'Snakeskin' by Lucy Welch

It’s time to shed my skin again.    

Sarah’s house is quiet now that she’s away for the weekend.  I’m alone with her cat winding himself around my ankles.  There’s not much worth nicking but I’ll clear out her account before I disappear.  

When I open my laptop, I‘m washed with an unfamiliar emotion.  Regret?  Will I miss her laughter?  Her mischievous dimples?  For the first time, I wonder what it would be like to stay.  To sleep with her arms wound around me every night.

But it’s too late for that.  My fake skin of lies is already splitting and the truth is impossible.  

My hands hover over the keyboard.  I don’t have to take everything.  She’s been saving because her mother has dementia and I can afford to be generous.  I’m not skint like the first time, when I swindled a lipstick-pouty divorcee with more Botox than sense.    

A clock chimes, shattering my delusion.  Why waste it on a mad old lady who can’t remember what she had for breakfast?

I  type Sarah’s password.  The screen flickers and I stare, goggle-eyed.  Her balance blurs, focuses, blurs again.  £1?  That’s not right. She showed me this yesterday, laughing because she’d saved so much.  Making my task childishly simple by inputting the passwords under my nose.

Slam!  Voices rise from the hall and I rush down to find a middle-aged couple, sunburnt and dragging suitcases.

“What are you doing in our house?”  the man demands.  

“Your house?  Sarah lives here.”

“Sarah?  The cat sitter?”

That’s when I realise she isn’t coming back.  

Afterwards, my fingers shake so violently that it takes several attempts to access my secret account.  The one no-one is supposed to know about.  

I thought she was an angel but it turns out she’s a snake like me.