Page 37 of Between Us

‘What does this mean?’ Jasper gasps, putting his hand on atattoo on her shoulder. It has a series of numbers, next to a tiny crescent moon and a tiny sun.

‘Private joke,’ she says, catching her breath and smiling.

Jasper grins wolfishly and kisses her.

In the next cut, he’s alone in the restaurant toilet, looking at himself in the mirror over the sink.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ He says to his reflection, to the camera. ‘Why? Well, not why, you knowwhy.’He rips a paper towel from a dispenser. ‘The heart likes commitment, and the libido likes novelty. What you’re really thinking is how.Howcould you. There are two things to know about me.’ Jasper pulls open the door and turns to look directly at the camera. ‘I don’t feel guilt. And I’ll do it again.’

22

The screening room once again erupted in excitement and Roisin could feel Joe crackling with pleasure at the reception.

Roisin was conscious of her frozen position in her seat, not wanting to twitch or move an inch in case it betrayed her feelings. Which were: tumultuous.The voice was so unmistakeably Joe’s,she thought. The attitude.

Underneath her hair, at the nape of her neck, she was damp with sweat.

Grey daytime. Jasper’s voiceover:

Manchester, at the start of the twenty-first century. Capital of the north. Banish your preconceptions. It’s not just feral youth, spice casualties and old prams in canals … My job is pretty much all that, though. Welcome to detective work in the Manchester Met.

Laughter in the screening room.

‘Oh Joe, you’re not going to be able to drink anywhere by the end of this, are you?’ Dev said. ‘Sorry, shhh shhh.’

Jasper walks along the city streets back to his car, speaking to the camera again, in a heightened reality where none of the ordinary people streaming past him can hear him.

‘Why do I cheat? It’s interesting we call it “cheating”, isn’tit. It’s called cheating because it’s not observing the rules of a game that we’re forced to play. Or if not forced, heavily coerced. If society makes honesty near impossible, people will choose deceit. You don’t change human nature, only its avenues of expression. It’s always been this way.’

What an arseholes manifesto this is,Roisin thought. Was she too close to the writer to judge it fairly? She didn’t know. Possibly more like too distant from the writer.

Jasper told the camera that your partner always has that one sexy friend who is, even for a man of his loose morals, completely off limits. Jesus.Thanks, Joe.Roisin wanted to die.

She glanced at the back of Gina’s head in front of her. She wondered what she was thinking; though to be fair, Gina was in no fit state to be viewing anything, much less interpreting it.

The whole show, Roisin thought, was meant to be so cerebral, erotic and knowing, and came off to her like Horny Ferris Bueller.

While taking notes about the last corpse, Jasper sees, to his shock, that the dead girl has a distinctive tattoo on her shoulder …

The episode ended with young Jasper in flashback. He creeps down for a glass of milk in the night and sees his father dancing with a woman by the stereo, but as he follows other noises, sees his mum is in a clinch with a man on the kitchen table, feet in high heels dangling …

Roisin sat bolt upright in her seat. What?WHAT?

Her flesh was prickling and damp with sweat.

Over the sight of child-Jasper’s face, the opening chordsof Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’ boomed out via the speakers in the cushioned space.

The group, bar Roisin, erupted into cheers and air-punching.

‘Seriously?! “Enter Sandman”?!’ Dev bellowed. ‘How much did that cost, you absolute baller?!’

‘They made it clear it was quite a treat,’ Joe said, almost delirious with the fuss he was receiving. ‘Did you like it?’

‘C’mere, I’ve got to hug you. Incredible, mate. Can’t believe it. You smashed it.’

Roisin clapped weakly, with clammy palms.

It was for the best that other people were here to give Joe the praise he sought. Roisin couldn’t have managed a word of it.

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