Page 116 of Between Us

Gina

Also I rang Matt as soon as I got the message from Dev, and had a REALLY good chat. He’ll definitely be coming to the reception. He doesn’t want to rejoin the WhatsApp group for now because of the heat with Joe, but he’s basically back on board for events without him. Feels really good to have made up.

Roisin wished her fulsome, positive response to this wasn’t so false. It was clear Matt hadn’t told Gina what had happened between them, and nor had she. She and Matt were over before they’d begun, so what was the point? She’d tell the girls one day, but couldn’t face it right now. Having felt the need to disclose a kiss, she was far more resigned about neglecting to mention their having done much more. Life moves pretty fast.

Nor had she told her friends about Joe and Beatrice; that could wait, too.

Irony upon irony: Gina was overjoyed that Matt was free to come back to the Brians, but Roisin knew now he never would.

This was where Roisin and Matt would be forever, then: decoding information passed between third parties.Oof– while she’d accepted there’d probably be occasions she’d have to socialise with Joe and New Mrs Joe (God help her), Matt and New Mrs Matt was going to be torment.

Roisin inspected the quantity of Goth paint left in her tin and sighed heavily.

‘I’m going to need a good dress,’ she said aloud, to a mostly soot-coloured room.

72

Roisin picked up a black satin court shoe from the box with tissue paper, examining it with resentful suspicion. The heel was like a chopstick. She pushed her foot into it and noticed how awkward and less comfortable she was, and how nice the silhouette of her leg looked with her calf muscle tensed.

Bloody women’s fashion.

She’d booked a room at The Midland to get ready for/crash out after the Doshi nuptials, and if she was honest, have a place of retreat from the party if it got too much. The electrics at the apartment were playing up – she couldn’t bring herself to call Cormac – and the whole place smelled of paint.

She didn’t know if Matt was bringing a date. It would be a bit much, a fortnight after they parted ways, but equally she didn’t expect his dating patterns to follow earthbound rituals and he didn’t owe her not to.

Roisin had completely failed to find a dress for tonight, which was unsurprising, given she was looking for a magical suit of armour for £150-200 max. She wanted the beholder to see a stylish, confident, yet not tits-forward woman whocould rise to the occasion without actually trying, because she was too cool for that.

After approximately seventeen online options were returned, Roisin went with a black sequin minidress she’d had since forever, teamed with black opaques, which would have Lorraine saying,I do wish you’d try a pop of colour instead of this Worst Witch thing.

The new footwear, at least, was a way of announcing she was still battle ready.

Roisin appreciated the irony that she’d never once worried about what Matt McKenzie thought she looked like in clothes, until after he’d seen her out of them.

Sharing a ballroom with him was what Wendy Copeland would, again, call NFI. That she quivered at the thought of locking eyes with him was ethically and practically irrelevant, however!

Roisin couldn’t expect her attraction to him to vaporise overnight, so she’d simply have to wait for it to catch up with her intellect. She was likely to find exceptional forgiveness for someone beautiful she’d spent the best night of her life with. Who could say.

I don’t know how you’re making someone who received an unwanted phone call, and Joe, the same person. One of these things is not like the other.

She increasingly found it hard to deny the truth of this.

Was she disappointed? Yes. But … did Matt have rights to be disappointed in her, for not seeing through Joe for so long?

As Roisin checked her eye make-up for the fifth time inthe unstinting magnification of the circular, barber’s shop mirror in the hotel bathroom, an inner voice whispered that now the anger with Matt had largely gone, what remained, might not be disappointment, so much as fear.

Her head knew that Joe Powell was a rare aberration, her heart wasn’t so ready to accept it. The thought that Matt might hide things from her …? Trying not to flinch when his phone rippled with messages from admirers? Forcing herself to never ever check he’d deleted the dating apps?

So … you won’t give him another chance because you like him too much?said the inner voice. Roisin told it to shut up.

Her phone pinged. Meredith, Gina and Aaron were here and waiting for her in the lobby.

As she descended in the lift, gibbering terror took over. What if Matt HAD brought a date? What if it was High Ponytail Ivy Legs from festa?

Roisin,she said to herself sternly. In the words of Lorraine,a grip should be fucking gotten.

Downstairs, she greeted the group and could quickly see that Aaron was a delight: a slim, curly haired lad in a navy suit who smiled broadly at everyone.He must adore Gina, to walk the plank of meeting all her friends this soon,Roisin thought.

‘Wow. You’d never know that Dev and Anita had days to prepare this?!’ Gina said, as they entered a hotel ballroom full of white balloons, white flowers and two huge lightbulb-illuminated letter initials.

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