We sip tea in silence, the words still bobbing in an ocean of story between us.

After we have drunk the final drops, Mel places her notebook and pen carefully in a drawer and locks it. She stands.

“Come.” She reaches a hand out to me down on the cushions. “There’s something I want you to see.”

When we reach the bottom of the private staircase I know where we are going: to see the skin books of the storytellers. The door opens with a held-breath gasp, as though it has too few visitors. The fragrance of these old skin books is a close, heavy scent that makes the air feel warm. These are the skin books of the storytellers, saved for ever. Our community needs stories and must remember them – they must be handed down immaculately.

Our storytellers learn the tales and speak them word-perfect to the people. More than this though, they wear the stories – their skin is a homage to our history. It’s always the same stories. We must not forget them.

I’ve been in this room once before, when Mel was still my mentor, when she still saw potential in me. When she had plans for my future. She had run her hands over the spines of the books in meditative delight. I remember thinking how sad it was that this was all she would have to show for herself when she died – the marks of stories that were not her own. Even then the cracks in my belief were beginning to show.

Now, though, Mel pauses by one of the bookcases, crouches down, and presses at its base. A drawer springs out. She reaches in and takes out a wooden box.

“You will want to touch,” she tells me. “Do not.”

Undoing the metal clasp, Mel lifts the lid and lets it rest open on its hinged edge. With great care she removes a rectangle of linen and steps aside, so I can see more clearly the item she has revealed.

Skin.

A piece of skin about the size of the palm of my hand. Its edges curl, looking frayed and irregular and showing signs of where it was pegged out to dry. Mel was right – I am desperate to touch it. It looks different from our skin books – thicker and more brittle. If I did touch it, I think, it would feel crisp and rough. I lean in and Mel puts a protective hand on the side of the box. I see hairs, and, on the skin where they grow are goosebumps – as though caught mid-shiver. This has not been tanned in the way our skin books are – the lye removes hair and evens out the surface. This is rudimentary – either due to age or lack of care.

But the biggest shock of all is the mark itself.

Because I’ve seen it before.

I look down at my stomach, as though the fragment of skin has made me transparent. If Mel could see my torso, then she would have seen a crisp, traced outline of the mark I see before me now.