Page 105 of Between Us

When she rang off, the hairs on her arms were standing on end. She’d uncovered, by pure chance, an outright lie. A recent lie. Roisin was sure if she challenged Joe, there’d be bullshit.

He wanted a quiet night to himself, his mental health hadn’tbeen so great, he knew Roisin would want an account of why and he wasn’t ready,blah blah.

She wouldn’t believe it anyway.

Why would I use my parents as a cover story, when you talk to them?Because you’d gambled that they’d not mention it. It wasn’t a perfect solution, Joe, but it was good enough. The roulette wheel spin quite possibly added to the frisson.

So where had he been? Roisin had assumed Manchester, but he had to have stayed in York. He’d told Roisin he was at the family home, and Dom was the explanation for that discrepancy. You don’t bother to create an alibi twice over.

Occam’s Razor: Joewasin York, that Sunday night, and didn’t want anyone to know what he was doing or where he was sleeping, not even Dom. Clearly, cheating on Roisin was embarrassing in front of his oldest friends; that was something.

But with who? He went back to York reasonably often, but usually with Roisin. Since they got the nice apartment, his parents came up to theirs pretty often. Sustaining an affair looked like difficult work, assuming she was based there, and the probability was that she was.

She supposed Joe could have a secret Tinder profile, setting his location to York city centre and waiting for responses, but she couldn’t see it, somehow. When Jasper said only idiots had evidence on their phone, it rang as very Joe-ish.

Oh God … what if hepaid for it? This notion was so startling that Roisin hadn’t thought of it until now, and still couldn’t allow it. There was something not at all Joe-like about that, either. He’d want to think his partner wanted to be there. He liked power over people. If you were makinga financial transaction, that was a blunt instrument available to anyone. With him, there’d be a psychological dimension. It’d be a mindfuck, as well as a bodily one.

Roisin googled central hotels in York. She’d heard Joe discussing accommodation preferences in London, New York and L.A. often enough. Looking at the options available, she felt pretty sure that if he wasn’t in a private residence – and that was a big if – he’d have been at The Royal, an Edwardian railway building with five stars. They’d stayed there after weddings.

Joe liked grandeur and pomp; he scorned ‘the trendy ones with thenudge nudge wink winkmarketing materials next to your Figgy Pudding flavour shower gel’. And Roisin judged that, if you were having some illicit boot-knocking, you’d prefer the anonymity of a chain to a tiny place where you might be asked,Special occasion? What brings you to York?

Roisin couldn’t resist an investigation. It was the longest of long shots, but still a shot.

She weighed up how to do this, bypassing data protection, and decided her best bet was: 1. Claim to have been a guest, not asking about one, thus not triggering spying suspicions, and 2. Querying something financial, which would encourage them to prioritise investigation and resolution over privacy.

It had one drawback – they might ask for a card number that Roisin didn’t have, or not without subterfuges she’d rather not undertake. She and Joe had separate bank accounts, went paperless for statements, and even if she could somehow access his online banking, he could’ve paid cash. Proving he was there was the thing.

Deep breath. She looked up the hotel online, typed the number into her phone, listened to the automated response. She pressed 5 to Speak To A Member Of The Reception Team.

‘Hello, The Royal York, how can I help you?’

‘Hi! I stayed at your hotel last Sunday, the fifteenth. I’ve had my credit card statement. I’ve been charged a ton, and I think it’s the wrong bill? I should’ve noticed at the time, but I was so hungover I paid it without checking, haha! Would it be possible for you to pull up my original reservation and see what room I was in, in the original booking?’

‘What name was the reservation under, please?’

‘Roisin Walters. R-O-I-S-I-N. Walters with an S.’

She figured the faster this went, the better it’d go for her, but a woman calling to ask about a man’s bill was too risky in sounding snooping alarm bells. This was necessary scene setting.

There was off stage tap-tapping at a keyboard.

‘I don’t have anything in that name on the system, sorry?’

‘Oh? Oh, wait … of course – it was booked by my boyfriend. Try “Joe Powell”? P-O-W-E-DOUBLE-L. Same date, obviously.’

Only at this moment did it occur to her Joe might’ve used a false name. He’d have had to use his real bank cards though, and that might’ve been too conspicuouslywedding ring in the glove boxfor his tastes. The tap-tapping, silences and breathing on the other end of the line were agony.

‘Ah, yes. Found you. It was a suite? In the extras, our records don’t have anything from the minibar, only a bottle of champagne on arrival in the room?’

Roisin’s veins pumped pure adrenaline.

‘Oh, I forgot the champagne!’ she said, improvising at a hundred miles per hour. ‘Haha! I’ve obviously been in denial about my massive Visa statement, apologies. Thanks for your help.’

She rang off, heart thundering. FUCKIN’ GOTCHA. No one, but surely no one, ordered champagne to a suite to sit and drink alone in contemplation. No one gilded a night of solitude to that extent: a suite was either someone on work expenses for travel, which Joe wasn’t, or someone showing a second someone a good time.

She had the smoking gun, and yet no fingerprints on it.

It’s not unfaithful to drink a bottle of Möet in a spacious room with a trouser press, last I checked.

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