Sensitive Skin

Alice kept hold of the front door key in her fist. To put it down would feel presumptuous.

She told herself to stay calm. She made a calculated expression of disapproval as the piano was humped across the hall parquet. She directed the pink chest of drawers to the spare bedroom with a flick of her ringless hand. The two men, small and tough as terriers, obeyed her orders with only the occasional indulgent smirk passing between them.

Libby was dead, and in her stead Alice had to become the no-nonsense one. Libby, the older sister, had been poised and capable. Right up until the moment she drowned. Beyond it, in fact.

In the will she’d left specific instructions about how the small amount of money she’d bequeathed to Alice should be spent.

For a deposit on a house.

Alice didn’t need a house. Instead, she had arranged to live in Libby’s old one. She felt an intense amount of guilt about it, but pretended not to because she had a suspicion that poised, capable people were above that kind of emotion. She was determined to leave behind guilt, fear, jealousy; it belonged in the grave with Libby. And so, under the pretext of penance, she had agreed to become the live-in housekeeper for Libby’s suffering husband, Steven.

‘Top of the stairs,’ she said to the terriers, trying to stand in a confident way. They threw her sympathetic grins, and humped her blanket box upstairs between them.

Steven was the issue. He was not handling bereavement well. Alice had come to understand that grief was quantifiable, and undoubtedly Steven was the worst off. Then came Alice’s father. Alice was only third on the list of desperately sad. She was entitled to feel really sad for a couple of hours a week and every other weekend if she was lucky, by her reckoning.

‘The kitchen,’ she said, to the terrier wearing the grubby Lacoste shirt, and he cheerfully stomped past her, carrying the enormous cardboard box that contained her numerous cooking utensils. It raised a problem she hadn’t foreseen - should she dispose of Libby’s old garlic crusher and fish slice? She couldn’t possibly use them. Libby never looked after her tools; her make-up bag was a disgrace of stubby blunt eyebrow pencils and lipsticks worn down to the nub. Alice imagined in advance that the kitchen would be filthy, although not visibly so. Filthy on some deep, tainted level, by association with death and carelessness.

Alice was still too angry to be the number one in the bereaved stakes.

She decided to throw out Libby’s utensils, and swallow the additional guilt down with the food prepared in the fresh clean start of a kitchen. Alice wanted to own the kitchen, if not the house.
Steven was at work. She had hours to herself, to claim the kitchen, to bless it with bleach and elbow grease, before she needed to start cooking. She wanted Steven to eat himself better: to see him filled with the fruit of her labours. She wasn’t quite sure why, but she wanted it, just the same.

***

As soon as the removal men finished up Alice made for the shower. She used the en-suite in the guest room that was now her room, and explored the aged products with interest. She managed to get her fingernails under the crusted cap of the mint shower gel bottle, and she let the green liquid slide over her curves without making any real effort to wash. Time passed in the hiss of the water, and the process of adjustment began. Her shower. Her home.

Before, she had been living in a flat, in Hackney, answering telephones on a temporary basis and trying to become an actress on a permanent one, without any real understanding of what she was doing in either case. She’d turned up to open auditions once or twice, and had been lined up, glanced over and dismissed without any surprise on her part. The only shock had been to discover that the other actresses were not good-looking either. So where were all the beautiful people? Not in casting sessions, that was for sure. Maybe they were plucked from the street and placed, like delicate fruits, in front of the camera in order to avoid bruising. The producers and directors had always looked so despondent, when faced with another round of women with big noses, large hips and speech impediments.

Alice felt neither angry nor disappointment at giving up her dream. It had been adopted mainly to annoy her parents, and Libby of course, who talked endlessly about plans and pensions, and said things like

You must make provision for the future, Alice.

Oh, the stinking irony of it.

She got out of the shower and manhandled herself with the towel, then got dressed in the same jeans and tee shirt, and threw away the remainder of the mint shower gel, into the stainless steel bin that matched the soap dispenser and toothbrush holder. The temptation was to go out and buy new objects and shower gel straight away, something soft and peachy that smelled of flowers. The mint gel made her feel like a tube of toothpaste with its bottom squeezed.
But the easiest option to make the house belong to her, just a little bit, was to make lasagne. A dish of comfort food and a smiling woman in the kitchen – that was how she pictured her new life with Steven.

She had layered the tomatoey mince, pasta and sauce and was waiting for the strangely uncooperative oven to hit temperature when the doorbell sabotaged her serenity and rang.

‘Hello,’ said the man. ‘Blimey! Yeah. Hello. Charmed to meet you. I’m Dan. I live at number seven. Here.’ He held out a bottle of wine, and Alice took it, her eyes drawn to the breadth of his hands, and then up to the fresh, ironed collar of his polo shirt.

‘Thanks,’ she said. The bottle was warm in her hands; it looked like one of those bottles that got passed around from one dinner party to another. ‘I’m Alice. Won’t you come in?’ It seemed like the kind of thing to say, and she was surprised when he took her up on it.

‘Yeah, great!’ He was light on his feet, springing past her to examine the collection of artwork Libby had chosen carefully for the stairwell. They were paintings by graduating students from St Martin’s College – a beautiful investment, Libby had called them. ‘I’ve never actually been in this house before.’

‘No?’

‘Funny, really. I work from home, so I’m around the street a lot. I’m an architect,’ Dan said, leaning in to one of the pictures and squinting at it. It was a watercolour of a giant stripey beach ball crushing a small child and a windbreaker. ‘I like this one.’

‘Really?’ Alice took a breath, and launched into the whole speech she had prepared for just this kind of a meeting. I’ve come to help out, Libby was my sister, Steven’s finding things difficult after, a bit difficult to get back on track and the funeral was hard on him. There’s so much for him to get his head around. I’m here helping.’ Now she’d said it all, in a less graceful and succinct manner than she had hoped, she felt grubby. Dan gave her a pat on the arm.

‘What a tough time all round. If you ever want to talk about it, just grab me.’

‘Thanks,’ said Alice. She wondered if Dan was attracted to her.

‘You look like her.’

‘Do you think so?’ Nobody had ever said that before. Most people had pointed out the differences rather than the similarities, but Alice supposed that without Libby to look at or talk to any more, people would begin to forget what had made her unique. How Libby would have hated that.

‘I have to say, I didn’t know her well,’ Dan said. ‘She didn’t really mingle with the rest of the Crescent. Steven never seemed that interested either, but then, he works long hours, doesn’t he? Will you be hanging around the house a lot or do you work?’

‘Steven’s going to pay me a wage. I’ll do the cleaning and stuff.’

‘Yeah? And the cooking, right?’ He raised one brushed eyebrow the colour of sand at her. ‘Is that lasagne I can smell? The wine will go nicely with that. Lovely. Shall I pop round again in a few days, once you’ve got your bearings and you know where the kettle is?’

‘Oh, yes, I, sorry, would you…?’

He stepped past her to the door. ‘I’m just yanking your chain. I don’t have time for a cuppa today, but next time, for sure, yeah?’ His hand on the latch, he turned to her, and she had the feeling of being encompassed by his attention. He had deep brown eyes that could have made her cry if the lines around his mouth hadn’t been so hard. She wondered how old he was. ‘We’re a funny little crescent here. I should probably give you a quick low-down.’

‘Yes please.’ She crossed her arms over her chest as the Autumn wind hit her from the open door. The last thing the conversation needed was erect nipples. She was feeling drawn towards Dan, as she did towards all men whom she thought fancied her, if she was honest.

‘Okay. Next door to you on your left is the foreign student, Massimo, and the girls who live with him, so expect a bit of noise there. On your right you’ve got Marlon and Bobby. Marlon’s a social worker and Bobby’s a personal trainer. Quiet types. I’m at number seven, with Ashley, but she’s in the process of moving out. It’s a shame, because I think you would have liked her.’ He let out a long sigh. ‘Still. It could take a while. She’s having problems finding somewhere suitable. Tom and Violet are at three, they’ve retired and can be pretty grumpy, and next to them is Valda. She’s agoraphobic, so we all help out, mowing her lawn, taking out the bins and stuff. She’s been in that house for years, but she’s lovely. She runs the Neighbourhood Watch, because nothing gets past her, and she doesn’t talk to strangers but she’ll warm to you. Once she gets over how much you look like your sister. She didn’t get on with your sister.’

‘Why not?’ And how, Alice wanted to ask, did one get on with, or get to know, an agoraphobic, in the first place? The chances of bumping into them on the street weren’t exactly huge.

Dan leaned towards her and pursed his lips. ‘That’s a subject worthy of a few hours and at least two large coffees – can I pencil you in for that? And then, if you get me a roll, I’ll tell you all about the disaster that is my love life as well. Deal?’

They shook hands.

Alice watched him walk down the path, trying not to grab on to the idea of him as an ally in some kind of fight against the unknown. But she wanted him to be on her side, whatever that meant. He had made her feel, with his brief, antagonistic descriptions of the neighbours, that there were sides to be picked, and she wanted him on hers.
She closed the door and retreated to the living room, keeping away from the windows. The white marble fireplace was clean and cold, and the two large sofas were busy with their floral designs. She touched the strong pine sides of the bookcase. When she had been a teenager, the first thing she’d done whenever she visited her friends houses was to browse through the objects – books, CDs, makeup – that defined them. It had been easier than having awkward conversations; it was a kind of shorthand.

She picked out Libby’s books easily, and they made her smile – The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, Du Maurier, woman-books, Mmmmm-books, looking good on the floral sofa with her pashmina over her knees type books. Maeve Binchey. Jamaica Inn.

Steven’s choices were a surprise – large fantasy novels, the covers showing mountains swathed in mist, and improbably proportioned people who looked capable of hacking them all down with their broadswords. So he dreamt of escape – or maybe he did dream of it once, when Libby was alive, and then it happened. Nobody wanted those things they dreamt of to actually come true, did they? Alice had often dreamed of being an only child: having all the love, and two slices of Viennetta after tea. She stood beside the bookcase and permitted herself a small weep. Then she went back to the kitchen to prepare the salad.

***