Page 65 of Between Us

‘Do you think I shouldn’t do this?’ Roisin said.

Matt paused. ‘It’s not about what I think. What do your instincts tell you?’

‘My instincts tell me …’ Roisin took a deep breath. ‘There’s something big about Joe I don’t know. When our life together worked, I couldn’t see it. In that fight overHunter, everything started to look different. This is probably the only opportunity I’ll have to check up on him. I don’t want to wonder what the truth of my twenties was, for the rest of my life.’ She looked over at Matt. ‘You know when an idea is reckless and stupid, but you know in your bones, from the very first moment you have it, you’re going to act on it? Any time spent debating it is pointless. It’s merely therapeutic. It won’t stop you.’

‘I do know those ideas,’ Matt said, with a broad smile. ‘I might specialise in them. Right then. And if there’s nothing to find, this doesn’t matter, Rosh. If thereissomething to find, then his feelings don’t matter.’

‘There’s the terrible third option: there’s nothing to find, but he finds out we were trying.’

‘I can’t give you one hundred per cent assurances, but I’ll be super discreet. I work in the plonk business after all, I have reason to be in a bar. Also, in that worst-case scenario, I’d be fine with being the fall guy. We could leave you out of it entirely and say I was digging.’

‘No. I’d never do that to you,’ Roisin said. ‘I asked you to do it – it’s on me.’

‘It’s a joint enterprise,’ Matt said. ‘We better shake. A moment to live on in infamy, witnessed only by some squirrels.’

He presented a hand and Roisin put hers into it.

As they trudged on, Roisin asked herself – and she couldn’t believe she was only asking herself this now – how she’d feel if Matt returned with solid evidence that Joe had played away.

Deep down, she still thought it was impossible. Counter intuitively, her search made her look like she believed the worst of Joe. In actual fact, she needed it proven for the opposite reason. She couldn’t really believe it until there was proof.

What if he had done it? How would she confront him? How do pathological liars behave when the searchlight finally catches them fully square in its glare, and there’s nowhere to hide?

41

The circular route Roisin chose around the fields and along the ramblers’ paths, by the brook where she threw stones with her dad as a kid, was nearly three miles in total. They felt hearty and vibrant as they stamped back down the shallow slope towards The Mallory.

‘You’re lucky to have grown up here,’ Matt said, and Roisin smiled and nodded, because that was too much of a conversation.

As they crunched across the gravel, Lorraine came barrelling out of the pub, dressed to the nines in a billowing, translucent smocked blouse, tucked into claret-coloured narrow trousers and Louboutins, hair wound up on her head in a loose bun. Roisin almost laughed out loud. The look was:when you’ve got a Sunday lunch shift at midday and serving the crab dip on a billionaire’s yacht at three.

‘I need to intercept you,’ Lorraine said, gesturing for Matt and Roisin to gather round, ‘to warn you that Terence has had plugs. Keep a straight face, he’s very sensitive. Some of the regulars have been putting “Wig Wam Bam”on thejukebox to … what do you call it? I want to say GNOME him, but that’s not right. When you’re trying to upset someone else on a computer, on purpose?’

‘Troll him?’ Matt said.

‘That’s it!’

‘He’s had plugs?’ Roisin said. ‘As in a hair transplant? Terence is my mum’s longstanding barman for the day shifts,’ she explained to Matt.

‘A weave,’ Lorraine said. ‘It’s not well judged. He’s overdone it. He’s gone from a hairline like an old tennis ball to a thatch that looks like it’d come running if you shook a packet of Dreamies.’

Matt burst into laughter and Roisin couldn’t help joining in, much as she knew her mother was performing for the visitor.

‘Act casual,’ Lorraine said in a hoarse whisper, beckoning them back into the pub. Roisin could feel how thoroughly beguiled Matt was. Lorraine hadn’t lost it.

‘Matt, let me get you a pint before you go. Can’t visit a pub and not have a drink,’ her mum added, as they walked in.

‘Given I’m not driving, thanks, Lorraine – if Roisin doesn’t mind?’ Matt said.

‘ONE,’ Roisin said, mock-stern.

Lorraine poured Matt a Carlsberg and made Roisin a Diet Coke, flinging ice into a tall glass from the bucket with tiny tongs. The jukebox was thundering away with The Verve’s ‘Sonnet’.

Her mum’s only menu was sandwiches with chips (hernonchalant manhandling of the baskets in the deep-fat fryer had frightened Roisin for decades now), so it was relatively quiet. Even the hardened drinker Mallory fanbase would only get going by mid-afternoon.

‘The wanderer returns! Finally found your way back,’ Terence said, appearing from the back, holding a crate.

‘Hi, Terry,’ she said, in friendliness with a tiny top note of weariness. She made sure she kept her eyes on his, with no drift upwards to the new mane. ‘This is my friend, Matt.’

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