14
Roisin sat down on the other side of the bed. ‘I know it doesn’t feel enough of a comfort right now but you’re going to forget about this much faster than you think, and he will too. The room is half dark and it was a moment.’
‘It was quite a few moments, where I was jumping around, and he was like …’ She mimicked someone staring in boggling, immobile shock. ‘Then he turned around, and I was pushing him away in panic and we … I … sort of slapped against him …’ She put her palms to her forehead. ‘Aaaaargggh. Make it not have happened, Roisin. Every day from now on, this has happened.’
Meredith carried on rubbing her back. Roisin didn’t usually refer in any explicit way to Matt’s frenetic love life, but needs must.
‘Gina, consider this,’ she said in an assertive voice. ‘Matt is a man of the world. Seeing women naked is his principal hobby. He’s seen so many that I promise you he still couldn’t pick you out of a line-up after this.’
Gina quietened slightly. ‘You think?’
‘Yes! Memory is dimming as we speak! Memory-generating brain cells start dying off age thirteen. Some of my pupils are proof.’
Roisin inclined her head at Meredith, to convey ‘help me out’.
‘This is very true of men slags. Many women, endless women. Just a blur of boobs,’ Meredith said. ‘In a long career. Like David Attenborough viewing wildlife. It’d be like asking David Attenborough to recall a specific giant tortoise. Among the … Great Tortoi. Wait, what’s the plural of tortoise?’
‘Tortoises,’ Roisin said.
‘Oh. Makes sense.’
‘He’s David, and I’m one of tons of Galapagos turtles?’ Gina said.
‘Yes!’ they chorused, emphatically.
‘’Cos he met so few of them, they had names! All of them died! I saw a documentary with one called “Lonesome George”!’
‘Maybe he was just unpopular,’ Roisin offered.
Meredith put a hand over her mouth. ‘Something more common then. Penguins?’ Meredith said.
‘Pretty sure David would remember a penguin if it had shaken its double-D tits at him while screaming GEEET OUUUTTTT,’ Gina said, palms at her side, doing a little belly dancer mime.
Roisin fought to suppress laughter. Meredith was trembling with the effort of not doing the same.
‘Also, if I’d known this was going to happen, I’d have had a wax,’ Gina said. ‘I’ve been rewilding to get that Seventies Hustler look this summer, I read in Elle that the bush is coming back. It’s all … patchy.’ Her voice wavered again. ‘Like, I wouldn’t want either of you two to see this. Let alone …’ Her face contorted.
‘Rewilding?’ Roisin said, having to gasp the word out between her fingers.
Gina nodded sombrely. ‘As my beauty therapist says, years of Brazilians aren’t reversed overnight.’
‘No need with my rainforest,’ Meredith said. ‘Nature is flourishing. Lots of natural grazing habitat.’ She didn’t quite make it steadily to the end of the sentence.
Roisin, at last, permitted herself to laugh. ‘Perfect for large herbivores … ahahaha …’
‘No way to describe my ex, but yes.’
‘So you’re saying you’ve created a magical haven,’ Roisin said.
‘Yes, I’m saying that wildlife frolics.’
She and Meredith collapsed.
‘Fuck you both!’ Gina said, witnessing their honking, but her heart wasn’t in it. She was finally smiling, grudgingly.
Roisin’s chest was heaving as laughter subsided. She felt guilty that Gina’s trauma was her first moment of authentic joy since they arrived.
‘Gina, not only is he not going to have noticed the detail, but I’m absolutely certain you look incredible without your clothes on. You’re leaving out the most important thing here,’ Roisin said, wiping her eyes. ‘What will have registered, if anything, is fitness. Whereas if it had been me, he could’ve sued for mental distress. Also …’ Roisin had to say this without inviting false hope: ‘It shows he cares.’
‘Hi. Can I come in?’ Matt said, interrupting, from the other side of the door.
Gina looked to Roisin and Meredith for an answer or reassurance.
‘Don’t have to talk to him if you don’t want to,’ Roisin said.
‘I’d rather face him with you here,’ Gina whispered. She wiped her eyes and rearranged her hair around her shoulders. ‘Come in.’
Matt entered, clad in t-shirt as well as boxers. ‘I wanted to apologise, again. I’ve been a total dick. Shoulder-barging locked doors is completely not OK. I’m mortified. Please promise me that you won’t forever associate me with this moment of idiocy.’
Roisin wasn’t sure if it was emotional intelligence or public school manners that made Matt claim the shame of this encounter; either way, it was astute.
‘It’s alright. You didn’t mean to do it,’ Gina said, in a very polite and somewhat recovered voice. Then, ‘It’s forgotten. I promise.’
‘Thank you,’ Matt said.
‘Night,’ they chorused, as he left.
Roisin turned to Gina. ‘Gina. This is nothing. It’s for Matt to feel awkward, like he said. Be confident in your skin, because if I was in your skin, I certainly would be.’
‘I bet you are a lovely teacher,’ Gina said. ‘You always know what to say.’
Roisin hugged her bare, delicate bones. ‘I know how it feels to be held together by sheer bravado and Charlotte Tilbury.’
‘What’s going on? Where have you been?’ Joe said, unexpectedly propped on an elbow, awake, as Roisin gently closed the bedroom door behind her.
‘Your ghost story scared Gina; she screamed, and Matt broke into her room to rescue her. She was naked and feels very embarrassed.’
‘Really? Like, not a stitch?’
‘Yup.’
‘Lucky bastard, as usual,’ Joe mumbled, as he pushed his face into the pillow.
Roisin sighed as she snapped the light off.