Page 42 of Between Us

She watched Joe cross the lawn to the house and didn’t know how to classify her feelings.

Glad the declaration was over with. Torn up, and sad. Devastated that it had happened at all and immediately, despite everything, self-doubting whether it had to happen.

In the distance, he closed the door behind him. Roisin let her shoulders drop an inch and tried to absorb this altered reality.

What was this other sensation, one she couldn’t instantly name? Wait – spooked. Spooked to the point of creeped out, even more so than she’d been in the screening room. Why?

She got a message, direct from her gut, so shocking and surreal that her brain immediately rejected it. Her gut nevertheless stubbornly clung onto its instinct.

The night he walked back from Sesso, Joe had had a shower when he got in. He never showered before bed, and she’d registered it as odd at the time. When she mumbled a question as he climbed under the covers, he said he’d got rained on. Except it hadn’t rained, unless Burton Road was in the most micro of microclimates: Roisin loved sleeping with an open window. The night had been still.

And it was somewhat contradictory that this evening had both inspired the opening scenes of a story and had been completely uneventful. At the very least, he’d thought about it, hadn’t he?

Roisin strained in vain to recall any specific waitress.

Though she had asked if the cheating was autobiographical, she’d never seriously considered that it could be. She felt she was entitled to make the point that others might think it was.

What if it was? Was she going mad? Before last night, she’d have scoffed at the idea, said it was impossible. He wasn’t the type. Lacked the chances, anyway, as she told her counsellor. Even if she could conceive of Joe doing those things, why rub her face in it and risk his neck like this?

Except … look at what he’d done with her past. He couldn’t care less. He thought a hollowmea culpawas enough, once caught red-handed. He’d played the odds.

A huge wave of nausea rolled up, so strong that Roisin felt it might knock her off her feet.

What if the failure to check his conscience was because Joe didn’t have one?

What if the greatest betrayal here wasn’t the one she thought it was? What if JoewasJasper?

Two things to know about me. I don’t feel guilt. And I’ll do it again.

25

‘Here she is! Seen the papers?!’ Dev sing-songed, doling out a bacon sandwich to Roisin while the bluetooth speaker blasted Wet Leg’s ‘Chaise Longue’.

Anita was at the kitchen table, halfway into something egg-based and heavily sauced. That she loved to eat, and Dev loved to cook, was another way they were well suited. Roisin hoped they sorted out the procreating priority snafu.

The Brian Club were otherwise two men down, one in London, one en route to Los Angeles, and the two remaining were apparently yet to emerge.

What had become of Matt, after he climbed into that kidnapper-looking car? Roisin imagined him on all fours in a wet room in Soho House, ball gag in his mouth, as Amelia Lee barked orders and Granville, with venison biltong, looked on.

‘No?’ Roisin said to Dev, pasting on a neutrally curious yet psychologically robust kind of smile.

She had no intention of ruining the last hours of Dev’s grand trip with any hint she and Joe had fought. Yet she feared she’d have Recent Disaster written all over her face.She dreaded one of those moments when people cry, ‘Oh God, what’s wrong?!’ at the sight of someone who imagined they looked normal.

Roisin couldn’t convincingly mimic over-the-top high spirits, and it’d feel morally gross, so the acting job was mundane-cheerful.

As it turned out, Roisin needn’t have worried about what the focus would be.

‘Hoh, you need to hear the reviews!’ Dev said, hopping about once more at the sight of her in the kitchen. It hit her as insensitive, yet he wasn’t being. Whywouldn’tDev expect Roisin to be overjoyed at Joe’s accomplishment?

She was gaslit by the fact that only she seemed to find the echoes of their lives inHunterdisturbing. Was Joe right –hadshe wildly overreacted?

Had her unhappiness in the relationship completely warped her judgement? Had it nuclear-fusion powered her response?

Dev dusted his fingers of toast crumbs, then put one hand on his hip as he authoritatively scrolled his phone.

‘Here we go … Sheen, it’s total five-star raves across the board. Only theTelegraphwas sniffy. Listen to this …’ Dev muted Wet Leg.

Roisin sipped coffee and looked at a bacon sanger on sourdough that would feel like chewing a sofa cushion smeared with HP.

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