10
In the seconds after Joe spoke, Roisin discovered it was certainly true that faking it never really worked. The group must have sensed that Roisin and Joe were faltering.
If it was still old times, there would’ve been an excited, expectant gulp-gasp that they were about to hear news of an engagement. (Roisin’s willingness to swill Möet putting paid to the other possibility.)
Instead, a fully silent gap followed Joe’s declaration, because it turned out they clearly instinctively knew it couldn’t be that either of them had proposed. Odd how microscopic pauses could be so decisively revealing.
Roisin had no idea what Joe was referring to, either. She certainly had no expectation of him pushing his chair out and dropping to one knee.
‘I’ve got to leave earlier than planned on Sunday … to fly to the States,’ Joe said, now he had them all in the palm of his hand. ‘I’ve got a meeting with J.J. Abrams.’
‘FOOK OFF!’ Dev exclaimed, amid squealing. ‘Really?’
‘Is he the Star Trek guy? Or the Star Wars guy?’ Gina said.
‘Both,’ Joe said, basking.
‘This is for a film of SEEN?’ Meredith said.
‘Yup. Oh, and consider this information under a verbal agreement NDA. I am NDA-ed up to the gunwales.’
‘What’s an NDA?’ Gina said.
‘Non-Disclosure Agreement. A legal way to stop you gossiping,’ Joe said. He added, ‘Not YOU you. In general, “you”.’
‘When did you find this out?’ Roisin said, though she had a good idea.
‘Tonight,’ Joe said. ‘His people reached out to my people, etc.’
He had known when he was self-importantly banging out emails in their bedroom, then, and told her to go downstairs without him. He had actively chosen to withhold it for a moment with the group than tell his girlfriend, alone.
Nothing was about the two of them, any more. Champagne problems.
‘Actual Hollywood people. Joe! This is the coolest thing,’ Gina said, shaking her head, making a proud mum disbelief face.
‘Oh my God – what are you going to wear?!’ Anita said.
Everyone guffawed at the idea Joe’s choice of shirt was crucial and Roisin was grateful for their guilelessness puncturing the lingering tension from Dev’s air miles talk.
‘What do you actually say, in a meeting like that?’ Meredith said.
‘To be honest, it’s what my agent calls a kind of let’s get a look at you thing. If they’re going to do business developing your idea and involving you to some extent, they want to check you’re not intolerable. So not a lot, really. Don’t suggestively tongue the cutlery and laugh in the wrong places.’
‘Are you having dinner?’ Dev said.
‘Brunch. But I’ve already been warned, no one actually eats it.’
‘You order something and then look at it? Or you don’t order?’ Gina said.
‘They say, “bring all the things for the table” and everyone ignores it and drinks black coffee.’
‘Not called La La Land for nothing,’ Dev said, nodding. ‘Away with the fairies. Land of the lotus lickers.’
‘Fairly sure it’s “eaters”,’ Joe said.
‘Destabilise the power dynamic by demanding the Chateau Marmont waiter brings you a large chilled banana milkshake with a half banana garnish,’ Matt said. ‘It’s the kind of place where they’d have to do it.’
‘Is it at Chateau Marmont?’ Anita said.
‘That was a guess,’ Matt said.
‘Actually, yes,’ Joe said, and Roisin could sense Joe’s irritation at Matt stealing even one rumble of this thunder.
‘What time do you have to go on Sunday?’ Roisin said. She knew it was a boring scold’s question. A fun girlfriend should be cooing, but she couldn’t bring herself.
‘Taxi’s coming at quarter to seven,’ Joe said.
Dev, overhearing, made a pained noise. ‘We’ll say ta-rah to you on Saturday night if that’s OK, mate.’
‘Absolutely!’ Joe said, addressing the table. ‘I don’t expect anyone to get up to see me off.’
Anyone? Roisin thought. What am I, the dog we don’t have’s mother?
‘I think what you’ve achieved is so incredible, Joe,’ Gina said. ‘I remember when we used to donate our fully stamped café loyalty cards to you so you could have a free drink while you worked. Now look at you!’
‘Still appreciate it,’ Joe said. ‘Might be flying business on Virgin Atlantic day after tomorrow but in my heart I’m Diddy B forever.’
‘Diddy B!’ Gina cried, in warmth at their shared nickname for Didsbury.
Joe gazed back at her with real fondness.
Roisin loved Gina, too. But in that moment, without jealousy, she thought: Joe, you get on so well with Gina because she is sweetly pretty and built like Jessica Rabbit, and an unabashed Joe fangirl. She worships you and asks nothing of you.
Maybe Roisin should let herself off the hook regarding Joe losing interest in her – maybe he was always going to do that with any partner who couldn’t remodel herself into Joe’s adoring foil. He used to like a challenge.
‘Is it time yet?’ Anita said to Dev. ‘For the surprise.’
Dev nodded, and Anita jumped from her chair and scuttled off into the hallway as everyone watched, perplexed.
‘Apologies for my fiancée. She has the energy of Satan crossed with a billy goat,’ Dev said. ‘Yes, I know, and it’s me saying that.’
Anita bumped back into the room with hands full, holding a large flat oblong draped in a dust sheet, so large she had to sidestep.
‘We’ve got this for our house, but we’ll do more for anyone who wants,’ Dev said, getting up.
Joe made a covert comic-grimace in Roisin’s direction and she smiled thinly. She wondered why everything had to be smirked and snarked at now. Except, she was pretty sure she knew why. Easier to let go of something you had spoiled.
Dev helped Anita set the object, the size of a flat screen TV, down on the floor. They whipped the sheet away, both of them TA-DAHing as they did so.
They all squealed, bar Joe. It was a framed photograph of the six of them, crowded onto a black leather sofa in a Northern Quarter bar. They were under an American road sign, the words DON’T WALK lit up. Waterstones Deansgate Alumni, 2013.
Dev, centre, looked two stone lighter, with a then-characteristic pint and a chaser in front of him on the low table. Roisin, to his left, was grinning. She had her natural dark brown hair separated in low bunches (ugh, what was she thinking?) and a very tight Muppets t-shirt that made her look very busty (ugh, what was she thinking?). Pepe The King Prawn should not be stretched across a breast.
Her soon-to-become boyfriend, Joe, perched on the sofa arm, raising an eyebrow over the rim of a pint that he was holding up to obscure his face. He was shyer then. Roisin remembered the fascination between them at the time and felt a pang of loss.
Gina was on Dev’s right. She had short hair in a pixie cut and a strappy dress with biker boots. She was perched coyly on Meredith’s lap. Meredith, mostly obscured in green Converse, looked like herself. She was always the most herself, from the start.
Matt was crouched on the ground, leaning his head to be sure of being in shot. He looked less chiselled and poised than he did now. More of the keen, gangly young athlete about him, but still boy-band beautiful.
Peering at the past was a strange sensation, Roisin thought, as they oohed and aahed and joked about it. It was an earlier version of themselves they hadn’t exactly forgotten, yet it was still a jolt to be confronted with it. Somehow, you always lost the detail.
‘I thought we could take another one while we’re here; Then and Now.’ Dev said. ‘Lots of sofas to choose from.’
‘You can do one where you’re in exactly the same poses,’ Anita said, always the art director.
‘We can do another in another ten years!’ Dev said, looking expansively at them all. ‘And ten years after that!’
Much as she loved Dev’s idealism, Roisin felt sure that these two portraits would be less of a sequence and more like book ends.