Free Magpie Hall by Rachael King Page B

didn’t seem interested in continuing the subject. ‘Do you reckon you could stuff a human?’ The room was becoming unbearably cold, but Sam didn’t appear to notice.
    ‘You could try. It wouldn’t look very nice, though. No fur. It’d just look all leathery and strange.’
    ‘Hmm. Worth trying though, I suppose. To achieve immortality.’
    ‘I guess you could say that … Actually, you’d be better off donating your body to plastination.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘It’s like embalming. There’s a place in Germany that does it. I thought I might end up there. Why not? I do it to animals, why not let someone do it to me?’
    ‘And then what? You’ll be on show?’
    ‘That’s right. I’ll be exhibited.’
    ‘Naked?’ He raised an eyebrow.
    ‘Who knows? Maybe.’
    ‘I’d like to see that.’ He moved closer to me.
    ‘Would you now.’
    What was I thinking? I wasn’t thinking. Well, actually, I was. I wanted to obliterate all thoughts of Hugh in the way I had always obliterated thoughts of love gone bad. With sex. With a warm, hard body, so different from the pillowy flesh of my last lover. With someone I knew I wouldn’t develop any feelings for.
    Sam brought his body up close to me but leaned back to read my face. I smiled an encouragement and he needed little. His lips were rough and hot and the hand on the back of my neck was callused. I put my hands under his top and felt the smooth down on the small of his back. It was as if we both knew we would end up here, ever since we saw each other in the garden.
    ‘You’re sure you’re all right with this?’ he asked.
    ‘Mm, yes.’ I nodded and he took it as a signal to go further, and fast.
    His lips trembled on mine as he fumbled with the buttons on my blouse. He pulled away for a moment to see what he was doing.
    ‘Holy …’ He stopped and stared at the tattoo on my chest — a bluebird hovering above each breast, a ribbon floating between them. ‘That is some tat.’ He continued unbuttoning my top and it fell from my shoulders.
    ‘Jesus, girl, how many have you got?’
    I was shirtless now, sitting on the workbench where he had lifted me as though I were a paper doll. I still wore my bra, but he had the chance to stare at most of my tattoos, including the new one of the magpie, still raised and pink. He walked around the table to look at my back. His were just another pair of eyes in the crowded room. I found myself staring straight at an ancient fox with its teeth bared.
    I sat up straighter. It was a ritual I had been through many times before with men: the surprise, the fascination, then ultimately, the renewed sexual fervour. But never in such a strange setting.
    ‘Ten,’ I said. ‘So far. One for every murder committed.’
    He laughed uncertainly as he came a full circle back to me. His finger traced the dahlia on my left shoulder and moved down to the mermaid on my right arm. My white skin goosebumped in the icy room.
    ‘Come on,’ he said suddenly, and lifted my blouse back onto my shoulders. ‘Let’s get you into the living room and get the fire going. You’re freezing.’
    With the heat of the moment gone, I found my teeth beginning to chatter and I nodded and lowered myself to the floor.
    I followed him into the living room and sat on one of the shabby couches while he expertly built a fire. The springs of the couch dug into my thighs and an odour of dog enveloped me. I didn’t mind. I sank into the familiar feeling and the smells and pulled the old crocheted blanket off the back to wrap myself in while I waited for the room to warm up.
    I thought of Hugh at home with his wife. The children tucked up in bed, the two of them curled up on a couch with glasses of wine, maybe books. The comfortable silence only years of togetherness can bring. I looked at Sam’s back as he crouched by the fireplace, poking the virgin flames with a piece of kindling, and for a moment imagined a life with him in the country. He would go out to