Skin Deep. Laura Jarratt

and they’re rising up to greet us.’ She turned that smile on me. ‘It’ll be different here.’

      I looked at her, wanting to say, ‘Like you said the last place would be different, and the one before that,’ but I kept my mouth shut. Couldn’t risk unbalancing her mood. Besides, we needed to moor up somewhere and we needed money. Whitmere had a market where she could sell the jewellery she made. Maybe we’d make it through the winter before they moved us on.

      I steered Liberty towards the bank. Mum sat on the roof, her bare feet dangling in the doorway. Silver rings on her toes, and in her nose and eyebrow. Hennaed hair glinting copper in the sun. The last of the New Age travellers, who never grew up.

      ‘Feel that energy, Ryan, feel that energy.’

3 – Jenna

      There’s something about waking up early on Saturday morning before the rest of the family. The whole weekend stretched before me and, for a few hours, I had it all to myself. A quiet house. Peace.

      My magazine had an article on how exfoliation made the skin glow and apparently people in French spas spent a fortune battering themselves with water jets, so I turned the shower up high enough for the water to sting my shoulders while I scrubbed all over with a loofah. But when it came to washing my face, I turned the spray down. Low pressure, cool water. I never forgot to do that. Couldn’t.

      I gave myself a scalp massage with the new hair conditioner, giving it time to soak in before rinsing it off. The bottle said it’d make my hair full and glossy. When I cleaned my teeth, I timed myself with a watch – two minutes like the dentist said. I had to do the flossing blind though; there was no mirror above the basin. I’d thrown the towel stand at it when I got back from hospital. Dad had taken the pieces away without a word. Nobody replaced it.

      I sat down at my dressing table to put on the moisturiser and the sunscreen the dermatologist prescribed. It had to be done a certain way – tap the moisturiser in and then massage it thoroughly over the whole scarred area to keep the tissue soft and stop it contracting. The sunscreen was easier and only had to be smoothed over gently. My skin lived by this routine now.

      I rough-dried my hair and gave it a quick smooth with the tongs, then threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.

      Raggs took one look at me coming down in my old ‘walkies’ trainers and ran around in circles chasing his tail. I grabbed his lead in case we needed it and stuffed it in my pocket with a couple of apples for the ponies and one for myself. He did his usual thing of hurtling down the garden and back to me again, over and over, as if he was on a bungee cord. I caught him up at the gate that led out into the paddock and down to the canal. The paddock was ours, two acres bounded by high hawthorn hedge to shelter the ponies. We bought the Shetland, Ollie, to keep Scrabble company when Lindsay’s horse was sold. It felt like Lindz had died all over again when Clover went, but my dad said no father would be able to stand seeing his daughter’s horse running in the field while she lay buried in the ground.

      I whistled to the horses and Ollie headed over first, led by his greedy little tummy. Their velvet noses snorted at my hands as they chomped the apples. Raggs ran along the hedge line, nose to the ground as he followed rabbit trails.

      I could see Lindsay’s home clearly through the trees, a Georgian manor house that dwarfed our old farmhouse. There was a figure in the garden, wearing pyjamas and a brown robe. He stood and stared at the rose bushes, statue still. Mr Norman. I hadn’t seen Lindz’s dad for weeks. I watched him for a few minutes, wondering what he was doing, and then he turned and shuffled back into the house, slowly, bent over like an old man.

      Best not to think of Lindz today. Not on such a peaceful morning. The pain was always there to catch me if I did, always too raw.

      I patted the ponies’ necks and followed Raggs down the field until we got to the thicket of trees that lined the footpath through to the canal. Not many people walked this stretch now it was so overgrown. Raggs disappeared into the undergrowth. He knew this walk as well as I did so I paid no attention and concentrated on picking a path through the nettles. The leaves on the willows above us were still pale green. They’d start to yellow soon, then fall. Raggs and I would kick them up as we walked. He hadn’t seen leaf-fall before – this would be his first autumn. He’d love it.

      I lifted a branch aside and came out on to the canal towpath. Raggs was already there peeing up a tree. I patted my leg and he fell in beside me as we strolled along the gravel path. But he stopped abruptly after a few metres, his whole body a line of quivering attention, and I looked up to see what he was watching, expecting to spot a heron or something.

      Then I stopped too.

      It wasn’t a heron.

      A narrowboat was moored up ahead of us and there was a boy on the bank washing the boat windows.

      He was stripped to the waist and barefoot, wearing nothing but long shorts. His hair was the colour of the honey Mum bought from the farm shop, his skin tanned the same shade.

      I ducked back into the trees, bending to grab Raggs’s collar. We were going to go the other way now, but the stupid dog jerked away from me. I patted my leg frantically, but he ignored me. He took a few steps towards the boy.

      ‘Come back,’ I whispered. ‘Come back.’

      He fidgeted, dancing with his front paws on the spot, and then he made his mind up. He shot off towards the boat, yapping.

      ‘No! Raggs! Heel! Heel!’

      But he’d gone, leaving me cowering in the trees.

4 – Ryan

      You have to scrub really hard to get splattered flies off windows. Especially when there’s a week’s build-up of suicide bomber insects mashed on the glass. Maybe if insects could talk it’d be different. Maybe they’d warn each other in hushed whispers about the danger of Light. Don’t go there, one would say. My cousin went chasing Light. Always a fool, he was. Always after a new thrill and one day he never came back.

      Then again, maybe not. The ability to talk didn’t seem to make humans less stupid.

      A girl’s voice called out somewhere down the bank and I glanced up. Then a small ginger mutt came hurtling towards me out of the trees, barking like crazy. He slammed into my bucket, sending it into the canal, and then he cannoned into me.

      ‘Ouch!’

      His paws scrabbled at my legs as he bounced up and down, yipping for attention. I crouched down and he leapt on to my knee. ‘Watch it, short stuff. Those are sharp claws.’ His tongue slobbered over my face. ‘All right, calm down. Where’ve you come from?’

      ‘Raggs! Come back!’ That voice again, sharper, panicking.

      I rolled my eyes. What did she think I’d do with him? Wring his neck and throw him in the canal? Psycho narrowboat dog-murderer arrives in sleepy village – shock horror! We’d only been here two days. I’d expected longer before the locals found us and worked out we weren’t on holiday. But that’s villages for you. News travels fast and everybody knows each other’s business. So much for Mum thinking here’d be different.

      The dog wanted to stay in my lap and get his ears stroked, but even if he hadn’t, I’d have hung on to his collar just to piss the girl off, stuck-up cow. Besides, he was a mad little pup and he might run into the canal. ‘Can’t have that, Shortie. We’d never find you in there. You’re the same colour as the water.’

      ‘Raggs! Raggs!’

      ‘Dead obedient, aren’t you?’ I said to him as he paid no attention to the voice and tried to hook his stumpy front legs over my shoulders so he could wash my hair too.

      The girl appeared from out of the willow trees and stormed towards us. There was something odd about the way she walked – head down, hair over her face, shoulders tense. From what I could see, she had potential though – medium height, slim,