Page 100 of Between Us

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? Shewasright 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.festawas 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.’

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