Page 80 of Between Us

To prevent Matt feeling he had to reply, she hugged him. Roisin hoped her mother wasn’t looking out the window.

She felt her phone buzz as she pulled her jacket off and found a WhatsApp from Joe’s mum.

Roisin could you take me a photo of the magnolia tree? I’m trying to remember how far it is from the fence! Thank you XX

She typed back:

Sorry Fay I’m actually out at my mum’s at the moment! Will sort pic as soon as I’m home. Rx

No problem, I’ll discuss with my son when he arrives tomorrow. Lots of love. XX

Tomorrow?Roisin thought. Didn’t Joe say he was going to Yorktoday? She could send a phishing text to confirm or deny, but she couldn’t think what that would be, and it would make her feel unclean. BeforeHunter, Roisin would have barely noticed this contradiction.

Was Joe, in fact, still in Manchester?

That was high risk if so, with Roisin only eleven miles away?

Sneaking around is rather exciting and becomes a bit of an art. It was very much part of what made it electrifying.

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Getting along with her mother, when he sent her hormones aflutter, was one thing, but somehow McKenzie brought Terence on board, too. Roisin began to think of Matt as a sorcerer.

Such a stark irony, to be shunned by his own family and so effortlessly beloved by other people’s.

Ostensibly, there was nothing about Matt that would be appealing to Terence. He was inherently suspicious of those who resided in the metropolis, tossing about with their e-scooters and braised chicory.

Yet through a winning combination of Matt seeking Terence’s advice, chatting to him easily on topics of Terence interest, and a willingness to roll his sleeves up and clean up a dramatic spill from the exploding keg of guest ale, Terence was won round.

Enough to say to Roisin, ‘How long’s the pretty boy staying?’ and when she said, ‘Oh, only a few weeks,’ he nodded contemplatively and said, ‘Certainly a vast improvement on Ring Tone Brandon.’

Roisin knew better than to ask who Ring Tone Brandon was.

Watching Matt seduce everybody in his path made the rift with his own family all the stranger. That had played on Roisin’s mind a lot since he’d told her. She thought about why his cousin might’ve sought Matt out to tell him. Whether she’d wanted him to report it, then recanted. Given he was older than his cousin, and the opposite sex, it seemed quite a tribute to him, to have chosen Matt to confide in. Roisin asked herself what she would’ve done.

She thought about how he had concealed it, and those strange Christmases; what the dismissal from Benbarrow Hall must have felt like as a result.

She thought about how he didn’t date anyone he might end up liking, because he didn’t like himself.

I think he can’t be with Gina because it’d have to mean something, and he can’t risk that.

Mid-week, Matt announced he had to head back to ‘the Big Apple’ – Manchester, for Webberley parochials – for a few days.

‘My former employer wants to talk to me. No idea what’s going on – maybe they want the gardening leave cash back. I’ll hear them out at least, I guess, and the plants in my flat need watering,’ Matt said. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back in good time for the fête.’

Roisin suspected Matt might also have man-about-town dating business to attend to, but didn’t pry. It wasn’t as if there was much else to do on the evenings in Webberley other than scroll the apps. Who knew which movie stars were lurking behind false monikers on Hinge.

Lorraine had finally found a couple of bar staff to trial: a forty-year-old woman called Amy and a twenty-year-old lad called, somewhat surprisingly, Ernest. (‘Must be coming back in,’ Lorraine said.) Roisin agreed to make herself scarce rather than have them fighting for the soda gun with the landlady’s daughter. She still didn’t want to face the flat.

Therefore, early on Thursday evening, Roisin was rather ashamed to say, out of pure loose-endyness more than anything else, she decided to confront the final two episodes ofHunter.

Watching it on an iPad, headphones in, was a far lower-stakes experience than the Benbarrow screening room. Her mum’s iPlayer history showed she’d still not watched the first episode: thank God.

It faded in with The Stone Roses’ ‘Fools Gold’ and a sleeping Jasper Hunter. In the darkened bedroom, his girlfriend, Becca, waves his iPhone handset in front of Jasper Hunter’s sleeping face and with Face ID, it ripples open.

His eyelids flicker as she scrolls and, as quietly as possible, replaces the phone in the charger on the nightstand.

Cut to Jasper rubbing his face of suds in the shower.

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