Page 60 of Between Us

Too much typing for good news. Roisin started playing thelottery of prospects in her head, bargaining. She did that with her dad, before she’d even reached the patrol car.If it’s X, we can cope with that, if it’s Y, we will deal. Please, please don’t let it be Z.

She felt the animalistic terror you can only feel when mortality appears on the horizon.

Yes! Is fine. A relief. Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. Half 5 would be ideal

Phew, but also, what? She’d had that phone call from the clinic and not thought to let her kids know right away?

There had beensomething: Lorraine wasn’t so malevolent as to pluck it from the air. But she wouldn’t be above getting an all clear before she’d spoken to her daughter, and putting it to use by delaying it, either.

Before Roisin could decide how much of her mother’s account she believed, she decided she was going to let it go.

Catching out one liar in her life was quite enough, for the time being.

37

Roisin indicated left and audibly exhaled over the 6 Music presenter as she turned the corner of the familiar, picturesque road. Window down in the heat, she passed a flotilla of chattering girls in bridal veils teamed with equestrian gear, Jilly Cooper novel cosplay. She predicted she was heading into another of Lorraine’s tirades about the scourge of Airbnbs.

Families who kept their Webberley mansions as one of two homes had started renting them out for spendy stags and hens.

You’d think it’d at least give me some trade, but no, they’re in The Bulls with its horse brasses and shitty shoe scraper because it looks more rustic,said Lorraine. She was always furious when people exercised their freeborn right to dispose of their disposable income elsewhere.

The Mallory had been a coaching inn with rooms at the time Roisin’s parents took it over in the early Nineties. Having one child, Roisin, and another on the way, Kent and Lorraine had decided to use the space upstairs as a family home.

It was named after the village’s most famous alumnus, a mountaineer who’d died first in a semi-famous expedition.As a sullen teenager, Roisin had decided that was typical of the place. She called The Mallory ‘The Malaise’.

The Walters were an anomaly, owning bricks and mortar in an increasingly wealthy area without, as publicans, being wealthy.

They’d bought it with a giant mortgage which was now down to something more manageable, yet it still didn’t mean much left over every month. Lorraine wasn’t able to sell The Mallory and make sufficient profit that she was content to retire on it as pension, Roisin’s late father being ascrew it, let’s do itkind of guy when it came to spending.

Roisin suspected it was more than financial hubris: this was the place she’d raised her kids, lost her husband, found her principal sense of identity and worth as the siren landlady. Webberley was home.

Once sold, she’d have to move away. She’d not be able to find much for her money in footballer’s Cheshire, and it’d mean she’d not only be exiled, but to what Lorraine considered genteel poverty. The rich man she’d expected to remarry had stubbornly failed to materialise – no doubt, she’d told her children, because he didn’t want to take them on, too.

So here she was, staking out the last shabby premises in a prosperously pleased-with-itself dormitory village of Manchester, and yet imagining herself its Queen Victoria.

The fashionable pub, The Burnt Stump, sprayed its gable end wall cornflower blue and stencilled its name in huge font on the side, gathering crowds under its white awnings in the summer. The Bull’s Head went Good Food Guide-listed, with its crackling fires, hop bine, and exceptional pies.

The Mallory remained the crap one, which, the older stalwart locals said approvingly, ‘hadn’t changed for the tourists and townies.’ As if not changing was a virtue, when you’d started out not being very good in the first place.

Roisin parked up on the gravel outside and crunched towards the familiar arched brick porch doorway, the mouth of the Mock Tudor beast. It was always smaller than in memory.

‘My DAUGHTER!’ Lorraine whooped, emerging through it. She was in a dress with a palm-leaf print, gathered high about her neck like it was a beach sarong, her thick, dark brown hair in a river of ponytail like a horse’s mane. She’d had eyelash extensions since Roisin last saw her, like crushed flies: they had a sultry impact that stopped just short of surprised sex doll.

‘Hi, Mum. You look incredible.’ Roisin leaned in for a kiss.

‘Ah well, thanks. Broiler chicken dressed as poussin, that’s me,’ she sparkled. ‘I do like your hair that lovely deep Ribena shade, I might copy.’

She always forgot: the thing about Lorraine was, she wasgood in the room, as Joe said of certain writers. Roisin gathered it meant effervescent company and quick of wit, which compensated for other shortcomings.

Lorraine was fabulous, right up until the moment you needed anything from her.

Right now, of course, her mum neededher.

Roisin dumped her bags in her old bedroom and headed straight down to the bar, before she could become reflective. It was filling up steadily as Saturday evening got going.

She knew this space so well, from the time when her head was on a level with the drip trays. The grubby speckled tan linoleum, the deep basin-shaped bins on wheels, the gummy bottles of lime and lemon cordial with pourer caps, the row of optics for the spirits and the cardboard sheet you ripped bags of peanuts and Scampi Fries from.

As a teenager, she’d been very popular for her ability to serve under-agers, and having the fun parents.

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