Then the thought of being in his bed took over and she went back out to pick up from where they’d left off.
Ten minutes later, they were on the sofa and she had her fingers clenched in his hair and her mouth locked on his as he slipped a hand up under the hem of her dress and around the back of her thigh. She crooked her knee up onto his leg and his hand slipped behind her knee before she realised where it was going and what it would find, and her bright spark of panic coincided exactly with his exclamation of shock as he pulled away sharply.
“What the hell was that?” he demanded.
Confused and red-faced with embarrassment, she pulled away to her own end of the sofa, tugging the hem of her dress back down. “It’s just a patch of dry skin,” she murmured. “Thanks for mentioning it.”
As exciting as it had been to be dating again after such a long time, it had the unfortunate side-effect of making her psoriasis flare up again. The Dermalex was mostly keeping it under control, but there was no disguising the scaliness that his fingers had met. Her skin itched, but it was nothing compared to the burning mortification she felt.
“That’s more than just dry skin,” he replied, staring in accusation at a single silvery flake which lay between them on the dark leather of the sofa cushion. He stared at his hand, muttered “Ohmigod”, then dashed into the bathroom, from where she heard the sound of running water.
Her humiliation flared into anger. “It’s not contagious, you know!” she yelled. “Jesus, Rob, what’s your problem?”
“My problem?!” he yelled back from the other room. “What about your problem? What is it, Hannah? What have you got?”
By this time she had grabbed her things together and was heading for the hallway, but she stopped by the open bathroom door. He was at the sink, scrubbing furiously at his hand. “It’s psoriasis, okay?” she said. “I’ve got fucking psoriasis. Happy now?”
He moaned and scrubbed harder. “How could you not tell me you had something so grotesque?” he demanded. “How could you lie to me like this?” All the charm and erudition had fled his voice; he sounded just like any other drunken dickhead standing outside a club bellowing about what he thought he was entitled to.
“Lie to you?” Anger tipped over into humiliated outrage, and she felt the heat start to rise inside her. The condition, mild as her own case was, had still been a nightmare for her since as early as she could remember. School had been especially bad, and physical education lessons most of all. She’d endured all manner of bullying and name-calling – “Scabbers” had been the most popular one. Cornflakes had been tipped in her hair, and pencil shavings in her food. Rumours had been started that it was a sexually transmitted disease she’d caught by being a slut. Online it was even worse. She thought she’d left it behind with childhood, but here it was again: the same ugly face of petty cruelty, just dressed up more smartly. Now the rage burned hotter, directly behind her navel, spreading and growing through her belly as she started to sweat.
“You have no idea what grotesque is!” she shot back. “You have no idea what it’s like, feeling bits of yourself falling off. Well I hope it is fucking contagious. I hope that every time you look in the mirror you see how grotesque you are. I hope that you see every little spot and freckle and that they drive you mad until you have to cut them out of your own fucking skin!”
At that, the fire inside her exploded in a tsunami that roared up to her scalp and down to her feet, only to flash outwards and into him, leaving her empty, dazed and breathless. She didn’t wait for Rob’s response but staggered out of his apartment, more confused now than angry and embarrassed.
That had been the last she’d seen or heard of Rob until this evening. She finished her wine and took herself to bed, but lay awake in the darkness, wondering if he was out there on the street again, watching. She stared at the images on her phone, seeing only the ruin of his face, half-lit by streetlights. Dear God, had he taken her at her word? Her grandmother used to tell stories about the women in her family and the things that they could do, but of course Hannah hadn’t believed them. Who would? The notion that she might actually have cursed him was ridiculous.
Because as monstrous as Rob had become, what did that then make her?
She went back through the photographs again, re-reading the comments and her own replies, squirming at the smug, self-congratulatory tone with which she’d bragged to her friends about the gorgeous man she’d caught. Look at me! See? I’m popular! If he’d been a vain man obsessed with his own appearance, what had she done but feed that? The least she could offer him now was a chance to explain himself.
* * *
The next morning she called in sick at work and waited.
She didn’t realise how much on edge she was until a tentative knock on her front door, faint though it was, jolted her like an electric shock. Through the door’s frosted glass pane she saw a blurred shape shuffling back and forth, and she hesitated with her hand on the lock. She could ignore him, pretend she wasn’t in, and hope that whatever revelations he brought disappeared with him. But she needed to know what had happened. She needed to know if it was somehow her fault. Hannah unlocked the door and opened it.
Rob still had his hood up, but there was no disguising his mutilations in the clear morning light – indeed, from the defiant way that he held his jaw it seemed that he had no intention of hiding from her.
But oh, what damage had been wrought to that jaw, and the face above it.
What little skin was left sat uneasily beside patches of exposed muscle and tendon, yellow gristle marbling the red, and the glimpses of naked bone at his forehead and cheeks last night hadn’t been her imagination. He had no eyelids; his eyeballs were naked and staring, and she couldn’t imagine why he wasn’t completely blind. His lips (she remembered the touch of them and shuddered) resembled thick rubber bands, and his nose was little more than a cavity with a few scraps of cartilage. The scarring extended down his throat and below the collar of his stained t-shirt; was his whole body like this? It explained why his voice had sounded so nasal and muffled last night. He looked like a crude imitation of one of those plastinated “Bodyworlds” exhibits, made by an amateur with palsied hands and the rusty lid of a tin can instead of a scalpel. With such injuries he should have been in intensive care, but here he was all the same. His lips thinned in something which might have been intended as a smile, and when she saw the workings of his anatomy pull that smile into existence she nearly slammed the door shut again.
“Hi Hannah,” he said.
“Rob-Robin,” she managed.
“I know.” He gestured at himself. He was wearing lavender-coloured surgical gloves. Presumably his hands were just as bad. She tried not to recall the touch of those fingers cupping her face, stroking her skin. “I can’t imagine how this must look to you.”
She grimaced.
“Thank you for letting me come back,” he continued. “I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d told me to piss off.”
That was still very much on the cards as far as she was concerned. He clearly wasn’t in his right mind. The door was still on its chain.
“What—” She faltered, swallowed, tried again. “Oh Rob, what have you done to yourself?”