38
‘Your mum says your fella makes SEEN, is that true?’ said a thirty-something man in coloured ski glasses like an oil spill rainbow.
‘Yeah,’ Roisin said guardedly. ‘£19.98, please.’
‘Is Harry Orton dead?’ he said, flapping his card on contactless.
Roisin remembered that was a secret she was keeping for Joe, and Joe’s approach to her secrets.
‘You really want to know?’ she said. ‘You want to be spoilered?’
‘Yes!’
‘No, they fish him out of the Thames alive and the bullet miraculously missed any major organs. He’s signed up for another two series at least, so don’t expect them to kill him off anytime soon.’
‘Woah, thank you!’
Roisin watched him return to a large table to delightedly report his classified intel.
Another episode of Hunter aired tonight. Roisin dreaded it and its potential revelations. ‘Becca’ probably decided to do a PGCE and dye her hair mauve. She was extremely glad this shift would keep her and her mother busy, amply covering its time of transmission.
What about Sesso, and Gina’s point that Matt could sleuth it for her?
In the sober light of another day, Roisin hesitated at involving a blameless third party.
Then she pictured seeing Joe in a couple of days’ time. Caught once again in his verbal conjuring tricks and scathing brand of gaslighting. The only reason she’d called him out so hard on the lawn that morning was because she knew for sure he’d committed at least one crime. It had taken grit and mental dexterity to pin him to the wall for it, and she still wasn’t sure she’d succeeded. Once you knew someone could betray you over something that serious and try to bluff their way out of it, how could you trust a word out of their mouth about anything else?
Perhaps, in one respect, Roisin had become like Joe. She had to prove he was lying, because now she had to win.
She slid her phone out of her bag, underneath the bar.
Hi Matt! Don’t send me a heartsick turd emoji for this – unless you really want to – but, with dubious timing, I need to ask you a favour. A considerable favour, which you have every right to decline. It comes with a complicated context that I will have to give you over a pint. Can I tempt you to hear me out, if I buy the pints? R x
PS I don’t need sperm
When she checked her handset while pulling a pint of lager shandy, fifteen minutes later, she had a response.
Hi R! YOU WANT MY SPERM, EH. This is all fine, except is this some bait & switch about rejoining Brian C? The lady is not for turning, on that. Mx
Roisin let her mother serve the next customers and typed back.
No, absolutely not, and we can make that a forbidden topic if you want. I’m helping out at my mum’s short-staffed pub in Webberley tonight, driving back tomorrow. Shall I shout you in Manchester sometime next week?
Hmmm … or I could come out to Webberley tomorrow? I fancy some fresh air. Arrive late morning, say 10.30, you drive me back? We could do a Sunday yomp, whatever one of those is. X
PS please find Tupperware with a lid that fits for the sperm
Roisin hadn’t expected this request. Her instinct was to deter him, as she never invited her friends out here. Yet she couldn’t think of a single decent reason to say no, and she was about to ask quite a lot of Matt.
Sure, if you really fancy the sticks? Here’s the link to my mum’s pub. Ring the doorbell. Please warn me if you’ll be with one of People magazine’s 100 Most Beautiful and I’ll at least brush my hair x
Just me, one of Amateur Potato Grower magazine’s Most Beautiful. See you then! Mx
Roisin pondered Matt’s unexpected interest in the countryside. Was he, despite what he told Meredith, worried about paparazzi?
She idly googled: Amelia Lee Boyfriend.
The latest hits showed Amelia in recent days browsing Santa Barbara shops with her new love, Jon Hamm: both of them in aviator glasses. ‘The lovebirds met on the set of their new film, an adaptation of The Beautiful and Damned.’ For fuck’s actual sake! Roisin started snort-giggling to herself about how Ruby wanted to date an ordinary guy.
Oh, Matthew, you soar like Icarus: too close to the sun, and at the mercy of your own jawline. She hoped he was beautiful and not damned.
Roisin was trying not to think about the fact he wouldn’t be lighting up any Brian Clubbing for the foreseeable. She hoped Gina found someone great and healed, and it could be reconvened. But by then, it’d be different. And Joeless? What more did he want to say when he got back from America? Was it a ‘let’s keep talking’ professional banality he’d ported into his private life? She stared into the middle distance, while her stomach mixed cement.
A stranger’s voice interrupted her reverie.
‘Can I get a pint of Harvest Pale, love, or is it self-service?’