34
‘You got us nice wine! You can stay! We’re dining al fresco,’ Meredith said, taking Roisin’s offerings as she stepped into the hall. Nice smells and Chvrches drifted out of the kitchen beyond.
Roisin loved coming to their house. Meredith had spotted a doer-upper, and do it up they had.
A large gold disco ball hung between the snowy scrolls of coving in the narrow hallway, and a rainbow-striped carpet ran up the black glossed stairs in front.
‘Patterned is BACK, baby,’ Meredith had insisted to a doubtful Joe.
The wall to their left was covered in framed photos of the lives of Meredith and Gina. Many, many Brian Club nights out were immortalised in the chosen imagery.
As she put her bag down, Roisin’s eyes unfortunately happened to fasten on one featuring the distinctive cheekbones of Matt McKenzie, laughing as Gina jumped on his back and got him in a headlock. Roisin would miss their friendship. It couldn’t be forever; this had to be a wrinkle. They were all too important to each other.
Gina was lighting candles on the table in the little split-level outdoor space on the other side of the kitchen, which had the urban oasis for entertaining look: nursery blue and pink hydrangeas, wisteria-clad walls and strings of novelty shaped solar lights.
It was known as The Hanging Garden, given the number of times that five-hour-long dinners here had left them hanging out of their arses.
They played with breadsticks and hummus until the dinner appeared. Meredith had taken charge of the cooking, serving a Jamie Oliver Greek lamb recipe with a side dish of fennel, baked with tomatoes and olives. Gina declared herself totally happy with the latter and a Quorn vegetarian ‘gammon steak’.
Roisin could hear Joe’s ghostly mockery. Your partner always has that one friend … What if that kind of joshing was to conceal a genuinely ferocious crush that Roisin knew nothing about?
As lovely as the company, the food and the surroundings were tonight, Roisin knew it was a preamble until she broached the topic.
As they sat sipping tumblers of wine in the fading light, over the rubble of the main course, Gina, the only one unaware there was a particular purpose to the evening, unwittingly broached it herself.
‘Rosh, I meant to say: I watched Hunter! Sober! It was so good. It was as good as American things! You must be so proud.’
‘Not really,’ Roisin said, smiling. She was glad she had sorted an order of service out in her head beforehand. She’d planned the best logical order in which to make the reveals, as there was much to get through.
‘But I will pass your praise on, G. I have news. I’ve split up with Joe,’ she said. Telling the parents required timing and diplomacy, but rights to speak to the girls belonged to her.
Grenade thrown, she watched as Gina’s face contorted into total incredulity. Meredith blinked several times in surprise, then raised one eyebrow, nodded, and topped Roisin’s glass up.
‘No! Oh my God! What? Are you serious? Why?!’ Gina said.
‘It’s been shit for ages. Since Joe’s career took off. I didn’t want to say anything, because his career had taken off. I thought it was going to change back, that it was a phase. If I had to guess—’ She drew breath. ‘And I do have to guess, because I can’t get him to drop the swaglord act and be honest with me – I’d say he checked out of the relationship almost by mistake, at first. He got suckered in by this exciting new world, forgot about me. Now he can’t be arsed to climb down and remember. I pretty much knew we were done before Benbarrow. Then I saw Hunter …’
Here was the hard part. It was tricky to explain how badly Joe had treated her without discussing her family. She’d decided on a partial disclosure.
‘… Apart from the things that looked exactly like our lives on there, trust me when I say there were other things, private things, he’d used that I told him, that I really objected to. I’d go so far as to call it betrayal.’
Roisin looked at her friends’ transfixed faces over the table candlelight and thought she was lucky neither of them were gossips by nature. There’d be no guessing game between them later as to what Roisin meant. They might work it out individually. If so, so be it.
‘I’ll probably discuss it, one day. Right now, I hate Joe too much for forcing my hand.’
‘We get it, don’t worry,’ Meredith said firmly. ‘For what it’s worth, I was only going to dare slag it off if you did, but I found Hunter a fairly disturbing experience. Doing take-offs of us all, without warning us, was weird. Then his main character is a Joe-alike, cheating on a Roisin-alike. It was trashy, to be honest.’
‘Were they us?’ Gina said. ‘I thought he’d robbed the odd thing here and there, but they weren’t us, really?’
Roisin didn’t know what to say. If it was based on them, then it strongly implied Joe had letched over Gina.
Roisin would have to vague it out.
‘Well, when I challenged Joe, I got this is my big art, you don’t understand how art works stuff. Maybe not, Joe. I know how relationships and trust and decency are meant to work, though.’
‘That’s cold,’ Meredith said. ‘I’m so sorry, Roisin. How long’s it been, almost ten years? We care about you both. I know how pushed you must’ve been to do this.’
‘Thanks. Needless to say, I’m only going to watch tomorrow’s episode whenever I can steel myself.’
Gina looked agonised: she always felt others’ pain deeply and was probably avoiding speaking in case she sobbed. She’d hit a badger once while driving and had to go to counselling. (Again, Joe had found this hilarious, crooning Badger in the Wind to the tune of Elton John’s hit, pounding imaginary piano keys.)
Roisin understood that tearing Joe down was hurtful to Gina, and she hated doing it. But what choice did she have? She pressed a finger under each eye to staunch any waterworks. She could cry anytime; she wanted this evening to be used for other things.
‘… It gets worse. Or my feelings get worse; whether this is objectively worse, I can’t say …’
Meredith and Gina looked so rapt, they almost weren’t breathing.
‘When we had the fight over Hunter, he didn’t flinch. He didn’t have any guilt or remorse at all. I had this overwhelming instinct …’ She paused. ‘It was something in the way he lied to me, as if it was nothing to him. I could tell he’d had shitloads of practice. I think he’s done it himself. I think Joe’s cheated on me. Lots.’