Skin Deep Read online

  PRAISE FOR SKIN DEEP

  ‘Skin Deep is a truly compelling, page-turning and evocative novel, with a wonderfully realised 80s setting. The story hooked me, the questions it raised about beauty and art gripped me, and the characters will stay with me for a long, long time. Highly recommended!’

  Kate Harrison, best-selling author

  ‘I loved this. Viewed through the eyes of troubled art-student Diana and neglected child Cal, Manchester’s Hulme in the 80’s is vividly painted and instantly recognisable. Laura Wilkinson’s novel asks important questions of us all; about the nature of photography as art, about the ideals of beauty that constrain and limit us, about exploitation, about class. This book will get under your skin.’

  Jules Grant, author of

  We Go Around in the Night and Are Consumed by Fire

  ‘An engrossing, poignant and wise story that reminds us how we all crave to be seen for who we truly are. I raced through it.’

  Jo Bloom, author of Ridley Road.

  BOOKS BY LAURA WILKINSON:

  Public Battles, Private Wars

  Redemption Song

  The Family Line

  Published by Accent Press Ltd 2017

  www.accentpress.co.uk

  Copyright © Laura Wilkinson 2017

  The right of Laura Wilkinson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  The story contained within this book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of Accent Press Ltd.

  eISBN 9781682996171

  for my three boys, love always

  Acknowledgements

  I am extremely fortunate to have the support of a great number of smashing people. Thanks to you all. And you, lovely reader, for spending time with Diana and Cal, Alan and Linda. If I thanked everyone personally, these acknowledgements would amount to a novella. Here are those I must mention in relation to this particular novel.

  Thanks to Helen Wilkinson who read the first draft and provided encouragement. Also, because you sat up with me late one night as I dissected the plot and characters in forensic (and possibly quite boring) detail. You never once told me to shut up. Thank you, you rock.

  To Marian Williams for allowing me to steal a detail from your story and for, well, being my mum. Respect and love.

  Everyone at Accent Press who work damn hard for me. Special mentions to Greg Rees – you are my champion and editor supremo, Karen Bultiauw, Kate Ellis and Anne Porter for wisdom and support, and inspirational head honcho Hazel Cushion. You are quite a team.

  Thanks are due to early readers Becky Edmunds, Mark Sheerin, and Sarah Tanburn. Also to members of the Jubilee Writers group and Jenn Ashworth who read sections of the novel. My beta-reading besties: Norma Murray and SR for sage-like advice with this novel (and life). For keeping me going with the writing life more generally I send heartfelt thanks to a host of amazing, talented authors, most especially: JA Corrigan, Shirley Golden, Katy O’Dowd, Sarah Rayner, Kate Harrison, Sue Teddern, Erinna Mettler, Bridget Whelan and Araminta Hall.

  To Wendy Jones for her time and advice on procedures and outcomes in Social Services in the late 80s and early 90s. To Sally Atkinson for similar on matters of adoption. I have stretched possibilities to suit the narrative but your advice was invaluable. Thank you both.

  And where would authors be without the support and love of the blogging community? Your cheerleading for the industry is awesome; you are reading and reviewing superstars – of a great many books and authors. Huge thank yous. There are a great many of you but again I have to choose a few for special thanks: Anne Cater at Random Things Through my Letterbox and the Facebook group Book Connectors, Anne Williams at Being Anne Reading, Sonya Alford at A Lover of Books, Holly Kilminster at Bookaholic Holly, Jo Barton at Jaffa Reads Too, Tracy Terry at Pen and Paper, Tracy Fenton and Helen Boyce at THE Book Club, Wendy at Little Bookness Lane, Joanne Baird at Portobello Book Blog, Sandra Woodhead at Book Lover Worm, Sophie Hedley at Reviewed the Book, Rosie Amber and her team, Annette Hannah at Sincerely Book Angels, Vicki Bowles, Kaisha Holloway at The Writing Garnet and Linda Hill at Linda’s Book Bag.

  Grovelling apologies if I’ve missed you: my publisher needs to limit the pagination!

  And last but by no means least, my Gingers and the BigFella. I love you.

  We live only to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting.

  Kahlil Gibran

  I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Diana

  Winter 2007

  He is dying. A scalpel presses against my flesh; a piece of me is being cut away, cut from the deepest, most tender part of me. I took the call moments ago and now I sit silent in the cab, nodding as the driver rattles about the weather, the football results, the dreadful traffic. I do not ask him to be quiet; how could he know? He means well and the babbling is a comfort.

  I know how he did it, they didn’t tell me; they didn’t have to. I see him at the bridge’s edge, staring into the middle distance, certain. The city before him. A sea of dense, inviting grey. The shadow of Holy Joe’s lingers like incense. He closes his eyes, bends his crooked knees and rolls forward – flying – into the heavy, wet air. Into another world, into freedom.

  Cal.

  Linda identifies the body, the shell that is not Cal. He dies before I reach the hospital; the traffic is appalling. Never regained consciousness, they said. I am glad of this small mercy.

  The corridor is long and beige; it smells of disinfectant and death. Linda hovers at one end, me at the other. We walk towards each other, like gunslingers at noon, heels tap-tapping, charting our progress. She takes my hand and places the interlaced gold, silver, and bronze ring in my palm and closes my fingers around it, one by one.

  Finally, she says, ‘He was beautiful.’

  He would have loved that. Beautiful, beautiful Cal.

  ‘A note?’ I ask, dreading a nod. It is my fault.

  She does not answer, embracing me instead, and I fold into our history, mine and Cal’s, into youth and beauty and transformation.

  Diana

  Autumn 1984

  In the soft morning light Hulme looked beautiful – glorious, technicolour Hulme, also known as Beirut or bandit country.

  Manchester city centre was forever red, and wet with rain, but Hulme erupted in great random dollops of colour: yellow, lime and blue municipal doors and window frames; scrubby grass; retina-aching walkway graffiti; old punks’ hair in cyan and magenta.

  We’d arrived at the block with a key for number fifty-five and a van load of possessions. But the maisonette was boarded up, the front door covered in eviction notices, bailiffs’ cards crucified on the frame with rusting nails. Unsure what to do, we leant on the damp balcony wall and stared across the estate from our vantage point two storeys up. One of the other crescent-shaped blocks of flats faced us. Gigantic, it reminded me of the ruined Coliseum in Rome; black, foul-looking discharge dribbled from a window, snaking down the concrete. There were four crescents in total: jerry-built monstrosities; interlaced blocks inspired by the Georgian crescents in Bath and optimistically named after great architects and landscapers. Only drug dealers, dropouts and students lived there now. Rents were low, though most of Hulme’s inhabitants were squatting.

  ‘What the hell are we going to do?’ Linda said. ‘We can’t go back to Whalley Range. Landlord’ll skin us.’

  A local boy who’d introduced himself when we’d parked the van, offering to ‘mind’ it for us, slipped alongside me. He elbowed me in the ribs and said, ‘Number fifty’s empty. No boards.’

  ‘And how will we get in without a key, soft lad?’ Linda said.

  The urchin launched himself, shoulder first, at the door. It juddered but did not open. The door to number fifty-one did though.

  Out stepped a tall, scrawny bloke, a parrot sitting on his shoulder. A demented scarecrow in a grubby, frilly shirt and torn pyjama bottoms, bloodshot eyes bulging. I jumped.

  ‘Jesus, you nearly gave me a heart attack,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry.’ He looked wounded and the bird squawked, making us all jump again.

  The classy tones of Your Love is King poured from his flat. He didn’t strike me as a jazz man and Sade’s slick styling was at odds with his crazed appearance: a modern day, scummy Heathcliff.

  ‘What’s with the parrot?’ I said.

  ‘I found it.’ He pointed at the ramshackle play area between the crescents and the parrot lifted a scaly leg as if it were about to shit. ‘In a tree,’ he continued. I wondered where else a lost parrot might hang out and where all the trees were in Hulme. I’d not seen any.

  ‘So you took it home?’

  ‘I thought it might starve or something. Freeze. They’re tropical creatures; they don’t like the cold.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ Linda piped up. ‘And it’s friggin’ brass monkeys. Let’s get inside.’

  ‘What about the owner?’ I said.

  ‘Gone,’ Parrot man said.


  ‘What about you? Can yous get us in?’ Linda said.

  The boy was attempting to stroke the bird. I shuddered.

  ‘I can try. Let me get my boots,’ Parrot man said.

  He disappeared inside, reappearing within minutes, minus the parrot, incongruous in pyjama bottoms and sixteen-hole Dr Martens. He marched over, arms outstretched. ‘Move over, lad.’ He raised his arms above his head, wrists relaxed, lifted one leg, knee bent, like a praying mantis, then leapt at the lock, foot first. His feet were huge.

  The door swung open. We were in.

  ‘Nice one, la. Ta very much,’ Linda said. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Alan. Alan Gilbraith.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Alan,’ I said, taking his outstretched hand. ‘Diana Brading, Linda Kelly. We’re going to be neighbours.’

  ‘Pleasure’s all mine, ladies.’ And he took a bow, dandy style. ‘If you need anything, I’m right here.’

  I nodded and smiled. ‘You could help us unload the van?’

  * * *

  The boy earned a couple of quid, helping us up drag our stuff up four flights of stairs, and Alan helped out as a neighbourly gesture, or as a way of trying to get into our knickers. He had no chance but we didn’t let him know that. After we were done, the boy said his brother could fit a new lock, repair the frame, and then he asked if there was anything else he could get us. He meant to steal whatever we asked for, I was sure, so I replied that we had everything we needed. I would not receive stolen goods and no way would I squat. I was determined to pay rent no matter what Linda said. It would be next to nothing; the council were desperate to let properties here.

  ‘You’re different from the other students,’ he said.

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘You look like someone famous; he’s weird; and she’s a scally,’ he said, pointing at Linda. ‘Got a fag?’

  ‘How old are you? Ten?’ said Linda, hands on hips.

  ‘Piss off,’ he said.

  ‘She’s a model,’ Linda said, tipping her head at me.

  ‘Former model,’ I said, emphasising former and wishing I’d not told her. I’d done so in a drunken moment at a party when I’d wanted to impress her, to gain her friendship. Almost two years older and with a seemingly glamorous history, I’d appeared worldly and sophisticated, and despite the differences between us – background, age, course – we became best friends, inseparable for over a year now.

  ‘I’m not a student,’ Alan said.

  ‘Dealer?’ the boy asked.

  ‘No.’ He sounded offended and I wondered what it was he did. On the dole, presumably.

  ‘What are you studying?’ the boy said, addressing Linda and me.

  I touched my chest, ‘Art,’ then gesturing at Linda, ‘Art History and Literature, books and stuff.’

  ‘Pictures yours?’ He pointed at the bundle of canvases resting against the hall wall.

  I laughed, throat tightening, stomach tumbling. ‘I wish. These are by famous artists. This one’s mine.’ I turned over a medium-sized canvas. An abstract piece created on my foundation course, the contents of my make-up bag, inspired by Matisse’s later works. It wasn’t good and I’d produced nothing of worth throughout my first year here either. It was why I was redoing the year, and if I didn’t come up with something soon I’d be kicked off for good. I was in the last chance saloon.

  ‘Me brother will be over in a bit.’ Shrugging, the boy stepped outside. I followed him and Alan out, and we said our goodbyes. ‘See yous around.’

  Despite the cold I stood on the balcony and watched the boy shrink as he darted across a walkway and over the adjoining bridge to another block of flats.

  Where in this body of concrete bones does he live? Will I see him again?

  I gazed over to the play area. In between the broken swings was a pile of burnt-out sofas; a top-loading washing machine lay on its side at the bottom of the slide and torn-open bin bags spotted the grass. Even in the cold air I could smell the dog shit. Man-made ugliness, it was the antithesis of the pretty plastic life I’d led. And living in Hulme was cool. No doubt.

  Mum would hate this.

  I was fascinated and terrified and excited. I’d found my spiritual home. Here I would recover my mojo. This was where the freaks, the beautiful, and the damned hung out.

  Cal

  Spring 2007

  The nurse says: ‘Tell me your earliest memory.’

  She’s very pretty, in a girl-next-door way. And kind. So I tell her. ‘Darkness, total, blacker than black, dark.’

  ‘A womb memory,’ she says.

  ‘No, definitely not.’ I try to wave an arm. It hurts but I can cope with pain, no problem at all. I’ve had lots of practise. ‘Imagine a box. An enormous black box and you’re trapped in it. Alone. Sort of. If you scream and scream someone will come. A washed-out face with colourless eyes which stares at you like you’re nothing. You feel like nothing, or you would do if you knew what nothing felt like. That’s my earliest memory. Darkness, a face, relief, nothing.’

  ‘The face was your mother?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Probably not. It feels like a man. Something about the size of the body, and the smell. I’ve smelt it since and it throws me right back. And it’s definitely male. But I might have invented all this. Crazy, huh?’

  Her expression is neutral. I can’t tell what she’s thinking.

  ‘Why’d you ask?’ I say.

  ‘I’m interested,’ she says and smiles, a small, quiet kind of smile.

  I feel the morphine taking effect. I close my eyes and other pictures creep in, like photographs developing in a tray, all those chemicals washing over the paper history of my mind. Pictures, pictures, pictures. On billboard adverts, television screens, computers, phones, posters on walls, bus stops, shops, cinemas, magazines, galleries. Flashing, flashing, flashing. I’ll go mad for all that colour, for all those faces, all those lovely, lovely faces. Clear blue eyes, sun drenched, peachy skin, shiny, golden hair, long limbs and nails like sea shells.

  Diana.

  So lovely I dive right in.

  Diana

  The flat was filthy, junk spattered about like a Pollock. We tiptoed round our new home, poking around, imagining who came before us and why they left so hurriedly. Upstairs, I pushed open the door to the windowless bathroom. The light from the landing was poor but as it trickled into the room I felt movement across the linoleum, dark shapes skittering into the crevices and cracks where the bath, basin and toilet met the floor.

  Cockroaches?

  I blinked, and looked again. There was nothing but the cheap white enamel of the suite and a London Calling poster peeling off the wall. I plodded downstairs.

  ‘Where do we start? It’s overwhelming,’ I said, draining the last of an instant coffee which Alan had made next door and brought through.

  ‘By getting rid of this crap,’ said Linda, pointing at the net curtains, the magazines in the corner of the living room, ‘and the fridge and the skanky mattress upstairs. After that we need to get the leccie sorted. I’ll bomb to the corner shop and put some cash on this.’ She held a key for the meter. Ever practical, she’d sussed out the basics, water, electricity and gas, while I’d mooched around upstairs.

  We dragged the rubbish onto the balcony and left it piled up against the door of number fifty-five. I’d harboured fantasies that some of the magazines might be worth keeping, but they were mostly soft porn, Classic Cars, and Jackie. I’d not seen that mag since I was a kid. A copy with Donny Osmond on the cover was passed round a friend’s house shortly before I was transported to boarding school.

  We took everything that wasn’t ours onto the balcony, except one box. It contained electrical goods and we thought they might be worth testing before we threw them out.

  It was almost seven in the evening when there was a knock at the door. I was on my hands and knees scrubbing the skirting boards. The door swung open and in stepped a tall, bleached blond. Rows of silver skulls shone out from his knuckles. He held a toolbox in one hand and a long piece of wood tucked under his arm. His eyes were dark and narrow, his cheekbones high and his lips full. He took my breath away.