Page 18 of Between Us

‘Apologies for my fiancée. She has the energy of Satan crossed with a billy goat,’ Dev said. ‘Yes, I know, and it’s me saying that.’

Anita bumped back into the room with hands full, holding a large flat oblong draped in a dust sheet, so large she had to sidestep.

‘We’ve got this for our house, but we’ll do more for anyone who wants,’ Dev said, getting up.

Joe made a covert comic-grimace in Roisin’s direction and she smiled thinly. She wondered why everything had to be smirked and snarked at now. Except, she was pretty sure she knew why. Easier to let go of something you had spoiled.

Dev helped Anita set the object, the size of a flat screen TV, down on the floor. They whipped the sheet away, both of themTA-DAHingas they did so.

They all squealed, bar Joe. It was a framed photograph of the six of them, crowded onto a black leather sofa in a Northern Quarter bar. They were under an American road sign, the wordsDON’T WALKlit up. Waterstones Deansgate Alumni, 2013.

Dev, centre, looked two stone lighter, with a then-characteristic pint and a chaser in front of him on the low table. Roisin, to his left, was grinning. She had her natural dark brown hair separated in low bunches (ugh, what was she thinking?) and a very tightMuppetst-shirt that made her look very busty (ugh, what was shethinking?). Pepe The King Prawn should not be stretched across a breast.

Her soon-to-become boyfriend, Joe, perched on the sofa arm, raising an eyebrow over the rim of a pint that he was holding up to obscure his face. He was shyer then. Roisin remembered the fascination between them at the time and felt a pang of loss.

Gina was on Dev’s right. She had short hair in a pixie cut and a strappy dress with biker boots. She was perched coyly on Meredith’s lap. Meredith, mostly obscured in greenConverse, looked like herself. She was always the most herself, from the start.

Matt was crouched on the ground, leaning his head to be sure of being in shot. He looked less chiselled and poised than he did now. More of the keen, gangly young athlete about him, but still boy-band beautiful.

Peering at the past was a strange sensation, Roisin thought, as they oohed and aahed and joked about it. It was an earlier version of themselves they hadn’t exactly forgotten, yet it was still a jolt to be confronted with it. Somehow, you always lost the detail.

‘I thought we could take another one while we’re here; Then and Now.’ Dev said. ‘Lots of sofas to choose from.’

‘You can do one where you’re in exactly the same poses,’ Anita said, always the art director.

‘We can do another in another ten years!’ Dev said, looking expansively at them all. ‘And ten years after that!’

Much as she loved Dev’s idealism, Roisin felt sure that these two portraits would be less of a sequence and more like book ends.

11

‘Right, I think we’re there …’ Anita said, standing in front of the fireplace, examining them through her iPhone in its camo shockproof case. It had one of those PopSocket nodules on the back and looked like the serious professional tool kit that it was.

She’d found Dev a prop pint glass and shot glass and filled them with water. Joe was also required to hold a drink at the same level: everything had to be just so.

‘Says everything that I didn’t score a place on the sofa then and now never will, forcontinuity,’ Matt said, making air quote marks, holding his crouching pose.

‘EveryFriendshas a Gunther,’ Joe said, to much laughter.

‘He wasn’t one of the main six,’ Roisin said, and immediately regretted the lumpen stupidity of making Joe’s point.

‘Sorry, I weigh a bit more than I did when I was twenty-two,’ Gina said to Meredith, who replied, muffled, ‘Luckily my knees have got bulkier too.’

‘Hold your positions a little longer, please!’ Anita commanded, before prodding at her handset. ‘OK, I’ve taken loads, and you can argue over using the one where you lookbest,’ Anita said. ‘We’ll send copies of both on to all of you after the weekend!’

Dev snapped the overhead light off and the space was one plunged into atmospheric period gloom.

‘This isyourengagement celebration, Dev – we should be making a fuss of you two, not us,’ Roisin said, getting up.

‘Nothing we’d rather be doing,’ Dev said, beaming, and Anita nodded.

‘It’s true. We were away with my sisters last weekend and Dev’s not recovered yet.’

Dev shuddered. ‘Chaos demons.’

‘Hey. Speaking of demons. This place has to have a ghost, right?’ Joe said, pulling his iPhone from his pocket and shaking it lightly, as if it was a deck of cards. ‘Who wants to find out if there’s a ghost story?’

‘Joe …’ Roisin said, in tone of warning. ‘Don’t shit us all up.’

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