Page 2 of Between Us

‘You know, I’ve wondered about the food at the Fox’s. I had coleslaw once that tasted like tuna. I’m sure it gave me the shits.’

There was a blast of an air dryer, which obscured the next part, until Roisin could tune back in:

‘… does what he likes, too. She and Kent are like a couple of carefree teenagers, aren’t they?’

‘Mmm-hmm. She’s free of that particular care now, anyway. Is my skirt seam straight?’

They clattered out.

Roisin sat with her knickers round her knees as she absorbed the fact that her mother had got pregnant by a man she knew as one of her parents’ card-playing friends.

This information put the official signature on a disorientating, gruesome experience she’d had a year earlier. On these particular social occasions, involving Texas hold ’em and copious amounts of tequila, her parents issued stern warnings not to come downstairsunder any circumstances.

Roisin and her brother had long ago developed a technique for sneaking down to spy on Christmas present wrapping, and later to subvert being grounded: the bar in the family pub was high enough that, as a smaller person, you could crouch low and crab-scuttle behind it.

You were in the saloon at the front, which the grown-ups typically inhabited after hours. You could, with the agility of a safe-cracker, carefully unbolt the little door panel at the side and escape into the lounge, and then the pub garden and Webberley beyond.

This Saturday, despite the muffled hubbub below, Roisin had a powerful craving for Dr Pepper. She would look back and wonder if, in fact, her subconscious had a thirst for knowledge, because the appeal of the drink and the potential bollocking in no way balanced out.

Roisin crept downstairs, heart in mouth. Sliding the bottle out of the rack and hooking its medal lid on the opener was made infinitely easier by the raucous, booze-fuelled badinageof her dad and a woman, Glen’s wife, Tina, unseen but very close at hand. Cigarette smoke curled in the air and the jukebox played something jazzy. Ice clinked. Laughter exploded.

Mission accomplished, as Roisin gripped the soda pop bottle, yet something compelled her to take the insane, additional risk of opening the side door and poking her head into the lounge bar. In the near distance, at the pool table, two figures were clamped together. She couldn’t see the faces of either. Her mother’s legs, feet with painted toenails in gold strappy shoes that Roisin coveted, dangled either side of bare male buttocks. Roisin made out foreign, animalistic noises as the dull thud of understanding hit her in the guts. A cry of shock and objection caught in her throat before she withdrew and fled back upstairs to lie awake in bed, awash with sweat and chest pounding, trying to make sense of what she’d seen.

Now, returning to her place in the theatre balcony, Roisin felt similar.

She couldn’t help staring at the near imperceptible, shallow curve of her mum’s stomach under shiny fabric, inspecting her glossed face for clues. When had she done it, the termination? During a school day?

She’d assimilate tonight’s lurid intel entirely by herself: with perhaps one failed attempt to discuss it with her younger brother, Ryan. No matter how many times he made it clear that Roisin’s revelations weren’t welcome, she lived in hope of him as a confidante.

Roisin became grateful for the distraction of watchingQueenie Mook ply her strange trade, in the multicoloured up-lit, kitsch altverse of the variety theatre.

Queenie was very petite and had a helmet of fluorescent orange hair, a startling synthetic tangerine that recalled Johnny Rotten.

She addressed the throng as ‘my loves’ and was dressed in a silk blouse with an egg-sized enamel brooch, navy trousers, like the manager of a branch of Vision Express. Roisin was a little disappointed, having envisioned an imperious Sixties matriarch with a chignon, in a beaver fur coat.

The show soon settled into a rhythm – Roisin figured out it was a game of harvesting information from the audience, while weaving the illusion of having supplied it. The phantoms, seen and heard only by Queenie, only ever offered their first name, which was always a plain and common one. None of them gave surnames, which would’ve resolved identity a lot quicker.

A procession of Teds, Marys and Jacks queued up. Queenie auctioned their presence to the auditorium, along with a few other salient, yet vague details. Perhaps Mary loved music –everyone would say that about her,she says – or Jack was motioning a steering wheel? Did he …like cars? Drive tractors for a job? Did he – sorry if this is difficult, my loves–die in a road accident?

There’d eventually be a gasp of recognition from somewhere in the stalls and Queenie would zero in on a target.

However, whether the message was indeed for the – usually emotional – recipient was conditional. If they correctedQueenie too many times, she’d snap: ‘Sorry my love, this message isn’t for you,’ and move on briskly.

Lorraine, Kim and Di were rapt throughout, hanging on Queenie’s every word, wiping under their eyes when Queenie provided dubious catharsis. Diana’s dad, Rodney, did not put in an appearance.Should’ve had a more common name,Roisin thought.

Roisin’s composure only faltered in the last twenty minutes, during an interaction with a widow near the front row.

The woman’s late husband, Clive, victim of a chronic lung condition, was reportedly on stage with Queenie.

The widow was sobbing. The chicanery of the whole thing had seemed like relatively innocent – if bizarre – fun to Roisin, until that moment. Did Queenie know she was inventing these visitors? Did she really give credence to her own powers? Do liars always know they’re lying?

‘When he went, it was fast?’ Queenie said, once the woman had quietened.

‘No. It was slow. He was on oxygen for weeks.’

‘But when he went, it was fast?’ Queenie paused. ‘Clive’s telling me it was fast – he’s very certain,’ she added,to make it clear who the woman was contradicting. ‘He keeps gesturing to his chest, as if he’s short of breath,’ Queenie added, banging her own sternum with a fist, somewhat unnecessarily.

‘Uhm … well at the end, I suppose it was quick?’ the widow said.

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