and close by a woman laughed.
    The man stared up at me. Maybe I expected him to look vengeful but he just seemed blankly puzzled.
    “That right?” asked the female officer, looking a bit suspicious.
    “Yeah,” I said warily. “But I’d better be getting on.”
    The male police officer stepped forward.
    “We’ll need some details, my darling.”
    “What do you want to know?”
    He took out a notebook.
    “We’ll start with your name and address.”
    That was another funny thing. I turned out to be more shocked than I realized. I could remember my name, though even that was a bit of an effort. But I just couldn’t think of my address even though I own the bloody place and I’ve been living there for eighteen months. I had to get my appointment book out of my pocket and read the address out to them, with my hand trembling so much I could hardly make out the words. They must have thought I was mad.
     
TWO
     
    I had reached “E” in the register; E for Damian Everatt, a skinny little boy with huge spectacles taped together at one hinge, waxy ears, an anxious gappy mouth, and scabby knees from where the other boys pushed him over in the playground.
    “Yes, miss,” he whispered, as Pauline Douglas pushed her head round the already open classroom door.
    “Can I have a quick word, Zoe?” she said. I stood up, smoothing my dress anxiously, and joined her. There was a welcome through-breeze in the corridor, though I noticed that a bead of sweat was trickling down Pauline’s carefully powdered face, and her normally crisp graying hair was damp at her temples. “I’ve had a call from a journalist on the
Gazette
.”
    “What’s that?”
    “A local paper. They want to talk to you about your heroics.”
    “What? Oh, that. It’s . . .”
    “There was mention of a melon.”
    “Ah yes, well you see . . .”
    “They want to send a photographer, too. Quiet!” This last to the circle of children fidgeting on the floor behind us.
    “I’m sorry they bothered you. Just tell them to go away.”
    “Not at all,” Pauline said firmly. “I’ve arranged for them to come round at ten forty-five, during break time.”
    “Are you sure?” I looked at her dubiously.
    “It might be good publicity.” She looked over my shoulder. “Is that it?”
    I looked round at the huge green-striped fruit, innocent on the shelf behind us.
    “That’s the one.”
    “You must be stronger than you look. All right, I’ll see you later.”
    I sat down again, picked up the register.
    “Where were we? Yes. Kadijah.”
    “Yes, miss.”
     
     
    The journalist was middle-aged and short and fat, with hairs growing out of his nostrils and sprouting up behind his shirt collar. Never quite got the name, which was embarrassing as he was so aware of mine. Bob something, I think. His face was a dark shade of red, and wide circles of sweat stained his armpits. When he wrote, little shreds of shorthand in a tatty notebook, his plump fist kept slipping down the pen. The photographer who accompanied him looked about seventeen; cropped dark hair, an earring in one ear, jeans so tight I kept thinking that when he squatted on the floor with his camera they would split. All the time Bob was asking me questions, the photographer wandered round the classroom, staring at me from different angles through the camera lens. I’d tidied my hair and put on a bit of makeup before they arrived. Louise had insisted on it, pushing me into the staff cloakroom and coming after me with a brush in her hand. Now I wished I’d