Page 82 of Between Us

‘I left my scarf behind that night. By accident, not intentionally. I walked back to get it, as you know. When I reached the restaurant, I saw it was round the neck of a waitress who was smoking outside. She was upset, she’d had a fight with her boyfriend. She offered me a cigarette. I thought it was a kindness to keep her company. I could also sense there was probably material in it.’

Roisin’s eyes widened.

‘Yeah, I know that sounds grubby, which is why I didn’t disclose it at the time. There we are. I can’t write about a man who stays in, looking into a laptop screen in the suburbs every night. Taking an interest in other people’s lives and being a nosy bastard goes with the territory.’

Roisin wasn’t going to encourage another soliloquy about screenwriting, so stayed silent.

‘I hung around, chatted with her and smoked with her forfifteen, twenty minutes. She told me the boyfriend was a married guy. I offered her some meagre advice she wasn’t going to take, wished her luck. I walked home and showered, as I knew getting into bed next to you reeking of Parliament Lights, eight years after I quit, was not a great idea.’

‘Yet by the time you came to write it, the way it played out was that you and Petra were climbing each other, yanking each other’s hair?’

‘Jasper Hunter and a characterinspired by Petradid those things. Is this really what you think of me?’

‘Have you seen your own show?! It’s pretty hard to believe that a completely innocent chat became that sequence on screen. And that despite the encounter being innocent, you’re only admitting to it now.’

Joe looked incredulous. ‘OK, OK – if I’d done it myself, what are the logistics, here? We’ve established you were awake when I got home, right?’

Roisin gave the most miniscule of shrugs.

‘Firstly, we have to believe a twenty-two-year-old wanted to shag a then-thirty-year-old, despite me seeming like Gandalf to her, I’m sure. I’m no Rufus Tate and I don’t have any cinematic licence to clear a restaurant. Based on three minutes of chatting her up she’s suddenly game, then we’ve got, what, fifteen minutes left at the absolute most to have a knee-trembler behind some bottle bins?’

Roisin said nothing.

‘That wouldn’t have appealed to me when I was a randy teenager. Let alone when I had a lovely home and a nice girlfriend to go home to,’ Joe added.

Roisin had to admit that Joe’s steadiness suggested he had nothing to hide.

‘Sure you didn’t take Petra’s number? Arrange something else for another time? Then fail to mention it to me, for that reason?’

‘Yes, I’m very sure. For one thing, I’m not a predatory creep towards distressed young women. Feel free to check my phone if you need to.’

(Except: only idiots leave evidence on phones, right?)

‘After the lies you’ve told me, why should I believe this revised version whereyes, OK, you met her?’ Roisin said.

Yet she was chicken scratching, and she knew it. This fitted all the facts. If there was a hole to pick, she couldn’t see it right now.

‘The lies I’ve told you?! I didn’t handle the confrontation at the country house well. I admitted that. I didn’t lie to you?’

‘You didn’t mention fag breaks with heartbroken girls from Split, did you?’

‘It wasn’t relevant! You only wanted to know if I’d slept with her! Why would I get into this, given it didn’t matter and sounds weird?’

‘Thank you! At least you concede it sounds weird.’

‘But having a brief and entirely clothed chat with someone of the opposite sex isn’t being unfaithful, last I checked.’

Roisin’s pounding heart started slowing, and she remembered that she had revealed more about herself than Joe. Clearly he did, too.

‘Your turn. You still haven’t told me. How do you know this, about Petra?’

Roisin swallowed. Sweat bloomed under her clothes. ‘I went to Sesso for dinner, sat at the bar. Got chatting to the front of house and he told me.’

‘He?A guy? You went and propped up a bar alone, and got into conversation? To check up on me?’ Joe said.

‘Yes.’ Roisin felt, and looked, crappy.

‘That doesn’t sound like you at all.’

---