The Loosening Skin

^{INTRODUCED BY} MIKHAEL STUCK

Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for that warm welcome, and thanks to the Film Institute for asking me to introduce this screening of the first and last film by the visionary director Max Black: Sticking Point.

Max was one of a kind.

He was best known as an actor, and in that he excelled. But since his death nine years ago it has been my goal to make his talent as a director better known to the world, based on the footage he shot whilst attempting to tell the story of my life, and the lives of five others. We became known through the media as the Stuck Six, and everybody thought they knew everything there was to know about us.

But there was so much more.

When people are deeply in love we say they become like one person, one soul, united. I don’t think that’s true. We retain our individuality, and our right to our own interpretation of the love we share. Max was deeply interested in that idea. Not the notion of getting to the truth at the heart of the Stuck Six, but of realising there was no one truth about us. He bought the rights to Howard’s autobiography, but that wasn’t what he was filming. He talked to all of us, and he became my friend when I realised he was trying to construct something complex. Something both moving, and fair to my life.

I found a like mind in Max Black.

When I first met him I was surprised at how different he was from his media persona. I thought he would use his charm on me to get what he wanted, but instead he did something that people rarely do. He listened to me. He wanted to understand what having that love, and losing it, had done to me and to my family. We began to talk regularly in preparation for his film, and often the conversation focused on how different the world would be without moulting. He pictured a time when love cannot be bought or sold, lost or gained in a skin.

I wonder what he would have made of the huge changes we have all faced in the last few years as that world has become a reality. I think he would have been overjoyed. I only wish he had waited to see it.

New studies show that over seventy per cent of the UK’s population now take a daily supplement of Suscutin, delaying the moulting process indefinitely. We now have the choice whether to moult or to remain in the skin that loves. We can leave love behind when we’re ready.

This means that now, in the year 2022, Max’s only work as a director is already outdated. He’s not alone in this. Every piece of art made before 2020 is a historical record. To watch, read, or listen to anything made before that date can feel like the equivalent of watching a public information film about the horrors of smallpox. These problems no longer apply to us, do they?

I’ve asked myself many times, particularly once Suscutin came along, why I’ve spent so much time working to get Sticking Point finished, and to the attention of the general public. Even once I had enlisted the support and belief of our director, Sofie, and the backing of our distributor, Silverfish, I wondered what I was attempting to do. Why does this one film matter so much when there are so many other films, finished films, on the subject of love already? Surely this is the time for new artists and new visions?

I was surprised, when I looked deep inside myself, to realise that the answer wasn’t based purely on my personal connection to Max. It sprang from my belief that when someone’s way of living becomes history, it doesn’t automatically become irrelevant.

Love is still love. It’s going to take us all a while to figure that out, maybe. But whether we feel it alone, or with a special person, or in a group, it is the same emotion. Whether it lasts for one skin or one minute, or forever. In its essence, in its time of existence, it is the same, and it unites us all.

I can’t think of a film that explores that concept better than Sticking Point, and I never knew a person who understood that better than Max Black. Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoy the film.

After the screening there are drinks to be drunk, congratulations to be borne, photos to be taken with Sofie and the suits. We all smile and wrap our arms around each other’s backs. We stare straight ahead as if we share a vision, one way, travelling. Fuck it, fuck them all and their demands and compromises. It’s not the film I wanted but I’m done with it, and with them all. I’ve done my best by Max, and now maybe I can sleep.

Yes, I can sleep. I sneak out, find a cab, and don’t bother to undress once I’m through the door. I fall on the bed, and it all goes away. I’ve let him down, but I’ve done my penance. I’ve got nothing bad left to dream about.

The phone wakes me up early. It’s Gwen.

‘You should have come last night,’ I say, and she says, ‘Mik, can you get here? It’s back.’

SOMETHING TERRIBLE.

I ask her all the right questions, and try to make sense of her answers. I find myself saying ‘Right’ after each reply, as if things are being sorted into the correct order.

‘You couldn’t tell me you were having more tests?’ is my final question. The one I have to ask, for my own sake.

Gwen looks terrible. This was a fit woman, tall and strong and capable – a bodyguard, for Christ’s sake. All of the qualities I associate with her have been sucked out of her body by this disease. Her skin is the wrong colour and texture. It’s too white and papery on her face, dry and cracked, and blotched with red that has coagulated into purple swellings behind her ears, striping down her neck. When did I last see her? Surely she didn’t look like this.

‘You’ve lost so much already,’ she says. ‘I kept hoping it would be—’

‘A bad dream? This isn’t about me.’

‘You’re the one who’ll get left behind.’

This cottage. This cottage is too small, I should have bought her a bigger one. I can’t pace in this living room; I can’t breathe with this low-beamed ceiling pressing down on me, the wood painted black, everything about it belonging to some other version of England. I take back what I said last night – screw the past, forget it, it makes no sense. Let’s start again.

Although the future’s not looking any better.

‘Sit down,’ she says.

‘Let’s just stay in the present, okay?’ I sit on the sofa, beside her, and feel like a hulking mess next to her new fragility. I shouldn’t have driven after the amount I drank last night. I’m probably still over the limit.

‘From the look of you it was a good night,’ she says.

‘It really wasn’t.’

‘You want painkillers?’

‘Yes.’ I rub my temples while she gets up, unfolding with a delicacy that makes me feel ashamed of my mere headache.

‘Ibuprofen or one of my personal stash?’ she calls from the kitchen.

‘You choose.’

She comes back with a glass of water and two white oblong pills. I knock them back. ‘So how long?’

‘I thought you wanted to stay in the present.’

‘I’m asking how long we can stay in the present for.’

‘Not long,’ she says, curling back up to her original position, knees tucked in, spine curved against the cushions. Why should she say that so calmly? I want her to rage with me, to challenge it all. We had plans for after I’d done with the film. We were going to go travelling and do things, physical things like climbing and swimming and hiking. It all had a reality to me that is growing more ephemeral by the minute, and I can’t grasp it, or her.

Gwen doesn’t do television, so the sofa is directly in front of the bay window, looking out over the unkempt garden. The iron gate at the end of the path is ajar – I must have forgotten to shut it properly – and beyond it, on the main road through the village, I can see my BMW and the pub opposite. It’s one of those ones with low, dark windows and dirty white walls. It’s called The Lamb.

‘I hate Devon,’ I say. ‘I should have talked you out of living here. Come back to London with me. I’ll find a better doctor.’

She shakes her head.

‘I’ll sell this place from under you if you piss me off. I’m serious this time, Taylor. Move your arse to London and get checked over properly.’

She doesn’t say anything for a while. Then, out of the blue, ‘Studies show a huge increase in Epidermal Sclerosis in the past five years. I heard rumours that they’re looking at Suscutin as a possible cause.’

‘Stop reading tabloids. You’ve spent too long sitting down here, looking out of the window and waiting for shit to happen.’

‘Come on!’ There it is: the fire, the heart of her. ‘Mik, it’s the pills, it’s the pills, it’s only what I deserve.’

‘Nobody deserves this. And if it’s the pills, they’ll prove a link.’

‘And do what? A few adverse reactions against a multimillion pound industry? It won’t change anybody’s mind. It hasn’t changed your mind. You’re still taking your daily dose, aren’t you?’

‘You know I am. There’s no proof, Gwen.’

She nods, and slumps back down. ‘I get it. It’s much better that we’re all free to love each other forever. If we can find anyone to love us back.’

She’s so bitter. But she knows who I am; she knows the deal. I don’t do love, not now, not ever again. ‘Listen, you’re my best friend, but I—’

She punches my arm. Once, not too long ago, it would have hurt. ‘Shut up, you moron. You’re so self obsessed.’

‘Fuck you!’

She laughs, then says, ‘Sell the damned cottage. Just pay my hospice bills instead. There’s a nice one with a duck pond just outside Exeter.’

‘Seriously? You’re going to meekly accept your impending death because there’s a duck pond to sit by?’

‘It’s not treatable, Mik. It’s gone beyond the first layer. It’s all the way through me, now. I smell it. I want to be in a place where we all smell as bad as each other.’

‘I think you’ll find that smell is my hangover.’

‘Go wash then, you pig.’

When I come back downstairs, only ten minutes later, it’s all different. Death is accepted, done and dusted, sitting down to breakfast with us. How can that happen? She’s made toast and coffee in her magazine-standard kitchen, and she’s all business.

‘Listen,’ she says, as I butter the toast and layer on marmalade, ‘there’s something you need to do for me.’

‘Fire away.’

‘You need to find someone. Someone that I have to apologise to.’

‘Making amends time already?’

‘No,’ says Gwen. ‘Don’t. Don’t make a joke about it.’

‘Is this to do with the day that you left Max?’ I ask. The day we never talk about.

She doesn’t answer me, exactly. ‘I don’t want to die without having said sorry. You can understand that, can’t you?’

She knows I can.

She knows how important apologies have been to me, and how hard I have worked for them: to get them, and to give them. Finishing Max’s film has been one long apology to him, even though he can never accept it.

‘It’s not only that.’ Her fingers pluck at the collar of her white shirt – why does she still dress like a professional even though she’s been out of work for years? It’s like she’s never let her guard down; she’s still looking for threats.

‘Then what?’

‘Do you remember when you first helped me out? What you said to me?’

‘I said, whatever you need.’

‘Not that bit. I told you I had to disappear, get far away from there, and you said: Okay. And you said: Nothing is unforgivable, though.’

‘That’s right.’

‘You still believe that?’

‘I do.’ I have to.

‘Then find Rose Allington for me,’ she says, and she hasn’t looked so desperate since she turned up outside my caravan one morning on Max’s Sussex estate, halfway through filming, and begged me to take her away, hide her from herself.

‘Just tell me,’ I say, on an impulse. ‘This one time. It was so long ago. Tell me what you did, and what Max did, and be done with it.’

She rolls her eyes. ‘One more time, Mik. It’s not about you.’

‘Oh that’s right, I forgot for one second. Lucky you were here to remind me. So where do I look for this Rose Allington? I’ve always wanted to play detective.’

‘You start by finding someone I used to know. He’s called Phineas Spice.’

JUST A TRIM.

It occurred to me to go back to my original name, of course. After we became press fodder, and being a Stuck was literally that – being mired in that role as one of the six happiest people on Earth, just waiting for it to end. Of course it had to end. We all knew that. The six of us, the reporters, the people who were searching the internet every day for updates. And it did end.

I always intended to go back to my old name. Mikhael Gusin. But when it came to it, I couldn’t. I wasn’t that person any more. I couldn’t find a new name that suited me either. What do people do, sit down and make one up? Is there a list, somewhere, to pick from by your particular trauma?

No, I’m Mikhael Stuck. It fits. We all took Howard’s surname at first because we wanted to be stuck together, and now it describes who I am with an ironic precision that continues to entertain me.

Not so for Phineas Spice, who has gone back to his birth name of Alexander Joseph Murray.

It didn’t take long to find him. In fact, I didn’t find him at all. I paid someone to do that. I don’t think Gwen really had in mind that I would need to get dressed up in a trenchcoat or a deerstalker, and do the legwork. I hired an agency, and they tracked him down in a couple of days. A courier dropped off a thick file to my flat in Kensington, and I read all about nightclubs and skin fights, gambling and prostitution. And Starguard, of course.

I know exactly what kind of person is cutting my hair right now.

The shop is empty. I waited outside in the car, trying to get Phineas alone. Alexander, I should say. He’s a short man in a loud shirt, the collar open, a gold chain hanging loose. He’s bald himself, and shiny under the recessed spotlights of his black and chrome decor. He trims away at my locks with expert fingers; you’d think he’s been doing this all his life.

‘Not too much off the top, thanks.’

‘No problem.’

‘How did you choose the name?’ I ask him.

He blinks; I watch him in the large rectangular mirror before us, a slant of the summer sunshine falling across his chest, but he’s perfectly calm as he says, ‘Pardon?’

The sharp snaps of the scissor blades are loud in my ear. ‘The name of your shop. Nicky’s. Are you Nicky?’

‘That was my dad. He owned it. After he died I took over.’

‘I’m sorry. When was that?’

‘2018? Yeah.’

‘You weren’t a hairdresser before then?’

He stops cutting, and straightens up. ‘I trained as a barber, years ago, out of school. Came back to it late.’

‘Wow.’

The brush is applied to the back of my neck, sweeping away loose strands to the linoleum floor. ‘You’re done,’ he says.

‘Thanks.’

This is a quiet town, barely map-worthy in the depths of Bedfordshire. Shefford has a small supermarket and one cafe, from what I can see. The barber shop actually has competition; there’s another one, three doors down. Why do hairdressers flock together? One turns up on a street and chances are there’ll be two more on the same stretch in no time at all.

Give me a city any day. Give me anything but little communities with their big mouths. The locals were smiley and pleasant, but keen enough to give the papers a scoop, back when the six of us lived in Cambridgeshire. Not far from here, actually.

I should have come here with a question in mind, or a way into the conversation I want to have. Instead, I end up standing at the reception desk, credit card in hand once the transaction has been completed, hesitating. I must look like an idiot.

This man was scary, once. He had things done to people. He was in charge.

He points a finger at me. ‘You’re Mickey Stuck, aren’t you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I thought I recognised you.’ He doesn’t say more.

It’s now or never. ‘Actually, we have a mutual friend.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Gwen Taylor. She used to work for you. Starguard.’

‘So she did.’ He reappraises me, straightens up. Hardens. ‘It was a long time ago since she disappeared off. Still, water under the bridge. Max Black, that’s the link, right? I haven’t thought about him in years. You met her through Max?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So how is she doing? Is she finally going to pay me back what she owes me? All that bodyguard training, setting her up in a job, it wasn’t cheap.’

‘I’ll pay you back. Whatever, name it.’ I shouldn’t react, I know; he’s just trying to get a rise out of me. Play who’s got the biggest wad.

‘Just the eight quid for the trim was enough from you, thanks. We’re done.’

Now he’s got my back up. ‘Did you get your pound of flesh from most of your girls one way or another, then?’

His eyes snap to mine. ‘I had a business, they were employees. That was it.’

‘So was Rose Allington one of your employees?’

He walks past me to the door, turns the top lock, and lowers the venetian blind with a swish. How come that action makes the shop feel so much smaller?

He leans back against the door. ‘How old are you?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Because right now you look really young. Really young. So what is it? Taylor wants to track down Rose? She wants to finish what she started?’

‘She’s dying. Skin disease. She wants to see Rose. That’s all I know.’

‘And you said you’d find her?’

‘I promised.’ Surely even somebody who was once Phineas Spice can understand that.

He smiles at me. ‘Really young,’ he says. ‘Come on, come in the back, I’ll put the kettle on.’

He’s not threatening at all, here, in this small back room; in fact, he’s welcoming to me amidst the shelves of shampoo, conditioner and dye. There’s a plastic chair and I sit, my leg pressed up against a trolley, the top tray of which contains so many pink plastic clips, while he makes tea. The smell of wet hair, dried hair, is strong. I suppose you get used to it.

‘That’s really disappointing,’ he says, when he asks how easy he was to track down. ‘But I only went back to my roots, really, didn’t I? Roots. I wouldn’t mind some of those again.’ He touches his bald head, runs a hand down its slick curve, then hands me a mug of tea. ‘I used to shave it to look hard, down in London. Get taken seriously. Then I stopped, moved back here, and it wouldn’t grow back. Look at you, you’ve got no worries yet, have you? Does baldness run in your family? My dad was bald at thirty.’

I think of my father’s thick hair, still curling around his ears and temples – or it was when I last saw him, a year or so ago. ‘No.’

He nods. ‘You’re really going to go through with this? For Taylor’s sake?’

‘She needs my help.’ One of the few things about me that I like is the fact that I always help Gwen when she needs it.

‘Sounds like she got lucky when she met you.’

‘We’re not together,’ I tell him, although I’m not sure why.

He digests this information. ‘What was it like? Being with five people at the same time?’

Does he mean love or sex? It’s not one of those uncomfortable male moments, jokey yet sweaty, that I’m not keen on. I’ve had those before, after a few drinks, where men get drunk enough to ask me what went where or if I was a giver or a taker, all that crap. I answer as if love is all there is. ‘Confusing, but good. Happy, for a while.’

‘Sounds like all love stories. You were, what? Nineteen, twenty, when it happened to you? You were the youngest, the last to join, right? The good looking one.’

‘You seem to know a lot about it already,’ I tell him.

‘I read the book. The oldest one wrote it. Howard, was it?’

‘Well, see the film. It’s in cinemas now.’

‘Max Black’s film.’

‘Yeah.’

‘No,’ says Alexander, or Phineas, or whatever. ‘I won’t be going to see that. I don’t want his thoughts in my head.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve seen and heard about a lot of shit, but I don’t want to own the oil paintings.’

‘I don’t understand. You knew him? You didn’t like him?’

‘Wow,’ he says. ‘Listen, forget all about this stuff. Forget about Taylor. Go your own way.’

‘I’m looking for Rose Allington. Gwen wants to apologise to her while she still can. That’s it. That’s all I know. I don’t care what you think you know, or what it matters. I’m just doing a friend a favour.’

He wets his lips with his tongue, then puts his own mug down in the small sink, beneath a wall-mounted boiler that looks older than I am. He’s a snake; I read his file, I know what he is. He makes money from other people’s suffering. He’s playing me, there’s some angle in this, there has to be. But he’s squeezing past my knees, past the tray with the pink clips. He leaves the room, and I still have no idea what he wants from me.

I sit there for a while before I feel certain he’s not coming back.

Eventually I put my mug down next to his, quietly, and walk back into the main part of the shop.

He’s at the door, hand on the top lock, looking out over the lazy travels of those on the main street. The afternoon sun has moved round to bathe half the room in its light; I have to squint when he swivels around, to see his expression. But I can’t guess how he’s feeling.

‘You get started on a path,’ he says. ‘You never start down it yourself. It’s only later you realise – that was the person who pushed me down it. Later, if you’re lucky, someone else – a better person – sets you on a better road. One that leads to a good place.’

‘That’s what you’re trying to do for me, is it? Is that what you did in London? In your nightclub? With all the employees of Starguard?’

‘It’s what I’ve always tried to do.’

‘So who set you on the wrong path, then?’

‘That doesn’t concern you,’ he says, and I glimpse the man in the file. ‘I don’t know where Rose is. She fell off my radar not long after Max died. If you’re serious about finding her, you should go look for Petra Cross.’

It’s a name that’s not unfamiliar to me. I wonder if Gwen has mentioned her before. ‘Where can I find her?’

‘Doesn’t mean a thing to you, then?’ He smiles, but I get the feeling he doesn’t find it as funny as he’s pretending.

‘Just tell me.’ Why am I always having to say that to people?

‘Don’t judge us all too hastily when you get your answers, okay?’ He opens the door, and swings it back. ‘It was a long time ago. Before Suscutin, which I’m guessing you take. I’m not judging you. I take it too.’

‘Most people do.’

‘Yes,’ he agrees. ‘Most people do. Some don’t like themselves for it.’

‘Like you, you mean? Why not?’

He hesitates, then says, ‘I like the dream it’s selling us. Just not the fact it has to be sold.’

‘What dream is it selling?’

‘That love lasts forever.’

Ah, now I understand. He’s fallen in love and moved up here for the quiet life, sustained by Suscutin, but he misses London. He misses being Phineas Spice. ‘So where’s your other half?’ I ask him. ‘Your dream?’

‘Wrong way round,’ he says, amused at me. ‘I made the changes so that if love comes along, I’ll be ready for it. Worthy of it.’ He winks. ‘One of these days, it’ll find me.’

‘In Shefford, Bedfordshire?’

‘You are just so young, aren’t you, mate?’ he says. ‘Right. Out you go. Don’t come here again.’

RENOVATIONS.

If twenty-nine is so young, why do I feel so crumpled? Time has folded me this way and that, and left its marks.

Twenty-nine is old enough to have seen things change, and to change along with them. It’s more than old enough to know things might change back, one day. But not yet. There’s no point in racing towards it. There’s no reason to force change in the hope someone likes it.

I’m not like Phineas/Alexander, who’s sitting in his shop pretending he’s become lovable, and that some good man or woman will notice. I’m not stupid enough to imagine that could work.

I can’t reconcile that dreamer with the man I read about in the file. If there’s one question I wish I’d asked him, it would be why did you choose such a stupid pseudonym? Phineas Spice is a pathetic name.

But even if I knew why he called himself that, I get the feeling I’ll never understand him. The file, the facts: they give me no insight into a person. It’s the equivalent of somebody reading press cuttings about me and thinking they’d know what happened when I was part of the Six. You can’t get to know someone through the written word. A compilation of actions, laid bare on the page, have all motivation missing from the information.

I find myself driving east.

Living on the edge of Grafham Water seemed like a good idea, once we came to the attention of the press. They couldn’t get at us from every side; that long calm lake – a reservoir, in fact – deterred just about all of them, except for the few who were desperate enough to hire boats from the local sailing club, from time to time.

I stop the car down the road from what used to be our house, on the verge where the paparazzi used to park. I get out, and stretch away the hours of driving. It’s a warm evening, and still. I skirt around, keeping a distance from the barn conversion, large, on a remote part of the water. There are no cars parked directly outside. We rented it, paying for six months up front after we’d been brought to the attention of the world as the Stuck Six. Howard made the decision to give an exclusive interview to get the money together. He didn’t consult us. But I was grateful that he organised everything, and didn’t make me speak in public.

I was different, then.

He was in charge, and when he said it was time to leave Birmingham, our jobs, our studies, our friends, we did it. Some articles called him a cult leader, but the truth is that somebody had to be the boss of us. The entity we were. You don’t get six people together for any period of time and find decision-making works in a democratic sense. For one thing, there’s not an odd number to sway a vote.

The hawthorn provides cover from the big window at the front, and I skulk around to the side of the house, where changes start to become obvious to me. There’s a storage area with a slanted roof jutting out from the wall, between the kitchen and the bathroom windows. Logs are arranged, pyramid-style, inside – a good supply. A burner must have been installed, ready for a cold winter.

But that was always Dan, stocked up for the worst situation while hoping for the best. He was so adamant we would make it through the difficult times, stay together even after he moulted. But when I said I couldn’t stand it any more he was the one who gave me the money he’d been saving, and an address of an old friend in London who I could stay with.

I wonder why he chose to buy this place when the money came through, and to live here still.

I should knock at the front door, like a guest, in case he’s in. But I end up at the back door, trying the handle as if I still have the right to enter.

It’s locked.

My instinct tells me nobody’s home.

I look through the glass pane and see little differences everywhere rather than the things that have stayed the same. These variations on my past jump into clarity: an amateur’s painting of Grafham Water at sunset with a charm about it; a silver spice rack; an open cookbook and a blue striped teapot. None of these objects look like Dan’s taste to me, and everything is far too tidy. He’s living here with someone, is my guess, and he hasn’t told me. Or any of the others. I think if he chose to tell one of us, it would be me. We told each other everything.

But perhaps lovers always say that of each other, and it’s never exactly true.

I hope he’s happy. And other clichés.

I move away from the door.

We never swam in the Water; I don’t know why that’s so strongly in my mind. We didn’t even spend long looking at it. It would have been a photo opportunity extraordinaire for the photographers that camped outside, or sailed past. Mickey Stuck, looking depressed and alone – is there trouble in paradise? And to strip down, reveal my body to them, was unthinkable. Mickey Stuck, youngest member of the Six, showing off the physique that makes him so desirable.

I take a stroll down the footpath, overgrown, that leads to the familiar view that trapped me while the world waited for us to end. There, at least, nothing has changed. Nothing apart from me.

Gwen is dying, and I’m looking at an old view.

I take off everything, shed my clothes on the grass and wade into the water. It swallows me, claims me. Fuck, it’s cold, my lungs tighten with it, but as it slides up over my skin my body adjusts, and then I’m swimming. If there was someone with me, waiting on the shore for me, I would call – Come in, the water’s fine.

It is fine. It’s good, and it’s only for me. I don’t need to share it. If I wanted to, I could swim right across this reservoir. I’m fit, I’m still young, I’m free.

Of course, I’d be naked at the other end.

So I splash around for a bit longer in the late afternoon light, trying out one stroke, then another; I even do a bit of butterfly, feeling my shoulders working hard, starting up a deep ache in the muscles. When I realise I’m shivering I head back to the shore.

There’s a flash of red on the footpath. It swings, and emerges from the bushes; it’s a handbag, suspended on a woman’s shoulder, giving away her presence like a bright target. She has something in her hands.

She holds the small object up and out, in front of her. I watch her gesture, and place its meaning. She’s taking photos of me on her phone.

‘Come on then,’ I shout, and then I’m walking towards her, naked, shouting loud and fast, and she turns and skitters away behind the bushes, out of my view in seconds.

Common sense kicks in.

I stop chasing her. I return to the water’s edge and put on my clothes, having to struggle with them as they stick to my wet skin.

Fuck it, fuck her, fuck it all.

I should probably phone the others. Howard, at least; I should tell him what’s happened. I’m guessing it’ll take a while for the woman to agree a price with a newspaper or website, and then the story will appear. That gives me a window of maybe a day. I should attempt some damage limitation, as least by explaining to Dan what I was doing outside his house, naked, swimming in the reservoir.

As soon as I work it out myself, I’ll let him know.

For now, London is what I need. It’s past ten when I get in, and the tiled hall with its clean mirrors placed along the white walls is just what I need. I take the stairs to my top-floor flat, and am relieved to find it’s still not a home to me. It’s just a space I rest in sometimes, where I don’t have to be recognisably anything. Not even a person, really.

I’ve lived here for a few months. One of the things I like best about it is that my cleaner keeps moving everything. I like the thought of her, shifting it all about, rearranging to her satisfaction while pretending it’s for mine. She works for an agency; I don’t even know her name. Whenever I get a glimpse of her, early in the morning, she puts a finger to her lips and tiptoes off to another room.

Perhaps that’s the kind of relationship Max liked, with his female bodyguards. They took care of him without once expecting a word from him. Maybe I should get a guard too. But no, I don’t want that kind of life any more. Having a bodyguard is a bit like proclaiming you’re worthy of one, and trouble invites trouble. I don’t want to be the focus of any more fantasy or jealousy.

I never should have swum in the water. Stupid, stupid.

I eventually find the instant coffee at the back of a cupboard, and make myself a cup, enjoying the way the smell awakens the flat.

There’s always something to apologise for. I’ve done something terrible, Gwen said, the day we left Max behind. The day he took all those pills. These sins, I can’t believe in them. And Alexander, Phineas, whatever he called himself – he made out like Max was some sort of monster. But these people are my friends. These are the people who found me at my lowest, and saved me. These crimes feel like a child’s crimes; I am finally a parent, with transgressions brought before me, and I must smile and mend the toy, and say All better now. Is that my role here?

But Max is dead and Taylor is dying, and there are so many pieces to glue together.

The sleek wall-mounted television, background company, reports a large anti-Suscutin rally at Westminster. In the aerial views the streets are packed, and then the camera cuts to the inevitable close-up of angry faces, and a car on fire. Not here in Kensington of course, but somewhere not far away people are raging, screaming, fighting to restore what they think of as the natural way of things. But they are a minority.

The camera cuts back to the main desk, and the serious presenter moves on to similar rallies being held across European capitals today, and protest gatherings across the US. She doesn’t mention Africa or Asia, and she doesn’t mention a possible link to Epidermal Sclerosis. It’s as if these things belong in different programmes, or not in the news at all.

How am I meant to know things if nobody will tell me the truth?

Flicking through the channels, I land upon Max’s face, young and handsome, playing a cop tracking down a serial killer who makes girls fall in love with him so he can slice off their skin and wear it. All of his expressions, his movements, are familiar to me, but in a different context. When he’s disgusted by the barbarity of a crime, I see it as that time he hated the amount of mayonnaise I put in his sandwich. When he expresses his love for his beautiful young wife, who will undoubtedly end up in danger, I see him on our ridiculous camping trip, in his own backyard of his Sussex Downs estate, telling me that it’s a great sunset and a wonderful world, and he could do with another beer.

Yeah, that was a great camping trip, even if we didn’t go further than a mile from his house and the tent leaked.

While he tracks down the killer I tap the name Petra Cross into my phone.

Two things:

She has her own Wikipedia page.

She’s dead.

I scroll down the page, and the reason why I know her name comes back to me. Every person at the Suscutin march, out there rioting on the streets tonight, would have told me in a heartbeat that she is their hero, their martyr. She attempted to burn down the biggest Suscutin laboratory in the UK three years ago, and didn’t escape the blaze she had started. Firefighters managed to save the building, but her body was found within; she’d climbed into a janitor’s cupboard when she was unable to escape, and died of smoke inhalation.

There are lots of memorial sites and mentions of her name, but I find only a few pictures of her online; in this day and age it’s quite an achievement to have been so camera-shy. There’s a photo of her with a military unit, in camouflage gear. They are arranged in two rows, and she is front left, kneeling, with dark smears on her face and twigs sticking up from her helmet. She looks very young.

There’s also a photo of her after she died, curled up in that small cupboard; someone took a picture of her, and slapped it up on websites and wherever, at a price. Her face is half-twisted away, and her limbs are folded up tight.

I wish there was a third photo of her, smiling naturally at the camera, or maybe caught unawares with a group of friends, looking the wrong way or pulling a funny face. Then she would become someone I might recognise if I passed her on the street.

There’s nothing to suggest a link to help me find Rose Allington, but there is one interesting aspect. Both Petra and Gwen are ex-military; could Rose be the same? Starguard: that’s the link. You’re a superstar and you want a cool bodyguard, then you employ an ex-military looker. Max always used Starguard.

Wherever I look, Max’s face pops up. Right now, he’s saving the day as his beautiful wife gets kidnapped by the serial killer. He finds her in time, punches the killer in the face, and seals the whole deal with a long, loving kiss. Wife, and skins, saved.

I’m not going to pass this puzzle back to the private investigators I hired before. I’m going to solve it myself. I want to understand it in ways that a report can’t tell me.

I start working through all the Google results for Petra Cross, methodically, while the serious news presenter returns and runs through the same lines about the rally all over again.

‘What happened?’ says Howard. ‘Your film not doing well enough at the box office, so you have to strip off for the publicity?’

‘Don’t be a dick,’ I tell him. ‘Have you spoken to Dan about it?’

‘He says you should have let yourself in and grabbed a towel. Apparently the spare key is still under that pot Sunetra made at night school.’

‘Seriously?’ I had forgotten all about that pot, and her experiment at integrating into the local community while learning a brand new life skill. It lasted about four weeks, as all her projects did, before she hit on poetry, and her one creation – a lopsided pot with a thick handle and a patchy green glaze – got consigned to the garden as a planter into which nobody planted anything. Not one of us was much of a gardener. ‘Tell him I’m sorry.’

‘You tell him.’

‘I’m busy. I’m doing something for a friend.’

‘Are you driving?’ he asks.

‘I’m on hands free, and keeping my eyes on the road, Howard.’

‘Come out to Cologne. You’ll love it. Nobody in Germany gives a crap about your skinny-dipping.’

‘I said I’m busy.’ I pull into the fast lane, and speed up, until I’m going faster than he would like. It’s petulant, but it makes me feel better. I shouldn’t have accepted his call, but the guilt got to me for a moment.

‘The UK can’t be the nicest place to be with that headline.’

‘At least I didn’t make the front page. Somebody got killed in the riots yesterday. I’m page three.’

‘How apt,’ he says. He always did have that sort of sense of humour. ‘Seriously, I’m worried about you. Come and stay for a bit. I’m out all day working, so you won’t see that much of me. You’re not doing anything, are you? Your film’s done.’

‘It’s not my film. It’s Max’s film.’ I indicate, slow down, and pull into the inside lane. The exit for Swindon is coming up fast.

‘Yes, bloody Max,’ he says. He was so jealous of my friendship with Max; Max’s death didn’t seem to change Howard’s dislike of him. ‘Do you hear yourself? Why do you make out you’re still a teenager and I’m your dad? I’m not trying to make you do something you don’t want to do, but you seem to go out of your way to piss me off. And you make me feel really old in the process.’

Now he’s annoyed, I feel better. A switch flips in my head, and I can relax. ‘You are really old,’ I tell him.

‘I’m thirty-seven and you forgot my birthday. Again. It was last Thursday.’

‘Sorry. Many happy returns.’

‘You idiot,’ he says, but I can hear his smile. ‘If you want you could talk to Nicky. She’s in London at a convention. Get together, do drinks, or something. Distract her from her serious academic life.’

‘I will, but I’m not in London right now, okay? I’ll phone her when I get back and she can bore me for hours about romantic fiction in the 1800s or whatever.’

‘Okay, cool. It’s probably a good idea to be out of London for the time being.’ There’s a pause. I swear I can hear him thinking. ‘Maybe you should give me an address for where you’ll be staying, just in case, because I’m going to get our solicitors and media team to just look over—’

I make crackling noises at the back of my throat. ‘Sorry Howard… going through… a tunnel…’

‘Mik, phones don’t even do that any more. You’ve seen too many old films. Just hang up like a normal person.’

‘Can’t… hear… you…’

I end the call, and smile to myself all the way to Lyneham.

UNDERNEATH.

The people living in Petra’s old house know nothing about its connection to her. They are a quiet couple, living and growing together in a way that probably makes them look older than they are, and they have likeable, open faces as I stand on their doorstep and question them on this hot Saturday afternoon.

The house is one of a row that overlooks the long fence that runs around the laboratories. An RAF base once, my online searching informed me that it was bought at a rock-bottom price by Suscutin six years ago, and revamped for:

That was what their website claimed, anyway.

‘All the houses around here are owned by employees, now,’ says the man. ‘It’s convenient, that’s the main reason we bought. Plus the company has a private security force that does the rounds out on the estate sometimes as well as inside the wire, which is good. They drive round twice a night.’

‘Why? Is there trouble?’

‘No, it’s just because of the protestors, particularly this time of year,’ says the woman. ‘Petra Cross really used to live here? We bought it at auction. No wonder she tried to burn the laboratories down, if they moved in just next door to her and she hated them so much.’

‘She could have moved,’ the man points out.

‘Why is it so bad at this time of year? With the protestors?’ I ask.

‘Usually they keep to camping along the back fence, although the farmer keeps trying to get them moved off, and they aren’t much bother,’ says the woman. It sounds like a very British form of resistance, with an annoyed farmer, camping and everybody determined to make their point without inconveniencing each other any more than necessary. ‘But a lot more turn up come the anniversary of the arson attempt, and they stay in the village. They can get a bit loud in the pub, and mess up the churchyard. Excuse me for asking, but aren’t you Mickey Stuck?’

So that explains why they’re being so loquacious, so helpful. They feel they already know me in some way. There are strange benefits to fame that pop up in the most unexpected of places.

‘I am, yeah. It’s been lovely to meet you, and thanks for your help.’

‘Are you okay?’ says the man. ‘Do you need to come in and call someone?’

They must have seen the paper; it laid it on thick about the state of my mental health. Or perhaps they think celebrities shouldn’t be out, wandering around, unsupervised. Their concern touches me.

‘I’m really fine. I’m researching a new film.’

‘That’s right, you’re producing them now, aren’t you? That’s brilliant,’ enthuses the woman, and I’m glad I’ve ticked all their boxes and given them a good story to tell their friends.

‘I only wish…’ the man says, hesitant, then presses on, ‘that it had been around for you guys. The Six. Suscutin.’

‘It was so sad when you broke up,’ says the woman.

‘It was. Have you two been together long?’

‘Eight years,’ she says. ‘Still going strong. Still in love.’ She glances under her lashes at him, a little unsure to speak for him in such a way perhaps, and he takes her hand and squeezes it. They are adorable. What a gift they have – ongoing love, with no expiration date. It’s impossible to understand why people want to shut down the laboratories, destroy the drugs, when it can offer this.

Then I think of Gwen: her papery skin, her pain.

‘That’s amazing,’ I say. ‘Thanks, guys.’

‘You’re sure you don’t need anything else?’

I shake my head. ‘Do you mind if I leave my car parked here for a bit? I’d like to walk into the village and take a look around.’

They are delighted to be of further help. They give me extensive directions, tilting their heads in time as they talk of the path to take.

It’s a short walk, and the fence runs along the length of the path for most of the way. Just before I reach a minimarket, the first shop of the village from this direction, the fence takes a ninety-degree turn and heads off across the Wiltshire fields. I can see a sparse strip of weed-ridden land in the distance that must have been a runway. The main laboratory buildings are hidden from view. There are a few warehouses I can see, but it’s impossible to tell if they are from the RAF days or are a new addition.

I carry on past the minimarket, and reach a crossroads that I suspect is the closest thing the village has to a centre. There’s a bus stop, a pub, a Chinese takeaway. One of those little shops from which the faintest whiff of incense leaks, with dream catchers and tie-dyed dresses in the window. There are wind chimes hanging outside it, and they make no tinkling noise in this hot, dry afternoon: nothing stirs.

So much for hordes of protestors, getting loud in the pub and destroying the churchyard.

The act strikes me as incongruous – why would they choose the churchyard as their target? I see the short square belfry in the distance, on my left, and walk in its direction. It’s a pleasant stroll to St Michael’s sturdy walls. Sinking into the grass around it, at skewed angles, are old gravestones with lichen filling their grooves, making most of the names unreadable. I see no signs of obvious disturbance or vandalism as I take my time, weaving amid the stones. Why are the dead so restful? Soon Gwen will be dead, and quietened, serene, against her will. She was never meant to be such things.

When she goes, perhaps my guilty conscience will die too. The result will be something neither of us deserve: peace.

Around the back of the church are the new graves, black granite and white marble in the main, standing straighter because time has not marked them yet. These graves bear flowers: some fresh, some wilted, some no more than sticks in the dirt. One bears so many flowers that they overflow on to the grass and make a fat tail that snakes off to the treeline. The name upon the grey, veined marble stone is Petra. Petra Cross.

So here she is, not cremated, left unburned, which is fitting. And here are her tributes. No wonder they come here and mess up the graveyard with their flowers. She’s still in the shade of Suscutin, and that must help to keep their hatred alive.

The dates on the stone remind me there are only two days until the anniversary of her death. People gather on such anniversaries. Old friends come to pay their respects.

I walk back to the pub and inquire after a room.

‘All booked up, sorry,’ says the man behind the bar, barely glancing at me. He’s taken me for a Petra disciple, I think. He hasn’t recognised me. It actually occurs to me to say, Do you know who I am? But thankfully that ridiculous instinct passes.

I could find a bigger hotel and run the risk of becoming an object of interest to the staff, the other visitors, and maybe the newspapers if I’m unlucky.

Howard would kill me.

I know what he would want me to do, and – this is a first – I think maybe I want to do it too.

I phone Liz.

Liz is always the least recognised of us. There’s something about her short brown hair and dark eyes, the five feet four of her, which blends into a crowd and renders her invisible. Her ability to stand in a queue and not get served for hours at a time was an ongoing joke with us all. She never received much fan mail, either. Elizabeth Stuck – the only celebrity who nobody knew about.

It made me love her more. I told her once she should take to crime; she would never have been suspected, let alone caught. But of course she didn’t. When we all broke up she went back to her maiden name of Jones and became a team manager for one of the huge insurance companies that made their home in the centre of Swindon. The ongoing, faceless business of rules and targets seemed to be made for her.

Upon my arrival at her Swindon flat I sit down in a squashy armchair and she sits opposite, her hands in her lap.

‘Thanks,’ I say.

‘No problem.’

Being in the room with her is difficult. Not painful, but a little sore, and tender, like a new growth of skin over an old wound. We never did say goodbye to each other.

She asks me how long I want to stay.

‘Just a couple of days. Is that okay?’

‘Of course. Howard said he was worried about you.’

‘You speak to him a lot?’

‘About once a week. Just to touch base. He phoned me last night.’

Of course, he would phone Liz. The two of them were the oldest, and the most responsible. Her calmness penetrated us all to some degree, and I saw Howard drawing strength from her support, particularly at the end. It wasn’t a disguise on her part; she really was that chilled about it all. How, I don’t know.

‘It’s only because of these bloody pictures,’ I say, sinking further down into her squashy armchair. Everything in this small living room is either cream-coloured or a deep plum hue, and it’s so warm and airless in here, with the windows all sealed up tight. I could fall asleep in a moment.

‘The nude ones? He told me about them.’

‘You didn’t see them?’

‘I don’t do news,’ she says. ‘Besides, I’ve seen it all before.’

Her life is suddenly clear to me. It’s a hibernation. Its warm soft stasis appeals at this moment, but it already contains a seed of repulsion that could easily germinate if I stayed here too long. It’s so peaceful. But it’s not living, not as I would want to live.

‘Good thinking,’ I say. ‘It’s all crap, anyway, all this mental health stuff.’

‘It’s really lovely to see you, Mik. It’s not just small talk, I promise, I know how you hate that. Seeing you reminds me that I didn’t make it all up. Sometimes the past feels like it didn’t happen to me, do you know what I mean? Forgive me, but I didn’t go and see the film you’ve been working on. It could only have made it seem more like someone else’s dream.’

This sudden flow of words sounds rehearsed to me; if so, I’m glad I gave her the chance to say them in person.

‘That is so very okay, Liz. Everything you’ve done has always been okay with me.’

How very formal this intimacy is, with timings and sentiments, like the steps of a waltz. All the things I loved about her are here, in the room with us. They are watching us carry out this dance.

‘I think,’ she says, leaning forward in her own armchair as the octagonal clock on the wall ticks, ‘that out of the six of us, we two did each other the least damage in the process of disengagement.’

We never did argue, that’s true. We stepped around each other, and took sides in the others’ arguments. ‘Perhaps that’s because we didn’t want to hurt each other.’

She shakes her head, and settles her clear gaze upon me. ‘It’s because we loved each other the least.’

The certainty of her statement is unbearable. She has ranked our love and placed it bottom of the pile. I never once did such a terrible thing. It’s a sudden act of violence.

‘If that’s true for you,’ I say, with such delicacy, ‘it wasn’t the case for me.’

For I loved her deeply, as I did all of us. She wasn’t who I went to for talking, true. It was the physicality we created between us that obsessed me, that made me curl up in her bed with her most nights, towards the end. When we made love she grew in stature and significance; she had a vocal tenderness that surrounded me, ensconced me. I let go of everything but her voice, coaxing me inside her. Soft, even waves of sound.

And she loved me less.

‘I mean—’ She gestures, her fingers splayed, towards me, away from me. ‘We were less connected, somehow. Didn’t you feel that?’

It’s overwhelming: the room, the sinking armchair, this lethargy. I have no strength left to pull myself up, to hide this hurt she’s causing. I can feel it on my face, visible to her.

‘Don’t cry, don’t cry,’ she pleads, and she gets up, comes to me, drapes herself over me. She sits on my lap and pulls my head against her chest, commanding the situation, yet moving just softly enough that I don’t resist. She says, hoarse and low, ‘I loved having you in me, I loved you, I loved you, Mik, but it was a love I could let go of. It’s not a bad thing that you didn’t break my heart, don’t you know that? It’s a good thing. It means I think of you most fondly, now. I care for you more now.’

She has weighed and measured me, and now I let her comfort me for the shortcomings she has created.

It’s the only time we hug during my visit. Even when we say goodbye, and tell each other how good it was to spend time together, we don’t touch. We talk about the past throughout both evenings, but the stories we tell belong to the others.

Do you remember the time Nicky tried to cook risotto and the saucepan caught fire?

Howard and his pyjamas, folding them every morning, it was the unsexiest thing I’ve ever seen.

Sunetra’s pot, it’s still there, can you believe it? Dan still keeps a spare key in it.

This act of reliving it, filling in the memories between us to create a crude, piecemeal version of what was once our relationship, brings a level of closure I hadn’t ever imagined I would get.

I feel done with it. The whole thing.

I’m glad Suscutin wasn’t around back then. I’m glad I don’t have to go on loving her. She has learned to quantify everything that I want to keep immeasurable. By the end of my time in her cosy flat, I’m certain that I loved her least of all too.

In the churchyard once more, there’s a sense that so much time has passed since I was last here. How can that be? And yet my entire relationship, my Sixdom, has changed in my eyes, in my memory. I can’t begin to articulate its alteration. I feel different, deep down different. I feel fresh, vulnerable. Ready to be made over.

I feel as if I’ve moulted.

I take up my position on the bench beside the church wall in the early morning, and they come in a steady stream, often in threes and fours, approaching without particular reverence. I watch them chat as they lay flowers in a fantail that radiates out from her grave, thickening and stretching wider and wider.

This isn’t as I imagined it; they don’t look like disciples. They gather, their numbers swelling, and they begin to talk louder about themselves. They turn their backs to the graves, and away from me.

I’m glad I hold my own bunch of flowers, carnations, and am wearing sunglasses, and dark trousers with my sharp shirt. I’m acting too, pretending to be properly bereaved so I can observe in peace. It’s working. Some glance at me, but nobody pays me much attention.

The morning passes, and still they assemble; I hear raised voices outside the graveyard every now and again. How does this end? With a celebration, or a riot? A news crew arrives and pushes its way through to Petra’s grave, training the eye of the camera on the flowers. The reporter, an older man, approaches one group. They speak animatedly to the lens, not to him. It’s powerful to watch.

The crew, satisfied, leave. Midday approaches, and I’m starving. She isn’t coming. She isn’t coming. Why should she come? How would I know her, anyway?

I should go to Devon. I should check on Gwen, and help her move into the hospice with the duck pond, and simply tell her that she should forgive herself, if that’s what it takes to be happy. I’m not cut out for this business of finding people and facilitating forgiveness.

The churchyard is packed, and the sun is hot; I’m sweating even in the shade of the wall. The voices outside are louder, more strident. Perhaps the sun is to blame. I heard once that crowd disturbances, riots, they mainly happen in summertime. Few rebel during rainfall nowadays.

Max could have silenced them. When he got annoyed on set, he used his trained voice to hold the crew to attention, but even he would have had trouble cutting through the police sirens that are drawing closer. There aren’t small groups any more; there is a large crowd, and they are organising themselves, becoming more ordered in their outrage. The grave is forgotten entirely and the flower fantail is being trampled upon. I see people unfurl banners from their bags and shake them out, red paint on white cloth, and others unzip tops to reveal T-shirts underneath, bearing bold red lettering.

A young woman, maybe a student, approaches me and holds out a T-shirt. She gets dragged back by the others; I catch the use of the word disrespectful. Then she is parted from her friends by an older woman with a worn leather pack on her back, pushing through, using one arm out straight in front of her to divide the crowd. People move aside for her as she heads for Petra’s grave.

She stands on other people’s flowers, makes no attempt to avoid putting her feet upon them, and places one white rose on the top of the stone. She pats the marble with a familiar, weary gesture.

I remember her.

I saw her once, at Max’s estate. He was filming, he broke off to speak to her, and we lost the light for the rest of the day. Nothing more could be shot. She stuck in my mind, perhaps because of the way he approached her, with a gentleness that was at odds with the control he exhibited on set.

Later, over beers in his luxurious living room, I said, ‘This is going to take ages if you break off a shot to speak to every hanger-on.’

And he replied, ‘How do you know she was a hanger-on? You’re talking about the love of my fucking life, Mik.’ Then he smiled, I smiled, and he dealt cards for poker. There was a beer ready for Gwen, placed on the table; she’d gone to do her last sweep of the house for the evening.

So here’s the love of Max Black’s life, the hanger-on, the person Gwen has to apologise to.

Rose Allington.

The crowd heave into action as my watch registers midday. As they stream from the graveyard she gets jostled. She bumps the white rose from its place upon the stone. I walk to it, retrieve it, replace it. The churchyard empties in a rush. They are off, striding, shouting, a sibilant mess of Suscutin-hating slogans, while through a loudspeaker I hear a man call for order.

Rose and I are alone.

‘Thanks,’ she says, but I can’t hear it over the crowd; I read it from the shape of her thin lips. She looks very tired and very angry, red-cheeked and bleary-eyed. Time has not been kind to her; her skin has sagged, and her hair is brittle, dry.

I nod, to show I’ve understood, then wait until the crowd is far away enough so that I can be heard if I raise my voice. ‘Petra would have hated this, wouldn’t she?’

Rose frowns, but nods back.

‘They’re using her as an excuse.’

‘You knew her?’ she asks.

‘No. I know what happens to people when they become famous. The way they have things hung upon them.’

I remove my sunglasses, and I see it – that familiar moment of realisation in their eyes. That recognition of who I am. Perhaps she’s placed me at Max’s estate that day, or from the Stuck Six stories, or even from that stupid skinny dip. I can’t tell.

She steps away from me and lifts her arms up in front of her; it’s a classic defensive position. Bodyguard training, perhaps.

‘We’ve met before,’ I say.

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Well, we didn’t meet. We were in the same place at the same time. Max Black was a mutual friend.’

‘No, no, I’ve never, I didn’t know him.’

‘You’re not a very good liar.’

She’s breathing deeply. Dressed simply in jeans and a loose shirt, the straps of a small leather backpack pressing on her shoulders, she doesn’t look like she could defend herself, let alone another human being. ‘You’re Mickey Stuck.’

‘And you’re Rose Allington.’

‘My surname is Stacey, now,’ she says, eventually.

The crowd is a raucous background to our conversation, but they’re getting further away, and a measure of calm is returning to me now I’ve found her. ‘I’ve never been that close to an angry mob before.’

‘They’ve come every year since the fire. I shouldn’t turn up at the same time, but… I don’t want her to be alone with them, if that makes sense. They’re not all a bad bunch. I’ve met worse.’

‘People do strange things for causes they believe in.’

‘In Petra’s case, she just didn’t like people getting away with bad behaviour.’

‘Taking Suscutin leads to bad behaviour?’

‘You’re full of questions,’ she says. ‘And you tracked me down, right? What’s this for? The follow-up documentary about your film? Or just to find your own answers? You should be a private investigator. I could get you set up with a job interview.’

‘You were a detective?’ She looks wrong for that role, as well: too nervous, too honest.

She narrows her eyes at me. ‘Well, now I’m intrigued. You don’t know a thing about me, but here you are. Why is that?’

Here goes. ‘I have a request. On behalf of a close friend, who wants to apologise to you. In person.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘She’s dying. She just wants to say sorry. I don’t know any more than that. But I promised her I would find you and ask you.’

‘Who?’

‘Gwen Taylor.’

‘Who?’ Then the last name seems to stick, and she doesn’t even bother to say no; she simply walks away from me, taking a random path across the grass and around the back of the church, stepping around the gravestones.

I follow, keeping a little distance, as she circles the church to arrive at the entrance. I think she’ll go inside, but she turns away and strides from the graveyard instead. I keep my eyes on her bobbing backpack as she crosses the main road and squeezes between two parked police cars to take a side street that leads to a car park I didn’t know existed.

It’s full, every space taken by cars with stickers bearing the slogan

displayed in windows. She stops next to one of those new electric cars and produces the key from her pocket.

‘Hey!’ I call, and she freezes in place. She doesn’t look at me as I approach.

‘She’s my friend, and she’s dying,’ I say. ‘Wouldn’t you do the same?’

‘Just like Max was your friend, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I touched your skin,’ she says, and she looks me straight in the eye, with an intensity, a knowledge, that brings a prickle of shame to my skin. ‘In the British Museum. You helped get Max’s film finished, didn’t you?’

‘I did.’

‘Is it truthful?’

I raise my chin and bear her stare. ‘More so than anything else people have said about me.’

‘I went to see it. It was nothing like the autobiography.’

‘No.’ Honesty compels me to add, ‘Howard is many things, but he’s not much of a writer.’

‘It was beautiful. I don’t understand how Max could have made it, at that time. He was so… damaged. By then.’

‘No, he wasn’t damaged.’

‘And then he just committed suicide out of the blue, is that what you’re saying?’

‘For fuck’s sake.’ My anger, my shame, she’s coaxing it out of me; fine, she can have it. ‘For fuck’s sake! Just tell me. Just tell me.’

She flinches. She’s scared of me. My voice reverberates, then dies away. The march of the protestors is background noise; they must be at the laboratory gates by now. I’m an idiot, a loud one, and this shame won’t go away.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I still don’t understand it,’ she says. ‘That wonderful film. Are you proud of it?’

‘Very.’ I could add, it feels like the only thing I’ve ever done entirely right.

‘And you think you know Max well? Knew him, I mean.’

That’s a much more difficult question. I tell her, ‘There are things that happened. Nobody will talk to me about it. I think I could have helped, if I had known. I could have been a better friend.’ My shame is so heavy now, I squirm under the weight of it, and under the weight of her even gaze. ‘Please, just come with me. Hear her apology, and be done with it.’

‘I can’t be done with it by listening to Taylor telling me she’s sorry. But I’ll make a deal with you. Come with me now, and talk to me. About the Max you knew, and your life. Then you can ask me whatever you want, and I’ll answer it. And if you really still want me to forgive Taylor then I’ll let you try and persuade me.’

This is what I wanted, isn’t it? This is what I’ve really been searching for. Somebody laying out all the things that were hidden.

Why, then, does it take such an effort of will to get into the passenger seat, and stay there while she sits in the driver’s seat and starts the car? The fear I felt in the graveyard returns, redoubles.

She is driving, and I don’t know where we’re going.

This is happening right now. This is out of my control.