Read Under the Skin for Free Online Page A

between him and her was filling up with his malignant breath. She had to make her decision fast; her fingers itched to hit the icpathua toggle. But she must, at all costs, stay calm. To act on impulse was to invite disaster.
    Years ago, in the very beginning, she’d stung a hitcher who had asked her, scarcely two minutes after getting into the car, if she liked having a fat cock up each hole. Her English hadn’t been quite as good then, and it had taken her a little while to figure out he wasn’t talking about poultry or sports. By then he’d exposed his penis. She’d panicked and stung him. It had been a very bad decision.
    Police had searched for him for weeks. His picture was shown on television and published not just in the newspapers but also in a special magazine for homeless people. He was described as vulnerable. His wife and parents appealed to anyone who might have sighted him. Within days, despite the privacy she’d imagined at the time she picked him up, the investigation turned its spotlight on a grey Nissan estate driven possibly by a woman. Isserley had had to lie low on the farm for what seemed like an eternity. Her faithful car was handed over to Ensel, and he cannibalized it in order to customize the next-best one on the farm, a horrid little monster called Lada.
    ‘Anyone can make a mistake,’ Ensel had reassured her as he laboured to get her back on the road, his arms smeared with black grease, his eyes bloodshot from the welding flame.
    But Isserley’s shame was such that even now she couldn’t think about her failure without an involuntary grunt of distress. It would never happen again: never.
    They had reached a stretch of the A9 which was being converted to dual carriage; there were noisy mechanical dinosaurs and uniformed personnel meandering over mounds of soil on either side of the road. The commotion was consoling, in a way.
    ‘You’re not from this area, are you?’ Isserley said, raising her voice slightly to be heard above the din of great blades slicing into the earth.
    ‘Nearer tae it than you , Ah kin bet,’ he retorted.
    She ignored this jibe, determined to hold on to the conversational thread which might lead to his family, when he startled her by suddenly, violently, winding his window down.
    ‘He-e-ey Doug -eeee!’ he yelled into the rain, waving one fisted arm out the window.
    Isserley glanced up at the rear-view mirror, caught a glimpse of a burly figure in bright yellow reflective clothing standing by an earthmover, waving back hesitantly.
    ‘Mate ae mine,’ explained her hitcher, winding his window up again.
    Isserley took a deep breath, tried to get her heart rate down. She couldn’t take him now, obviously; she had lost her chance. Whether or not he was married with children had become irrelevant in an instant; on balance she would rather not find out, in case he wasn’t.
    If only she could stop panting and let go of him!
    ‘Are those real?’ he said.
    ‘Pardon?’ It was as much as she could do to speak one word without her breath catching.
    ‘What yis goat stickin’ oot in front ae yi,’ he elaborated. Yir tits.’
    ‘This … is as far as I go,’ she said, veering the car into the middle of the road, indicator flashing. By the grace of Providence, they had reached the comforting eyesore of Donny’s Garage in Kildary. WELCOME , the sign said.
    ‘You seid Invergordon,’ her hitcher protested, but Isserley was already turning across the lanes, homing her car towards the space between the garage and its petrol pumps.
    ‘There’s a rattle in the chassis somewhere,’ she said. ‘Can’t you hear it?’ Her voice was hoarse and none too even, but it didn’t matter now. ‘I’d better get it looked at. Might be dangerous.’
    The car stopped moving. Some kind of life bustled behind the cluttered shop windows of Donny’s Garage: other voices, the creak of large refrigerators, the clink of bottles.
    Isserley turned to her hitcher and gently pointed back