Page 77 of Between Us

‘I stay at some nice chintzy hotel and take a few pictures. Sometimes people take that to be my parents’ home. Or think that’s my family tradition. I never correct them. That’s all.’

‘Why don’t you want people – us – to know?’

He was a black sheep, and not a golden boy? Roisin was already perceiving him differently, and maybe that was why.

Matt gave her a sidelong glance. ‘I’d not want to single one person out, swear them to secrecy and put that burden on them.’

That was a nice way of saying that he didn’t trust it to circulate, whomever he chose.

‘… I didn’t tell you all because, firstly, I don’t want to get into why I’m estranged from them. Secondly, because some people would probably gloat.’

‘I’d not have suspected this at all. I’m really surprised.’ Roisin tried not to be just slightly hurt, working it out. He didn’t want Joe specifically to know. Whomever he’d told would think Roisin was safe as confidante, and Roisin couldn’t be trusted around Joe. Mrs Mean Boy.

‘I know why you’d not suspect it.’

‘Why?’

Matt pulled himself over a stile with easy agility and, once on the other side, offered a helping hand to Roisin, which she accepted.

When they resumed walking, Matt said, ‘Because I seem superficial and shallow, so my life must be a cinch. Guess what: superficial, shallow people can have shit happen to them, too.’

He threw her a smile to defuse this, and she couldn’t return it. She could hear how hurt he was.

‘No, you seem to handle things so effortlessly and have such a sunny disposition, that’s why. From the outside, your life seemswell joyful, to use a phrase of my pupil Amir’s.’

‘When you put it like that. Thank you.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve cultivated the frivolous image enough, so who am I to complain. It was easier.’

‘If it helps, I’ve never discussed the complexities of my family background with the Brians either,’ Roisin said. ‘Which feels so surprising, given how close I am to the girls especially. I’d trust them with anything. I just can’t. It worries me that, at thirty-two years old, I must think it’s my shame and disgrace also. Why else keep it secret?’

‘Can I ask more about it?’ Matt said. ‘Are we playing “you show me your dysfunction and I’ll show you mine”, out here in the woods, or are we being way more elegant than that?’ They broke the mounting tension with laughter.

‘I was leaving that up to you,’ Roisin said. ‘Plus, you’ve got to go back and act normal around my mother.’

‘OK, you go first, because mine is worse, and you won’t want to say much after it.’

That might be bullishly overconfident, Roisin thought.

48

Roisin breathed in and out and looked at the swirling eddies of the river as their path brought it in sight. She remembered coming out here to sit on the bank and drink cans of cider in her youth.

It felt easier to be open, in this seclusion. Still difficult, but easier.

‘Long story short is, my parents were what you’d call swingers. The thing about your parents getting up to that kind of rum shit is, no one tells you what’s going on. Your responsible adults are the ones responsible. It’s not like anyone sits you down and says, “So there’s the birds, the bees, and also your mum and dad, who are a whole petting zoo.” You work it out, bit by bit. That process of figuring it out alone is what messed me up the most, really. The whispering and the locked drawers and the snogging they thought we didn’t see. The drastic warnings that my brother and I had about leaving our bedrooms after lights out when they had “parties”, even if we had nightmares.’

Roisin looked at Matt. Just recounting it, she felt queasy.

‘You see why this is unbroachable? Most people are like,ugh I don’t want to think I have a sibling so my parents didit TWICE.’

Matt smiled.

‘You know that bit inHunter,where he sees his mum with another man, round the corner from Dad with another man’s wife? That was Lorraine. I told Joe about it. He ripped that off, didn’t ask me permission. So I saw that old wound unexpectedly reopened in the screening room.’

‘Seriously? He didn’t tell you he was using it?Wow.’

It was grimly satisfying to see Matt’s amazement.

‘My dad died of a massive stroke when I was sixteen. He was lying unclothed underneath one of my mother’s best friends, Kimberley, at the time. Who was also married. As much as my mum knew the deal in general, I don’t think she knew that particular deal. I think with Kim it was just good old-fashioned cheating, with someone off limits. I overheard the phone calls after he died. That’s the lie of the open relationship, I think. It’s never going to hurt anyone, until it does. It’s not as if I’ve ever asked, though.’

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