Under the Skin Read Free Page A

little old lady. Fifty miles an hour, absolute max. And that shoddy old anorak of hers on the back seat – what was that all about? She had a screw loose, probably. Nutter, probably. And she talked funny – foreign, definitely.
    Would he like to fuck her?
    Probably, if he got the chance. She’d probably be a much better fuck than Janine, that was for sure.
    Janine. Christ, it was amazing how just thinking of her could bring him right down. He’d been in a great mood until now. Good old Janine. If ever your spirits are getting too up, just think of Janine. Jesus … couldn’t … he just forget it? Just look at this girl’s tits, blazing in the sun, like … He knew what they looked like now: they looked like the moon. Well, two moons.
    ‘So, what are you doing in Inverness?’ he said suddenly.
    ‘Business,’ she said.
    ‘What do you do?’
    Isserley thought for a moment. It was so long since anything had been said, she’d forgotten what she’d decided to be this time.
    ‘I’m a lawyer.’
    ‘No kidding?’
    ‘No kidding.’
    ‘Like on TV?’
    ‘I don’t watch TV.’ This was true, more or less. She’d watched it almost constantly when she’d first come to Scotland, but nowadays she only watched the news and occasionally a snatch of whatever happened to be on while she was exercising.
    ‘Criminal cases?’ he suggested.
    She looked him briefly in the eyes. There was a spark there that might be worth fanning.
    ‘Sometimes,’ she shrugged. Or tried to. Shrugging while driving was a surprisingly difficult physical trick, especially with breasts like hers.
    ‘Anything juicy?’ he pushed.
    She squinted into her rear-view mirror, slowing the car to allow a Volkswagen pulling a caravan to overtake.
    ‘What would you think was juicy?’ she enquired as the manoeuvre slipped gently into place.
    ‘I don’t know …’ he sighed, sounding doleful and playful at the same time. ‘A man kills his wife ’cause she’s playing around with another guy.’
    ‘I may have had one of those,’ Isserley said noncommittally.
    ‘And did you nail him?’
    ‘Nail him?’
    ‘Did you get him sent down for life?’
    ‘What makes you think I wouldn’t be defending him?’ she smirked.
    ‘Oh, you know: women together against men.’
    His tone had grown distinctly odd: despondent, even bitter, and yet flirtatious. She had to think hard how best to respond.
    ‘Oh, I’m not against men,’ she said at last, changing lanes reflectively. ‘Especially men who get a raw deal from their women.’
    She hoped that would open him up.
    But instead he was silent and slumped a little in his seat. She looked aside at him, but he didn’t allow eye contact, as if she’d failed to respect some limit. She settled for reading the inscription on his T-shirt, AC / DC , it said, and in large embossed letters, BALLBREAKER . She had no idea what on earth this might mean, and felt suddenly out of her depth with him.
    Experience had taught her there was nothing to do about that but try to go deeper.
    ‘Are you married?’ she asked.
    ‘Was,’ he stated flatly. Sweat was glistening beneath the hairline of his big prickly head; he ran his thumb under the seatbelt as if it were smothering him.
    ‘You won’t be so keen on lawyers, then,’ she suggested.
    ‘It was OK,’ he said. ‘Clean break.’
    ‘No children, then?’
    ‘ She got ’em. Good luck to her.’ He said this as if his wife were a distant and repugnant country on which there was no point trying to impose the customs of a more civilized society.
    ‘I didn’t mean to pry,’ said Isserley.
    ‘S’alright.’
    They drove on. What had seemed like growing intimacy between them hardened into mutual unease.
    Ahead of them, the sun had risen above the car’s roof, leaving the windscreen filled with a harsh unpunctuated whiteness that threatened to become painful. The forest on the driver’s side thinned out and was replaced by a steep embankment infested with creepers and