Page 89 of Between Us

‘IS THIS NOT AVAILABLE?!’ Roisin bellowed, flailing her arms to indicate her presence in front of her mother.

‘Honestly, if I’d known you’d fly off the handle, I’d not have said anything …’

‘No good turn goes unpunished, eh? Slagging my friends off as potential thieves is next level. As if I’d put you at risk! Did he even address that part?’

Lorraine didn’t answer, and was making anI will have to suffer my daughter’s terrible temper as best I canlong-suffering face, arms crossed and eyes to ceiling.

‘Also, Matt’s been given his job back. He’s employed. Hecouldsimply enjoy his break before he starts again; instead, he’s putting in hours here.’

‘Knock knock! Bit of pre-match nerves, is it? Haha!’

Terence let himself in, arms full of cellophane packets of catering pack floured baps.

Roisin was too annoyed to feel embarrassed and said, ‘Something like that. I’ll leave you to talk through the plans with Terry. Give me a shout when McKenzie, aka The Talented Mr Ripley, wants to start decorating the garden and stealing fivers from the till.’

‘What’s up with her?’ she heard Terry say, and her mother replied in a stage-whisper, ‘It’sLadies Day At Ascoton the calendar today, if you know what I mean. Pay it no heed.’

Roisin stomped upstairs, lay on her bed – unseeing eyes boring into the drum-shaped lampshade – and boiled on what had been said. She considered firing off awhat did you saythat for, please?at Ryan, yet dismissed it within seconds. She knew exactly what she’d get back: a bloodless, curt dismissal.I simply wasn’t clear what his interest in The Mallory might befollowed by ahow are you?which wasn’t ahow are youas much as it was athat’s as much time as I’m giving your tantrum.

Fallings-out weren’t best conducted on encrypted messaging platforms, across oceans, anyway.

Thing was, it wasn’t Ryan she was angry with, not really. Yes, he could be an arsehole, but she knew that. A 3,500-miles-away arsehole.

It was her mother she was mad at. Matt’s natural brightness and Lorraine’s current reliance on their help had made her forget what she was really like, why she gave her mum a wide berth most of the time.

Lorraine took what she needed, then took some more, yet when Roisin needed some giving back – like, say, her mother putting Ryan politely in his place when he was undermining his sister – Lorraine went AWOL, playacted dumb. Support was something she sought but never bestowed.

Why even tell Roisin that Matt had been misspoken? Because Ryan was always higher in the pecking order. Even as Matt and her daughter saved her fête and saved her face, Lorraine couldn’t resist subtly reasserting that her son was CEO of the company. That his was the five-star standard of care. She rewarded words and took actions for granted.

Four years after her dad died, her mother was seeing a man with terrible moccasin shoes called Gary, who drove an uninsured car and flirted with Roisin. Roisin knew Gary had verybad word of mouth among the womenfolk of Webberley, and that sort of grapevine was rarely wrong.

She tried to get her mother to see sense. Ryan told Lorraine she should do whatever made her happy. He resisted Roisin’s entreaties to raise doubts, though she knew he had them. Ryan never made an intervention that could cost him popularity or even minor difficulty. Lorraine became engaged to Gary. She then discovered he was already married and had a petty criminal record.

Both of her offspring were at university, yetRoisin was required – with the emotional equivalent of a gun at her temple – to miss nearly two months of her course to come home and nurse her mother through a mini-breakdown and keep the pub running.

Her mother’s legend recorded that her recovery was magicked into being the day that Ryan had scraped enough from his student budget to send her an incredible bouquet. She still repeated the emetic message on the card about howhis mother was a queen who deserved nothing less than a king.

Moccasins Gary had been expunged from the record, and Lorraine instead recalled only that Roisin was so much of a daddy’s girl, she’d scared Lorraine’s suitors away.

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Roisin marched into Lorraine’s bedroom and threw open the wardrobe doors as if it was a rifle cabinet. The dazzling rainbow of silky fabrics demonstrated where The Mallory’s refurb budget was going. Quite a few things still had their cardboard tags dangling.

She selected a black metallic evening dress that looked like it was made of strips of precious bin liners. It was maxi-length and would encircle her legs in a way that made it not the most practical for mobility, but what the hell.

Back in her room, Roisin had to pull and tug at the zip somewhat, having a similar genetic blueprint to her mother but with a more generous chest and hips. When it finally fastened, it gave her a pleasing hourglass shape: a beguiling mixture of everything covered and provocative slink.

Roisin tied a striped butcher’s apron over the top and laced her boots back on. She was delighted with herself and felt a pubescent-level roar of rebellion. She looked like an It Girl heiress at Glastonbury.

The sensation was only improved minutes later by sashayingher sparkled-black shiny bottom past her mother on the front bar.

She garnered a shout of ‘Ooh la la!’ and a full set of turned heads from the grotty men cabal. And a, ‘WHAT THE! That’s Hervé Léger and it’s NEW!’ from Lorraine.

‘Harvey Leg said it was fine,’ Roisin said, blowing her a kiss.

Outside, taking up her stand, Roisin had completely the opposite problem to the one she feared. She wasn’t standing like a nelly, clacking her BBQ tongs like castanets: she was overrun.

Within an hour of opening, customers poured into The Mallory’s garden, now canopied with vintage bulb fairy lights and ringed with wooden planters full of flowers, thanks to Matt’s efforts. The throng were definitely not The Mall’s usual crowd: shoals of girls with peach-coloured and peroxide hair, fairy wings and heart-shaped deely boppers.

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