Free Beneath the Skin by Sandra Ireland Page A

wasn’t!’
    â€˜You were. You were thinking, I’ll latch onto this old bloke with money and a house in the Dordogne and all my worries will be over.’ He was teasing her, but she’d turned angry; she couldn’t meet his eye and when she did, eventually, he saw a sort of quiet desperation that he recognised. He felt sorry and didn’t know how to tell her, but Fee had turned it all into a big joke.
    â€˜Galen’s fancied her for ages!’
    â€˜How would you know? You’ve only worked there five minutes,’ Mouse said.
    â€˜I do two days a week,’ said Fee, sticking her tongue out. ‘I’m a psychology student,’ she added, in case Walt thought she was stuck in that shop, like Mouse, with no chance of anything better. That explained the spark. She was doing what Mouse longed to do. She had the life that Mouse had given up.
    â€˜And anyway,’ continued Mouse, ‘I’m not accepting his friend request. This is why I hate Facebook – it’s creepy, everyone seeing what you’re up to.’
    Fee laughed and turned to Walt. ‘You know she relies on William to help her with Facebook!’
    â€˜So?’ He felt a pang of sympathy. ‘She’s right. She’s got better things to do than post crap pictures of her sandwich on social media.’
    Fee looked vaguely disappointed. William wandered in, still in his uniform, shirt untucked and carrying an enormous Lego spacecraft. He set it carefully on Alys’s place mat and pulled out the chair with both hands. No one said anything when he sat down but Walt could see Mouse begin to fidget, with her teaspoon, her bracelet. He felt it himself, an indefinable uneasiness. He imagined Alys appearing, sweeping the Lego to the ground.
    â€˜Are you speaking about Galen?’ said William. ‘I went on the laptop, Mum, and checked your Facebook for you.’
    â€˜William! If I knew how to do it, I’d change my password!’
    The boy giggled. ‘I made you and Galen friends. Is he still an old lech?’

15
    So he arrives home without Tom.
    They should have been together, as always, anticipating the moment of touchdown, of coming down the aircraft steps and seeing their families waiting to greet them. Tom’s wife would have been there, his little kids running to meet Daddy; and Tom lifting them, the Strong Man, one on each arm as they kissed his sunburned cheeks.
    But there is none of that. The lads are subdued. There are funerals to go to, relatives to be phoned, respects to be paid. Walt knows he will go to Sara’s first of all, they live near the base now, to tell her the things she wants to hear. No, he hadn’t suffered. You don’t feel the pain; your body goes into shock. Yes, he was joking around right up to the end. Same old Tom.
    He catches the train back to Newcastle, slumped in the seat, angled away from the curious stares of the other passengers. There’s something about the uniform that brings out extremes in people. They either want to shake your hand or give you a pasting. As the flat landscape speeds by, he rests his temple against the cold window and tries not to see Sara’s tear-stained face in the ghost of his reflection.
    His parents meet him at the station. His mother is pale, sobbing into a tissue.
    â€˜I can’t believe it,’ she says in the car for the tenth time. ‘He was part of the family.’
    She’s sitting in the back, allowing Walt the honour of riding shotgun, the returning hero. He keeps his eyes on the road, on his father’s dependable fists curled around the steering wheel. His mother has always stated the obvious. It’s one of those endearing little quirks that irritate the hell out of him, like the way she carefully explains the ending of every movie even though you figured it out halfway through, and the way she repeats telephone conversations when you’ve been right there in the room