Page 11 of Between Us

Thing is, Roisin hadn’t only been unprepared for its impact, she’d been complacent.The great thing about Joe being the writer and not an actor,she’d blathered to the group,is he can get creative fulfilment and no hassle down Burton Road.

WhenSEENbecame signed contracts, they bought fish and chips and a £10 bottle of cava and had a picnic date in the park together. It felt like a statement, instead of going to a fancy restaurant. It’s going to be Still Us, the way we always were, Plus This.

Joe’s diary used to be: get up, drink black coffee, preferably wash, write, stick something in the oven, more writing. Rinse and repeat. Now it became complicated and ablaze with fuss. Roisin learned the lingo ofco prosandturnaroundandpunches.

After a day of high-powered breakfast and lunch meetings in the capital, Joe would get off the train mid-evening at Manchester Piccadilly, and Roisin would meet him for dinner out.

He’d talk too fast, and they’d drink too fast, and she gloried in every last detail of the latest developments. She was so pleased for him and always thought, girlfriend bias aside, he had the talent to make it.

Then the work came so thick and fast it often made sense to stay in London overnight, and Hollywood called, and he was flying back and forth to Los Angeles.

A production company in New York bought the rights to another of his ideas. At some point, Roisin acceptedget past this week and things will calm down a bitwas a coping mechanism lie of adulthood.

Joe being away never bothered Roisin. She enjoyed her own company, liked hearing about his adventures.

Yet somehow, at some point, hectic and mentally occupied became cold and detached.

Roisin learned not to message Joe when he was away, because she rarely got much back. He must be the only man, she thought, to deploy the heart react emoji to WhatsApps as a dismissal.

How’d it go with Fox Searchlight?Heart.Did the hire car get replaced?Heart.Oh my God, that ginger moggy is back soiling our garden! Pooing with his tail vibrating, making unnerving eye contact!Heart. You heart defecating cats, OK.

She’d not raised it. When someone comes through the door after five days away bearing a duty-free Toblerone, you don’t want to greet them with whining.

A thought came to Roisin, and once she’d had the thought she couldn’t un-have it: the prolonged absences were doubling as practice for breaking up. Each time he returned, he was a degree more distant than the last time.

Life had fundamentally changed, or maybe more accurately and painfully, Joe had changed.Can success really change a person, though,she wondered?Maybe it only brings elements that were always there to the fore?

The humour that once bonded them felt like sparring, underscored by resentment. Like an arm-wrestling bout that had to have a winner.

Plans with their friends were an obligation, if not an irritation – Joe always had something slighting to say.

God, that place again? We’ve become bourgeoise. Soon we’ll have Bless This Mess decal stickers on our wheelie bins.

She half wondered if hating on Matt was a way of carving out a convenient exit from the Brian Club.Sorry, not if he’s there – I can’t stand him.

Sex had dwindled, and when it occurred, had the unmistakeable sense of reaching a deadline: …best do it or it’ll become a thing we haven’t done it.

When they first met, the spark between them was obvious. Joe had immediately mentioned he had a long-distance girlfriend, Bea, back in his home city, York.

Nothing had happened between Joe and Roisin – nor would it have, if the girlfriend had remained; Roisin wasn’t into foul play – but she’d catch Joe looking at her, across tables, at the hour of the night when blood alcohol levels were high and the lights were low.

One Friday afternoon, Joe had found Roisin alone in a corner of the shop, stickering Signed By The Author copies of Terry Pratchett.

‘I want you to know. I’m ending it with Bea.’

‘OK,’ Roisin said.

‘When I’ve done that, I’m going to ask you out.’

‘OK,’ Roisin said, and tried not to flush sunset red.

He walked away.Woah.Quietly spoken Joe, with a love of the graphic novels of Alan Moore and a winning resemblance to young John Cusack, had a streak of real confidence. It was undeniably, hugely attractive.

Those were the days they hung on each other’s every word. The times they did nothing but talk: a day off together,walking round parks, browsing record shops, spinning pints of real ale out in old boy’s pubs. Everything was interesting if they were together. Oh, to be that young again, when everything felt new.

As the first – and it turned out, only – couple of the group, they became the ones to have everyone back to their flat when they were all too pre-payday skint to go out: Joe on the music and snacks, Roisin on lighting candles and mixing drinks. They were foundation laying and empire building, as a team.

Had someone else now been made a similar promise to the one she got made overDiscworld? Roisin had gone back and forth over it and concluded:

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