58
‘Matt’s gone, he said to say bye,’ Lorraine said, doing a little shimmy to Girls Aloud’s ‘Can’t Speak French’ on the jukebox as she multi-tasked swilling down black coffee and restocking the mini ginger ales.
‘What? Where?’ Roisin said, her dread at seeing him converting immediately into panic that she wouldn’t.
Her mum nodded to the front of pub. ‘There. Look.’
Roisin darted out the door and caught up with Matt, who had his duffel bag on his shoulder. He looked, with bloodshot eyes, as if he’d had a sleepless night, or maybe she was projecting her own. He also looked heartbreakingly good, and she wished she could still be indifferent to that.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Ah, I was going to message you. Home.’
‘For good?’
‘Yeah. I think now the fête’s sorted and your mum’s setting those new hires on, it’s a good time to go,’ he said. ‘Plus, got to go back to my actual job sometime.’
‘Not because … of me?’
He smiled a sad, apologetic smile. ‘Also because of you, yes.’
Roisin opened her mouth and closed it again. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘don’t go. We’ll go for a walk, talk about this …’
‘There really isn’t anything to talk about, is there,’ he said, politely; a statement, not a question. Roisin couldn’t argue with that, though she was still going to try.
She almost jumped out of her skin to see that while they’d been talking, Joe had been standing right behind them.
‘Morning. Hi, guys. Oh dear. Hope I’m not interrupting, sounds intense,’ he said.
‘What are you doing here?’ Roisin said, in bare horror.
‘Not the warmest of welcomes. Taking my new car out for a spin.’ He nodded back at something small, black and sporty in the otherwise near-empty Mallory car park. ‘Forgot you owned the Fiat, so thought I’d splash out.’
‘I’ll leave you two to it,’ Matt said, adjusting the bag on his shoulder.
‘Oh no, I want to talk to you as well!’ Joe said, with a performative vivacity that signalled real menace. ‘First of all, I came to give you this in person.’
He handed a small box with a large red satin bow to Roisin. ‘It’s my key. For the apartment. I’m all moved out. It’s yours.’
‘Thank you,’ Roisin said, stiffly, feeling exactly as uncomfortable as Joe had intended.
‘Secondly, I did some gumshoe stuff myself.’ He looked from Matt to Roisin and back again. ‘We should set up a little agency. Powell, McKenzie & Walters. Got a ring to it, haha.’
‘I really think I should give you some pri—’
‘Remember when I asked you, straight up, several times, if you’d personally gone to Sesso and asked about me, and you said you had?’ Joe continued, cutting across Matt to Roisin. ‘I thought that sounded really unlikely, but you swore on your mum’s life that it was true?’
Roisin internally writhed.
‘Well, guess what. I met up with Rick, too, and he didn’t know who you were. He did recall Matt McKenzie here coming in and asking a bunch of questions about a waitress who might’ve got involved with a customer. Imagine my surprise!’
Roisin folded her arms.
‘You’re not usually such a bare-faced liar, Roisin. I have to assume you really really wanted to protect him. I wondered why? THEN the answer arrived. Doh! Joe! They are having regular sexual intercourse. The whole “trying to find me cheating on you” thing was a way of legitimising this.’ He gestured at them both in turn.
‘No, we’re not,’ Roisin said.
‘Mmmm. Sure. Looks like it,’ said Joe. ‘Very normal vibes here.’ He made a swirling hand gesture. ‘The vibes are feeling highly normal. Just two pals, having a heated emotional exchange, needing to talk about something, the morning after the night before, outside your mum’s place.’ He looked up at The Mallory. ‘Do you need me to rip the Care Bears duvet off your wriggling bodies before you admit it?’
Roisin saw now that underneath the superior scorn, Joe was boiling with jealousy. She opened her mouth, but Matt spoke first.
‘I helped Roisin because she’s my friend. I didn’t care about the effect on you, because you’re not my friend. Simple really.’ Matt didn’t sound the slightest bit intimidated and having been agonised he was a witness to this, Roisin found herself grateful he was there.
He pulled his punches with Joe, but he wasn’t scared of him.
‘Your dear friend, sure. Finally found your moment to shine, haven’t you?’ Joe looked from Matt to Roisin. ‘You keep trying to catch me out, missing the deception going on right here, Roisin. There’s a technique that committed shaggers use that you may be unaware of. They pose as sympathetic shoulders to cry on about other men, while spoon-feeding you more negativity about those men. Eventually, you become so sure they’re the safe haven and protector, you take your clothes off and fall into bed with them. The “Not Like The Rest Of Them” device. It’s a grift, Rosh. You’re just this month’s mark.’
‘Seriously, Joe. Stop … you’re way out of order,’ Roisin said.
‘I’m going to go,’ Matt said curtly to Roisin. ‘Will you be OK?’
‘Oh GOD, like I’m unsafe,’ Joe said.
‘Sure,’ Roisin said, gratefully, and Matt walked off.
‘You know I know you’re lying, right?’ Joe said. ‘It’s written all over both of your faces.’
‘You can believe what you want, Joe,’ Roisin said, with more confidence than she felt. ‘Nothing’s happened.’
Joe looked to the box in her hand. ‘Enjoy your apartment. I should’ve put a curse on it for when he crosses the threshold. I just want you to own this moment. You were so desperate for a version of our break-up where I was revealed as the bad guy, and here you are, boffing Matt before the ink is dry on the divorce papers. You are the bad guy, Roisin. You. As for him, he’s something even worse.’
Roisin didn’t bother to disabuse Joe further, accepting there was no denial he’d listen to. She let him go. Joe didn’t suggest saying hello to her mother and nor, to be fair, did she want him to.
Lorraine emerged from the pub door as Joe accelerated out of the car park in his expensive new toy.
‘Was that Joe?’
‘Yeah.’
Roisin felt the extreme rudeness of his not having acknowledged her, and was left with no option but to say, ‘I’ve ended things with him. Been working up to telling you.’
‘Oh dear! I did wonder that you hadn’t mentioned him much,’ Lorraine said. ‘But … you’re alright?’
‘I’m fine. We haven’t got along for a while; we’d been growing apart. Needed doing.’ She waved her beribboned box. ‘He’s given me his half of the apartment as a parting gift. Not at all sure I should’ve accepted, but he insisted.’
‘As long as you’re alright.’ Lorraine squeezed her arm. Then, looking over her shoulder, ‘Oh, there’s Terence!’
Lorraine had always been a proponent of Roisin sticking with Joe, and that went triple once he started coining it in. Roisin was extremely surprised at the lack of enquiry and voluble objection. Something was up.
Roisin found out what the ‘up’ was likely to be, within an hour, when she decided – out of a need to draw a line, and a lack of available distractions – to watch the last Hunter.
She turned iPlayer on and, with a jolt of what felt like travel sickness, saw it had been watched. Lorraine had seen the whole series. Roisin paused, absorbed this shock. Any hopes her mum had missed the significance of the table sex scene were dashed by remembering how unexpectedly peremptory she had been when discussing Joe.
Roisin stuck the programme on and felt like adopting a brace position.
More procedural detective stuff, a reveal that the killer was the father of one of the waitresses, lots more sex, a promotion … once again, Roisin found herself surprised to be bored.
The final cliff-hanger arrived. Becca’s best friend Gwen came on to Jasper, and with magnificent restraint, he refused. But thanks to a very ill-timed bum dial, hot Gwen had found out Jasper was shagging around and was blackmailing him to succumb to her charms, or she would tell Becca. Gwen, who was not Gina, but Amber?
The credits rolled to Jasper walking down a Manchester street, bumping shoulders with passers-by in the style of a music video, to a valedictory burst of ‘Knights Of Cydonia’ by Muse.
As Joe had said, the voice-over promised more Hunter.
She switched the television off with relief and confusion.
Roisin cast her mind back to Joe freshly back from Los Angeles, and his speech to win her round, to persuade her to give them another go.
You have to see all three episodes to realise Hunter’s behaviour isn’t glamorised. It doesn’t pay off; he’s really humbled by the end.
Huh? Humbled? That was Joe’s idea of a comeuppance?
Roisin was completely flummoxed, and then she sat up straight. Her subconscious had picked up the telephone to her conscious again.
This is what he does. He’s a liar. A liar who lies in the moment, who says whatever will spring him from the trap. If you pick him up on inconsistencies later, the story will adapt and change shape. He scripts things to produce an effect in his audience. Personally, and professionally.
Joe Powell is not a fixed set of beliefs and behaviours. He is a chameleon with a vocabulary and a major hard-on for pulling the wool. He feels no guilt, and he’ll do it again. Do liars always know they’re lying? If Joe knows, he doesn’t care.
Joe was still right about her culpability regarding Matt, even if he’d got the extent of it wrong. Roisin couldn’t feel guilty, even if she should. He prized only survival, the upper hand.
She realised she didn’t trust a word he said, and that trust couldn’t be restored.
She said aloud, ‘Fuck him.’
Roisin couldn’t fix Joe Powell or figure him out, but she was done living inside his world.