23
Roisin stared at the bed’s canopy in the thin dawn light, as the minutes ticked by.
Eventually she grasped for her phone on the nightstand and looked at the time. 4.58 a.m. Half an hour before Joe’s alarm. She was incontrovertibly conscious. The kind of brain-abuzz state that makes it clear to you that if you try to fight it, you’ll only lie sweating, mind racing.
She had woken up with perfect clarity about what had to happen. Roisin had been fretting and second-guessing and what if-ing and it had come to a head. She had confused loyalty and forbearance with a determination to stay stuck in the past, rather than confront the present.
She slid noiselessly from the sheets, grasped for the robe. Joe was snoring: he was a sound sleeper anyway and he’d put away a hell of a lot to drink the night before.
Roisin couldn’t recall a single thing that was said between the end of Hunter and her going to bed, beyond general back-slapping. She’d gone up to the room before Joe, keen to be asleep or feigning sleep so they weren’t ever alone.
She tiptoed downstairs in the deserted house, flicked the kettle on in the kitchen and made herself a steadying cup of tea. She carried it out on to the lawn outside, sitting on a low stone wall and watching the sun rise over the lake. She waited.
Roisin checked her watch for the umpteenth time. Joe must be up and moving about by now, if his alarm had worked. As she thought this, she looked up to see him walking across the grass towards her, also holding a mug.
Roisin’s stomach roiled and her heart pounded, in a grisly parody of an encounter from a Regency romance. She was prickly hot under her clothes in the early morning warmth, trying to steady herself for what was to come. Working out the words for this showdown that she wouldn’t regret later. She suspected any plan of what to say would go out the window fairly fast.
She reminded herself, again: she had no choice. There wasn’t any point in avoiding it, pretending to be asleep longer and spinning out the meagre amount of time until his Addison Lee came crawling up the path.
If Roisin pretended last night hadn’t been a problem, she’d lose both her courage and a good chunk of her right to reply. You can’t convincingly express being shocked and appalled on an expedient seven-day delay, when someone gets in the door with West Coast-sized jet lag.
There being no correct and appropriate moment to raise any problem was one of the ways the game felt rigged. Pick an otherwise pressured time? She was thoughtlessly adding to it. During a nice evening out? Ruining it. Try to raise it on a quiet day? Ambush.
Roisin inhaled and exhaled and accepted that, the mental cruelty of Hunter aside, she’d been pushing this reckoning away for too long. Hoping that in exile, banished from serious possibility, the idea would change or die. That it would sort itself out. In a twisted way, Joe had done her a favour. He’d demonstrated a level of disregard she couldn’t ignore.
‘Why do I get the feeling you didn’t get up early to see me off with a big hug?’ Joe said as he reached her, sipping his black coffee. His face was still slept in and puffy from last night’s drinking, his hair glistening wet from the shower.
‘What do you mean?’ she said, testing her voice.
‘You’ve been in a threatening mood all weekend, Roisin. Barely said a word after the show, yesterday. You’re stood here alone at dawn with a face on like you’re the Benbarrow ghost, risen from her drowning. I’m not stupid. What do you want to say to me?’
Claiming to know she was upset, and taking the piss out of her, didn’t exactly match up. A simple are you OK would’ve done. Joe was battle ready.
Deep breath.
‘Why did you put my mum and dad in your story?’
Joe paused, mouth to mug. ‘In Hunter? That wasn’t your parents? It was fictional.’
‘The kid creeping down and catching the mother on the table? You’re telling me that’s not from a particular thing I’ve told you?’
‘Yes, sure. Lots of things I write are from lots of things people have told me.’
‘“People”!’ Roisin exclaimed, her temper breaking faster than she expected. The plans were already out the window. ‘I’m your girlfriend. Don’t give me a “how stories work” spiel like I’m the public at a Q&A, asking where you get your ideas.’
‘What do you want me to say, I just admitted it? Yes, some of that was inspired by things you told me. As it goes on, you’ll see tha—’
‘You betrayed my trust?’ Roisin said.
Joe grimaced, in an exaggerated performance of disbelief. ‘That’s wildly misrepresenting what happens when you draw on things around you and the people who are close to you. Am I supposed to run everything I write through a sources and similarities check?’
‘It’s a bit fucking specific for that paper-thin defence, isn’t it, Joe? How many people do you know who saw their mum with other men?’
‘As I said, yes, you’d be the trigger for it.’
‘Trigger. By depicting it? In the same way the sinking of the ship Titanic was the trigger for the film Titanic.’
‘It was a few seconds on screen, not the whole subject. It’s not possible to do what I do and not be influenced by elements of real life.’
She was almost relieved to find how livid she still was, and how pathetic and glib his excuses were. It made it simpler.
‘You’re pretending not to understand the difference between using anecdotes in general and ripping off traumatic, private things direct from your girlfriend’s past? Things told to you in strict confidence. Why didn’t you give me a warning about it? Is there anything else I should prepare for?’
The thought of the abortion being used made her insides turn into a mini earthquake.
‘OK, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t think. No, nothing else. I didn’t realise it was still this upsetting to you. You’ve probably forgotten, but you thought it was kind of … darkly, bleakly funny, when you first told me.’
This was so sly and unfair that Roisin authentically hated him, for a second. Maybe she had been playing it partly for laughs on the first telling. That was drunken youthful dates, trying to be fascinating and bold and own your family’s dysfunction as part of your fabulous rainbow, for you. Things said between two people newly sleeping together were not to be held up for daylight inspection. If you were perceptive enough about human nature to write about it, you were perceptive enough to know what was off limits.
‘You’re blessed with perfect memory for the tone of conversations we had ten years ago, but completely at a loss over why you didn’t think to consult me when you were writing it, a few months ago?’ Roisin said.
‘I see, this is one of those fights where anything I say gets me in bigger trouble.’
‘Are you serious?’
Joe screwed his eyes closed and paused. It was a stagey device, to make it clear that this was unnecessary. That she was what her pupils called extra. He necked the last of his coffee and set his cup down on the step.
‘I intended to mention it. But in the hugely long-winded process of writing and rewriting and going into production, it fell by the wayside. As I said, I’m really sorry. It wasn’t intended to be such a clear reference that you’d find it this emotional. In my mind, it had become Jasper’s origins and part of something totally different. Obviously, as someone not involved in the process, I should’ve realised it’d be more of a shock to you.’
Roisin wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but nevertheless, she was aghast at this smooth horseshit. There was a level of honesty she needed before she could contemplate supplying her understanding or forgiveness. Even now, Joe wouldn’t be forced into offering it. She could only assume he didn’t need either her understanding or forgiveness. It felt more than dismissive. The word contempt floated into her mind.
‘You know, Joe, this is ruthless. Worthy of a sweaty corrupt politician on Newsnight. You’re not being remotely truthful with me about what happened here. What’s even more worrying is that I don’t think you’ve even asked yourself why you did it. It doesn’t interest you.’
God, that was it. In a nutshell. Joe hadn’t wondered, in light of his girlfriend’s distress, why did I think this was OK? She’d not seen him wrongfooted or concerned, whatsoever. He’d gone straight into damage limitation ‘fob her off with a glib apology’ mode. It didn’t bother him enough to check his conscience. It didn’t apparently occur to him to check it.
‘In what way am I being dishonest?’ he said.
‘The real version of this, Joe, goes – you knew it was theft and you knew it was sensitive. If you’d told me, I’d object and you’d have to take it out. So you went ahead and chanced it, thinking, if you got away with it, cool. If it went wrong and I kicked off, it was a price worth paying to keep it in the script. Even when you knew I’d watch it here, with our friends around us, it didn’t change the stakes enough for you to come clean before you put me through that. Because why gift me an opportunity to be a nuisance? None of this fall-out means anything, because my pain over this is absolutely nothing to you. Not compared to your career. This is merely an inconvenient difficulty to be managed, before you get to the real business of some brunch meeting with men in designer sunglasses in Los Angeles where no one eats the food.’
When she finished speaking, Roisin saw that Joe looked embattled, but also faintly – and uncharacteristically – impressed. She had his attention. Roisin’s fury was obviously the first time he’d listened to her in a while.
She wondered if he was filing it away to use in the future. She wondered if any privacy was now an illusion.
Between us meant nothing.