Page 68 of Between Us

Joe reappeared with wet hair, in a clean t-shirt and joggers, sat down and poured himself a Shiraz.

‘It’s good to be home,’ he said, after a mouthful. He gazed far more intently at Roisin than he had in a long time. ‘You’re in the spare room?’

Roisin nodded. She didn’t want to seem mulish but had no idea what to say, until Joe showed his hand.

‘About last Sunday. I’m sorry for not … I’m trying to find a less speech-making sounding phrase thanmeeting the moment. I’m sorry for not knowing what to say. I was blindsided. I was about to fly to America for a huge meeting and my head was elsewhere. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you.’

Roisin said nothing, glad he was being conciliatory yet still feeling intensely apprehensive. He wrote Cool Things To Say for a living, so she’d wait until she felt a truth.

‘… I’m also very sorry I put a painful chapter of your childhood memories into my programme and didn’t anticipate how upsetting that would be for you. I had a discussion with you on my mental to-do list at the time. Then it was Dom’s stag do weekend, if you remember that? Three nights in Budapest.’

‘Yeah. You went up to York the night before. You can remember this now?’

‘I’ve had a lot of time to think. I’ve gone from “no time to think”, to “fourteen hours of staring out of a porthole window at clouds” amount of time. I went into ultra-defensive arsehole mode when we spoke. I was gearing up to face terrifying moguls and execs who bark BORED at you in the middle of a sentence.’

He drew breath. ‘By the time I came back from Dom’s stag, I’d got a raft of notes and theseeking permissionnecessity slipped from my mind. The way I write, I memory hole things very fast and move on to the next bit. I thought it was my superpower for productivity; I never considered how much it could hurt you, Rosh. I must stress I’m not defending how I’ve acted or reacted, as it’s plainly not OK. I just want to be fully honest about how it happened.’

‘Did you think I’d say,yeah sure, use itif you asked me?’

‘Uhm …’ Joe’s brow creased. ‘I thought you’d allow it eventually but bombard me with lots of – justified – questionsabout how it fitted into what I was writing, and I wasn’t ready to talk aboutHunter.That was the very selfish inhibition at the heart of it. I didn’t even ask myself if it was a good enough reason. I was a marathon runner who could only focus on the finish tape. Then it was all in the can; I couldn’t change it if you wanted me to. The denial and avoidance deepened. I’m like a fucking armadillo in Japanese trainers, these days.’

Roisin couldn’t smile. She hadn’t anticipated any of this.

‘AboutHunteras a whole,’ Joe continued. ‘AfterSEEN, my agent said, “Now is the time to push the envelope – you’ll never be in a stronger position to write something really bold.” Agent-speak for,you have a pass to fuck up on this go, so take a risk.I thought about the men I know, from the super uxorious ones like Dom, still with Victoria from college, to the absolute bed hopper, lawless scoundrels who’ve done Mick Jagger numbers, like our pal, Matt, to dull serial monogamists like me. Among other things, I wanted to write about how straight men treat women.’

Roisin’s muscles tensed during this description.

‘Our pal’? Did Joe even realise how badly he’d alienated Matt? Did he care? Was there a glimmer of a possibility that Matt was, as Joe had said, a very attractive façade on a much darker place than she realised?

‘I already knew I was writing another detective, which felt a little ho-hum. I thought the morerealI can make this feel, the more potent it will be. So, I set it here. I didn’t for a second stop to think that it might make you make connections with our life that aren’t there. Which is idiotic, and makes me realise I’ve been on a luxury cruise up my own colon.’

Roisin still said nothing.

‘… It’s supposed to have themes aboutthe crisis in masculinity. What I wanted to say on Sunday was, you have to see all three episodes to realise Hunter’s behaviour isn’t glamorised. It doesn’t pay off; he’s really humbled by the end. But you can imagine that saying, “No, Roisin, you’ll calm down if you watch MORE” wasn’t advisable last weekend.’

‘What about the Gina character?’

‘That’s not Gina. I think Gina is a very attractive girl but she’s like a little sister to me. Can I tell you something in complete confidence?’

‘Go ahead,’ Roisin said. Pretty rich to be boasting about his discretion.

‘I don’t ever break male codes of honour. Which is why I’ve never pulled down Matt’s statue and have let you ladies think he’s charm personified. What’s discussed over the single malt stays over the single malt. But it came out on the stag do that Dom has had a long-term crush on Vic’s best mate, Amber. He’d never, ever do anything about it. He hates himself for it. I wrote that in. I was so arrogant I thought I could casually implicate myself all I wanted, as I had the world’s most chill girlfriend. And the world’s most boring private life, locked in that study all the time.’

Joe looked like a man who wouldn’t fear a polygraph, his gaze meeting hers, steady and unblinking. His previous rationales for what he’d done had been torturous excuses and PR gloss, but this admission of careless ego rang entirely true. Roisin finally believed him.

She didn’t dislike what he’d done any less, but she hadthe peace of mind of at least following how the person who was meant to love her had treated her this way.

And she no longer thought he could’ve done those things himself. Perspective had returned. She had been so shaken up, knowing he wasn’t giving her the truth, she’d leaped to two plus two makes seven.

Was it too late to call Matt’s investigation off?

43

‘I see now howHunterhappened,’ Roisin said. ‘I still don’t understand where you’ve been mentally for the last year or so. It’s as if I didn’t exist. When I was ranting at you at the Lakes, you looked directly at me for the first time in a very long time.’

As he was doing now.

‘I know. I realise I’ve spent a lot of time thinking that because we don’t have kids yet, I could disappear into workaholism. Make these the empire-building years, for both our sakes. It wasn’t fair not to explain that, to put your life on hold. It wasn’t OK to not be a partner.’

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