39
The doorbell shrilled at 10.30 a.m. on the dot and her mother said, ‘That’ll be the Schweppes.’
‘No, it’s my mate, remember?’ Roisin said. ‘I might remove the decoration, but it’s up to you.’
Lorraine was in a stunning oyster Japanese-print robe. Roisin was referring to the fluffy unicorn sleep mask pushed up on her mum’s head. The grey fabric horn was pointing to the sky, a pair of huge stylised plastic googly eyes beneath. (Lorraine had stayed up later than Roisin, watching And Just Like That with a vodka and soda.)
Roisin had forgotten her mother’s love of mixing high-end apparel with ‘humorous’ merchandise.
Roisin bounded down the narrow staircase, out past the bar and through to open the door, the hefty bunch of jangling gaoler’s keys sitting in the lock.
She’d prepared her mum for Matt’s visit, saying an old bookshop pal in the area was calling on her. Roisin was mercifully marked safe from Lorraine tagging along on the walk: her mother saw no point in ambulatory movement unless there was Selfridges and a French 75 at the other end of it.
It had rained heavily overnight, and the sky was a threatening canopy of grey-beige, like a cup of tea that someone had used to wash a paint brush. Despite the clammy late-summer temperature, she’d need a waterproof.
‘Morning!’ Roisin said, at the sight of a smiling Matt. He was in a buttoned-up dark denim jacket over black trousers and those battered brown boots with canary-yellow laces. Roisin almost hooted at the way he’d dressed for Sunday In The Countryside, as if he was in a broadsheet supplement fashion feature. He just needed to be laughing at something out of view, one foot up on a sawn log.
‘Mornin’. This is where you grew up? It’s a bit of a cool place to grow up, isn’t it? How big’s that garden?’ He cast his eyes up at the building, then leaned back, hands in pockets, inspecting the rear.
‘It was full of pissheads, but it had to do,’ Roisin said. ‘Come meet my mum and then we’ll head out. I’ve designed us an actual route and everything.’
She led Matt into the pub, where Lorraine was downstairs, cashing up from the night before.
‘Oh my God,’ Lorraine said, whisking the mask off her head in a microsecond as she sized her guest up. ‘Who ordered young Harrison Ford?’
‘Harrison Ford if you ordered him from Wish,’ Matt said, not missing a beat.
They both exploded into laughter and Roisin couldn’t decide if their first encounter was going really well or very badly. She did not desire their forming a mutual fan club.
‘This is Matt, Matt, my mother, Lorraine,’ she said, as Matt reached over the till to shake hands.
‘She’s kept you well hidden,’ her mum said, her face suddenly aglow, as welcoming as an open sunflower. Good-looking men prepared to banter with her were her absolute favourite.
Roisin hustled Matt off on their walk before Lorraine could decide he must stay for lunch.
They set off, heading out of the village by picking their way along the uneven verge, in that strangely unexpected complete quiet of a country road. Ancient trees knitted leaves together, over their heads, giving the daylight an emerald-green tint.
‘Wouldn’t have predicted you’d like walking and walks,’ Roisin said to Matt, glancing at him in gratitude for being such easy company. Even for such an old friend, it could feel ever so slightly awkward, their being here together, out of context, but it didn’t.
‘Hard to get anywhere without walking,’ Matt said. ‘I’m not a totally urban creature, you know! We went to Center Parcs once, remember.’
Roisin grinned. She realised she relished being in Webberley too, which was also unexpected. The pub was full of ghosts, but the landscape around the village had no such negative associations. She had temporarily escaped the claustrophobia of West Didsbury and the mind games of Joe Powell.
‘Rained-on bracken! You don’t know how much you’ve become a city git until you realise you never see bracken,’ Roisin said, pointing.
‘Yes, look at us, present, enjoying the moment. Not a Marmalade Negroni in sight,’ Matt said. ‘I usually only see bracken in television shows with police tape.’
‘Hah, we were saying this about Benbarrow Hall. Why are all our reference points for grand things related to murder?’ It occurred to Roisin this could segue into Hunter chat, and she wasn’t ready.
‘Not seeing Amelia any more? What happened there?’ she added.
‘Ugh. Don’t.’
‘Sorry! I didn’t know how serious you were.’
‘Completely unserious, but she still managed to get me sacked from my job before we ended things after two dates, so …’ Matt paused. ‘Actually, no, I got myself sacked, with her help. What’s that saying, “meet one asshole, you met an asshole; meet them all day, you’re the asshole”? Last weekend taught me that when catastrophe follows you everywhere, you are the catastrophe.’
‘Sacked from work? You’re out of a job?’
‘Yep, on gardening leave for six weeks.’
‘Gardening leave?’ Roisin waited until they’d passed some other walkers, making the mumbled nod-smile hello. ‘Does your line of work have that? I thought it was a corporate thing. Not that I’m slyly running it down! I’m ignorant.’
‘You’re never slyly running me down. Unlike some people we won’t mention.’ Matt threw her a smile that she returned uncomfortably.
‘That jaunt to Lisbon was a work trip. It came with the strings that I had to take a friend or a girlfriend and post content featuring both of us. I’m chatting to this mysterious redhead on Hinge and late night, she says, why don’t we have a first date in Lisbon. I’ll meet you there. I thought, cool, yes, why not. Embrace the spontaneity. Her photos are super lifestyley, she’s very modelly, so it never occurs to me she’d mind taking selfies clinking brandy balloons …’
‘Did you really not spot who she was?’
‘No, she’d been clever. Amelia was always in a face mask, at a distance pulling a yoga pose, or half obscured by that dog. She’d only matched with me a week before and to be honest, I’d not paid hugely close attention.’
Plus ça change re: Matt and lady friends, Roisin thought, but didn’t say.
‘I see. Then she meets you in Lisbon and says, no photographs?’
Roisin stopped, poked both her hands out of her cagoule and shook her index fingers up and down, as if she was indicating plane cabin lights.
Matt laughed and groaned.
‘Weirdly like Ryanair pre-take-off, wasn’t it?’ Roisin said. ‘Should the cabin lose pressure, an oxygen mask will drop from the overhead area.’
‘I needed an oxygen mask by the end of that, let me tell you.’
‘Hahahaha.’
‘Yeah, so. She arrives. I find out who she is. I think it’s the most incredible publicity for the vineyard imaginable, and then realise it’s utterly useless. She won’t let me so much as have her hand in shot. What do I do? Tell her to go? Draft someone else in? Call my boss and say, “I’m very sorry, I invited a woman I never met before? It turns out she’s so famous she’s brought a bodyguard who’s ex-Special Forces, and I’ll not be providing any evidence of this claim?”’
Roisin put a hand over her mouth and laughed. ‘Sorry.’
‘It’s alright. I know it’s ridiculous. Much like me. I return with no pictures, and this deeply bullshit-sounding story. I run our online content, to make it worse. The MD’s son has recently taken over the business and he’s been gunning to get rid of me from the start. The old MD loved me and paid me well, so I’m a sore thumb on the wages bill. The son uses this fuck-up as a reason to let me go. He had me in on Monday and gave me the speech. “No hard feelings, go quietly and we’ll see you right. Take us through a tribunal and even if you win, we’ll make the North West scorched earth for you.” Also, imagine the tribunal. I’d have to argue, how should I know my date was an A-lister? Can you imagine the story in the Manchester Evening News?’
Roisin started hiccup-giggling again. ‘I mean, that’d make the nationals. Unfairly dismissed for accidentally dating Amelia Lee.’
‘Quite. Plus the payoff is very generous. I get gardening leave as I was about to close a deal with a small chain of restaurants up here and it was a large contract. They don’t want me mud larking about while the contracts are sorted.’
‘You’ll get another job, easy,’ Roisin said. ‘You’re you.’
‘Yeah,’ Matt sighed. ‘I’m me.’