61
Roisin was experiencing every symptom, while stubbornly denying she had the sickness. His name appearing on her phone was as if someone had stabbed her chest with a syringe of adrenaline.
The following day after her night out with Gina and Meredith, she unlocked the message from Matt McKenzie so fast her fingers were a blur. Roisin had been in agonies at the meaning for his silence and then had to allow she’d not been in contact with him, either. It was hard to know what to say. She’d been hoping Meatball would visit the pub and give her an excuse to send a photo, but rumour had it he was romancing the staff at the village chippy.
Sorry for leaving you with Joe last weekend. I thought my being there was only going to make him worse. How did it go? x
She typed back:
He didn’t improve but hopefully that’s the end of it. How are you? Is it the Ancoats bar launch tonight? x
Well remembered! Yes it is, ‘festa’. (No capital letters here obvs.) I’ll report back as to whether the Marmalade Negronis are any good. Give my love to your mum, Terence, and especially Meatball. I left a packet of those chews he likes in my room, if you’d not mind dispensing them. X
Hmmm, large kiss. Emphatically positive, but also a full stop. Also, are they possibly easier to send to people you don’t fancy?
Analysing text kiss sizes was another symptom.
Oh God, she missed him. The Mallory was drab without the sound of Matt’s laughter and, to be candid, the way his arms looked when he was hefting heavy crates.
Without Gina’s encouragement, Roisin wouldn’t have had the nerve to hope, but her words circled round and round her head. Was Gina merely a romantic, suffering a long tail with McKenzie Derangement Syndrome, or was she right? She was right about his family.
Fuck’s sake, what could Roisin DO with all these feelings she was feeling?
‘I’ve got Amy and Ernie on tonight,’ Lorraine said, as if she could pick up on Roisin’s anxiety. ‘Why don’t you go out, do something nice?’
‘I could, I suppose …’ Roisin said.
Did she dare? Or did she wait for this madness to subside? What if … What if the love of Matt’s life is out there in Ancoats, and tonight is the night they meet, she asked herself. Then they were forever united as one, on an inexorable track to marriage and babies, and Roisin had to always wonder what would’ve happened if she’d only had the guts?
That bitch needed stopping.
A plan started to form. A completely crackers plan.
He’d told her the name, festa, and that was a hint he wanted her to turn up, right? Right! No. That was the kind of thing that stalkers believed.
Roisin put on the black & Other Stories dress he’d once said he liked and booked a cab, reasoning that if it went well, she’d want a drink, and if it went badly, she’d need a drink.
She nervously pulled out a compact en route to check she didn’t have lipstick on her teeth, and the driver saw her.
‘First date, is it?’
‘Something like that!’
‘If you’re nervous, imagine him naked.’
‘I can’t think of anything more likely to make me nervous,’ Roisin said.
Given it was a special occasion, Manchester obliged with a rainstorm so heavy that Roisin had to dash into the bar holding her handbag over her head. festa was a long, high-ceilinged room full of exposed ventilation pipes and dangling bare lightbulbs on looped cords, which always made Terence say, ‘Why does no one finish the electrics any more? The containment is terrible!’ He liked everyone to remember he was CORGI-registered to do gas and electrics before he was a barman.
Roisin picked her way through the well-dressed crowd inside and started to think, he’s not here. He’s not here. Did she risk texting him; what would she even say?
Then she saw him against a far wall of plastic green leaves: an unmissable jawline. Her heart went boom. Her palms went damp.
He looked over as she drew near, and exclaimed, in real shock, ‘Roisin?!’
So the name of the bar wasn’t a hint. Nope. She noticed then that the woman he was chatting to had a high ponytail and strappy heels like Virginia creeper wound up her endless bare legs. She was breathtaking. If she was the future love, Roisin had brought piss to a shit fight.
Roisin almost said, ‘Wrong bar!’ while backing away, hearing ‘Yakety Sax’ in her head.
‘Why are you here?’ Matt said, putting down his drink and walking over to her.
‘Hello. Can I have a word?’ she said.
‘Er … yeah?’
‘In private? Outside?’ Roisin said.
‘Does it have to be outside? It’s shitting it down!’ Matt said, not unreasonably.
‘I don’t want to shout.’
There was nowhere in here she wouldn’t feel the weight of stares upon them; she couldn’t say this with people clustered around. Or over the music: New Order’s ‘Age Of Consent’ was giving them an ear boxing.
She and a baffled-looking Matt emerged into the street and Matt pointed at a shop awning a hundred yards away.
They darted under it, the water pouring from its edge in sheets.
‘I’m going to stress-test my dad’s thing about how you “never regret bravery”, to its absolute limit.’
‘OK?’ Matt said, wiping rainwater from his brow.
‘I really like you.’
Matt looked perplexed, yet impassive. She worried he would even be annoyed at being dragged out of his evening for this crap.
Roisin had rehearsed a more ambitious version of this speech, and she immediately junked it. It turned out life was not like romantic comedy films. Making grand statements about your passion to an unwary person you knew well was not like that scene at the New Year party in When Harry Met Sally: it was excruciating.
It was raining, and she did notice.
‘Whatever started the other night. You know. With Bryan Ferry. And Spandau Ballet. I really like you, and I think we should … date. If you want to. Gina’s totally fine with it.’
‘That’s what you wanted to say? You got permission?’ Matt said, and Roisin wanted to die. She’d have to characterise this incident, in the months and years to come, as ‘Joe PTSD’.
‘What if Gina had said no? You’d choose Gina?’
Roisin nodded, reluctantly.
‘The right decision,’ Matt said. Oof.
And the very fact Matt wasn’t saying wow, really, me too and clasping in her arms was as much answer as Roisin needed.
‘Thing is …’ Matt said. ‘This may be too much honesty, but I am so weary with not saying what I mean, and not being sure what other people mean. Thing is, I’m not who you think I am.’