Page 43 of Between Us

The world was laughing at her.

‘Right … right. OK, so, someone called Niall Thingy in theObserver,’ Dev said, drawing breath. ‘“I compartmentalise, that’s all. We all compartmentalise. Everyone has separate parts oftheir lives they divide and wall off from the others. Mine are simply a little more interesting than yours.” So says Jasper Hunter, the titular star (an indecently charismatic Rufus Tate) to camera. It looks like he’s the only detective on the force who’s going to be able to figure out who’s behind a spate of gruesome murders of fashionable young women. The victims’ only connection: they’re barmaids and waitresses. “Someone hates ‘sharing plates’ even more than I do,” quips Jasper’s morose, chauvinistic boss, Nev, played with evident glee by the Happy Mondays’ Shaun Ryder. (This is a show happy to provide in jokes aplenty.) Jasper meanwhile is engaged, ecstatically happy with fiancée Becca: his one secret weakness is risky sex with strangers. “The only people who’d ask me what the appeal is,” says Hunter, after a graphic coupling with an improbably gorgeous receptionist in a car park, “are the ones who’ve never tried it.”’

Roisin was hoping Dev might stop, but he was on a roll.

‘… In less experienced hands than writer Joe Powell, ofSEENfame,Hunterwould be a standard “maverick detective with private life in disarray” cliché. Yet Jasper has (I’m sorry) all his balls in the air.Hunterposes a bigger philosophical question. Does infidelity truly matter if you successfully keep it to yourself? The best mobster dramas force you to question your own complicity in the seductions of the lifestyle, your vicarious enjoyment of some of their most abominable transgressions …’

Dev looked up: ‘Abominable transgressions, I like that.’

Roisin gave a very taut smile.

‘…Similarly, Jasper’s exhilarating amorality towards casual sex draws you in. You start out shocked and even repulsed by his promiscuous duplicity. Monogamy, Jasper argues, is the price society asks us to pay for a settled life with a soulmate, and it’s too highfor some. Certainly, after an hour of such pulse-racing, stylish television, plenty of us will be unhealthily addicted to Jasper Hunter.’

Dev looked up. ‘What about that, then?’

‘Incredible,’ Roisin said, though in her head the sentence continued:Dismal male fantasies really get a pass, don’t they. Let me help you, Niall Thingy: yes, it does matter if you hide your shagging around. Where are ‘Becca’s’ rights not to be shagged on? It’s not about what society asks of him, it’s what he promised her.

Becca. Roisin felt vomitous. She needed time and space to sort through what she’d learned about Joe. There was a spectrum of possible revelation here. It ran from: Joe showing considerable insensitivity in not priming her for sensitive content, especially when he was robbing detail from real life. To: the whole thing was a deranged form of confessional, the mosthidden in plain sightinsult imaginable. Even Roisin had to admit, the latter was a large proposition, possibly too huge to be plausible. He wasn’t, as he’d said, drawing from life inSEEN.

The shower, though. After that night after Sesso.

Had he simply needed a cold shower, after his mind had been racing? Ugh. That had to be it.

The alternative, to borrow a beloved phrase of her mother’s, didn’t bear thinking about. Yet she was.

26

Roisin heard a noise and turned to see Meredith who had been listening, arms folded, to the review. She was wearing a pale blue sweater with cartoon clouds on it, likeThe Simpsons’ titles. On Roisin, it would look insufferably twee, but on Meredith, it made her seem like fresh air in human form.

‘Now Dev has done the good news, I best break the bad,’ Meredith said, picking up a jug on the table and pouring a glass of orange juice. She popped two ibuprofen from a blister pack, threw them to the back of her throat and washed them down with a glug of Tropicana Original With Bits, in a practised movement. Once she’d swallowed, she said, ‘Our driver is in no fit state. I even question if she’s still pissed, given the number of units imbibed. We don’t want to be three Princess Dis in a Paris tunnel.’

‘Oh no!’ said Roisin, though once again, sinfully grateful that Gina’s indisposition was providing diversion.

‘Is Gina really minging?’ Anita said. ‘I did wonder how bad she was when she was saying we had to play swim-up blackjack at Caesar’s Palace in Vegas for my hen.’

‘And was calling it Pisa’s Salad. She doesn’t remember much of the evening,’ Meredith said. ‘Which … might be something of a blessing.’ She made a face.

‘You know what, when I dried out, I didn’t realise just how much I was gonna love never having hangovers,’ Dev said. ‘The days I spent feeling like I’d been attacked with the pointy end of a Polonium umbrella.’

‘I’m not too clever myself; I might take my bacon sandwich to go,’ Meredith said, nodding towards Dev’s spatula.

‘Sure thing.’

‘Please come view her in the Chapel of Rest,’ Meredith said to Roisin.

She led Roisin through the soaring hallway towards the drawing room. ‘Now, I must warn you, I’ve done my best. But Gina may not look how you remember her. The embalming process takes its toll.’

‘I CAN HEAR YOU!’ Gina croak-roared, out of sight.

‘She sounds the same though,’ Meredith said.

Roisin laughed.

Gina was in a saggy t-shirt and football-length soft cotton shorts, doll-sized and horizontal on one of the giant sofas. She looked like a trendy art installation where they skew the scale. Her complexion resembled candlewax, hair slicked back from her face.

‘I fear she does not have long,’ Meredith said.

‘Honestly, worst hangover ever,’ Gina said to Roisin. ‘Never drinking again. I woke up at four a.m. and didn’t know where I was. I caught the belt of my dressing gown on a door handle, couldn’t move and thought I was having a stroke.’

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