Page 62 of Between Us

Sure, if you really fancy the sticks? Here’s the link to my mum’s pub. Ring the doorbell. Please warn me if you’ll be with one ofPeoplemagazine’s 100 Most Beautiful and I’ll at least brush my hair x

Just me, one ofAmateur Potato Growermagazine’s Most Beautiful. See you then! Mx

Roisin pondered Matt’s unexpected interest in the countryside. Was he, despite what he told Meredith, worried about paparazzi?

She idly googled:Amelia Lee Boyfriend.

The latest hits showed Amelia in recent days browsing Santa Barbara shops with her new love, Jon Hamm: both of them in aviator glasses. ‘The lovebirds met on the set of their new film, an adaptation ofThe Beautiful and Damned.’ For fuck’s actual sake! Roisin started snort-giggling to herself about how Ruby wanted to date an ordinary guy.

Oh, Matthew, you soar like Icarus: too close to the sun, and at the mercy of your own jawline. She hoped he was beautiful and not damned.

Roisin was trying not to think about the fact he wouldn’t be lighting up any Brian Clubbing for the foreseeable. She hoped Gina found someone great and healed, and it could be reconvened. But by then, it’d be different. And Joeless? What more did he want to say when he got back from America? Was it a ‘let’s keep talking’ professional banalityhe’d ported into his private life? She stared into the middle distance, while her stomach mixed cement.

A stranger’s voice interrupted her reverie.

‘Can I get a pint of Harvest Pale, love, or is it self-service?’

39

The doorbell shrilled at 10.30 a.m. on the dot and her mother said, ‘That’ll be the Schweppes.’

‘No, it’s my mate, remember?’ Roisin said. ‘I might remove the decoration, but it’s up to you.’

Lorraine was in a stunning oyster Japanese-print robe. Roisin was referring to the fluffy unicorn sleep mask pushed up on her mum’s head. The grey fabric horn was pointing to the sky, a pair of huge stylised plastic googly eyes beneath. (Lorraine had stayed up later than Roisin, watchingAnd Just Like Thatwith a vodka and soda.)

Roisin had forgotten her mother’s love of mixing high-end apparel with ‘humorous’ merchandise.

Roisin bounded down the narrow staircase, out past the bar and through to open the door, the hefty bunch of jangling gaoler’s keys sitting in the lock.

She’d prepared her mum for Matt’s visit, saying an old bookshop pal in the area was calling on her. Roisin was mercifully marked safe from Lorraine tagging along on the walk: her mother saw no point in ambulatory movement unless there was Selfridges and a French 75 at the other end of it.

It had rained heavily overnight, and the sky was a threatening canopy of grey-beige, like a cup of tea that someone had used to wash a paint brush. Despite the clammy late-summer temperature, she’d need a waterproof.

‘Morning!’ Roisin said, at the sight of a smiling Matt. He was in a buttoned-up dark denim jacket over black trousers and those battered brown boots with canary-yellow laces. Roisin almost hooted at the way he’d dressed for Sunday In The Countryside, as if he was in a broadsheet supplement fashion feature. He just needed to be laughing at something out of view, one foot up on a sawn log.

‘Mornin’. This is where you grew up? It’s a bit of a cool place to grow up, isn’t it? How big’s that garden?’ He cast his eyes up at the building, then leaned back, hands in pockets, inspecting the rear.

‘It was full of pissheads, but it had to do,’ Roisin said. ‘Come meet my mum and then we’ll head out. I’ve designed us an actual route and everything.’

She led Matt into the pub, where Lorraine was downstairs, cashing up from the night before.

‘Oh my God,’ Lorraine said, whisking the mask off her head in a microsecond as she sized her guest up. ‘Who ordered young Harrison Ford?’

‘Harrison Ford if you ordered him from Wish,’ Matt said, not missing a beat.

They both exploded into laughter and Roisin couldn’t decide if their first encounter was going really well or very badly. She did not desire their forming a mutual fan club.

‘This is Matt, Matt, my mother, Lorraine,’ she said, as Matt reached over the till to shake hands.

‘She’s kept you well hidden,’ her mum said, her face suddenly aglow, as welcoming as an open sunflower. Good-looking men prepared to banter with her were her absolute favourite.

Roisin hustled Matt off on their walk before Lorraine could decide hemust stay for lunch.

They set off, heading out of the village by picking their way along the uneven verge, in that strangely unexpected complete quiet of a country road. Ancient trees knitted leaves together, over their heads, giving the daylight an emerald-green tint.

‘Wouldn’t have predicted you’d like walking and walks,’ Roisin said to Matt, glancing at him in gratitude for being such easy company. Even for such an old friend, it could feel ever so slightly awkward, their being here together, out of context, but it didn’t.

‘Hard to get anywhere without walking,’ Matt said. ‘I’m not a totally urban creature, you know! We went to Center Parcs once, remember.’

---