Beneath the Skin Read Free Page A

out that she was so much more. She was an artist.
    There was an intimacy about the dim studio, the way they were, a man and a woman, standing alone among the lifeless. It was only natural that they would eye each other up, all casual, picking up on the little sexual clues. By the end of their first conversation, he had felt that she’d warmed to him. She’d even offered him accommodation, a room in her house, above the studio. Though he still didn’t like the way she looked at him. He pulled back a little from the window. The paint on the sill was white, glossy and squeaky clean. His fingers brushed against some trinket on the ledge. It was a piece of artwork, obviously created by Alys. An old bird’s nest, a lovely piece of architecture, round and solid, the dip in the centre lined with down and moss. Alys had reimagined it, adding a rat nibbling on a broken egg. Another three pearly eggs nestled in the crook of its tail. It was surreal and slightly repulsive. He supposed he’d better get used to it.
    Alys’s house was squeezed between student tenements on one side and a low-roofed dance studio on the other. Standing on the pavement in front of it, you’d think it was a doll’s house: the six steps up to the glossy green door, the sash windows and the dull red brickwork. Walt imagined taking the front off, exposing all the rooms and their dark little secrets. You’d see Mouse reading in the attic, William building Lego; Alys’s plain white bedroom. The first-floor bathroom, big enough to dance in, with the claw-foot bath tub and the heavy showerhead in its cradle. You’d be able to hear the burbling of the old boiler, the purring of the four cats in the airing cupboard and the faint creaky respiration of the house itself.
    It was the sort of house that breathed a sigh of relief after dark. You could imagine the rafters sagging like Victorian ladies loosening their stays. Already Walt was learning the sounds of the place. The letter box shivered in the wind; the seventh and ninth steps dipped and groaned as he walked up the stairs. His bedroom door had a worn brass knob that never quite caught, causing the door to fly open in the middle of the night.
    There were cold spots on the landing, cracked panes, flaking paint and cobwebs that no one could reach. If Alys’s house were a doll’s house, you’d probably just replace the front and tiptoe away.
    Alys had four cats. Five, if you counted the stuffed grey one in the basket down in the basement. He’d been formally introduced to that cat on his first day, when they were locking up for the night. Though he had since learned that Alys never really shut up shop, but roamed around the building like a ghost.
    â€˜This is Hector. I put him outside during daylight but I bring him in at night,’ she had said, cradling the basket under her arm.
    Walt had tickled the oblivious feline chin. ‘So is he . . . glued to the basket?’
    â€˜Certainly not.’ She had snatched the basket away. ‘I would never glue him into place. He’s free to . . . be.’
    â€˜Be?’
    â€˜Hector is .’ The cat had continued to gaze at some distant horizon. Almost like a regular cat, but for the dust on its eyeballs. Walt’s shudder had taken him right back to the desert, to open-eyed corpses half buried in sand. Why the fuck was he putting himself through this? He must be crazy, getting caught up with someone who found dead things so appealing.
    Walt stepped away from the window and stretched out his stiff leg, noting the dull ache around his knee. The days so far had been uneventful. He spent a lot of time doing admin. Alys never seemed to answer the phone or reply to emails. He had busied himself wading through a backlog of enquiries, chuckling at the odder requests – ‘How much would it cost to mount a pine marten?’ – and contacting potential clients who were either used to