Between Us, page 7
‘Hi. Can I come in?’ Matt said, interrupting, from the other side of the door.
Gina looked to Roisin and Meredith for an answer or reassurance.
‘Don’t have to talk to him if you don’t want to,’ Roisin said.
‘I’d rather face him with you here,’ Gina whispered. She wiped her eyes and rearranged her hair around her shoulders. ‘Come in.’
Matt entered, clad in t-shirt as well as boxers. ‘I wanted to apologise, again. I’ve been a total dick. Shoulder-barging locked doors is completely not OK. I’m mortified. Please promise me that you won’t forever associate me with this moment of idiocy.’
Roisin wasn’t sure if it was emotional intelligence or public school manners that made Matt claim the shame of this encounter; either way, it was astute.
‘It’s alright. You didn’t mean to do it,’ Gina said, in a very polite and somewhat recovered voice. Then, ‘It’s forgotten. I promise.’
‘Thank you,’ Matt said.
‘Night,’ they chorused, as he left.
Roisin turned to Gina. ‘Gina. This is nothing. It’s for Matt to feel awkward, like he said. Be confident in your skin, because if I was in your skin, I certainly would be.’
‘I bet you are a lovely teacher,’ Gina said. ‘You always know what to say.’
Roisin hugged her bare, delicate bones. ‘I know how it feels to be held together by sheer bravado and Charlotte Tilbury.’
‘What’s going on? Where have you been?’ Joe said, unexpectedly propped on an elbow, awake, as Roisin gently closed the bedroom door behind her.
‘Your ghost story scared Gina; she screamed, and Matt broke into her room to rescue her. She was naked and feels very embarrassed.’
‘Really? Like, not a stitch?’
‘Yup.’
‘Lucky bastard, as usual,’ Joe mumbled, as he pushed his face into the pillow.
Roisin sighed as she snapped the light off.
15
The next morning, Dev was ladling out fried eggs and bacon in the kitchen with the sang-froid of a man who’d once carried on making full Englishes in Flatmates when the police had turned up after a report of common assault by a drag queen, Margaret Snatcher, on a vegan sex toy manufacturer.
The offensive weapon was a bullet vibrator in the shape of a chilli pepper, and the footage of officers inspecting and bagging it saw some of the show’s highest ratings.
Everyone was extremely perky at the sight of a breakfast line cook in the stunning kitchen and Anita mixing virgin Bloody Marys – Bloody Shames, as Dev called them. Once again, Roisin felt guilt that the Gina trauma seemed to have cleared something among them: like a rainstorm in a heat wave.
Was it because they’d been on their best behaviour, stilted, and the spell had been broken?
Either way, Roisin was glad of the cheer as she zig-zagged sriracha onto her fried egg, praising Dev’s cooking and Meredith’s forethought regards the groceries. None of your communal holiday, two miserly allocated Weetabix and off-brand tea bags, UHT milk; she’d thought of every luxury.
(And Dev had insisted on tons of bog roll, with the immortal words: ‘I won’t play a game of chicken with my own arse.’)
They were chatting amiably and discussing the route they’d take exploring the grounds, when Gina appeared in the doorway, wild eyed, looking as dramatic as if she was bursting in for the female solo in a Meatloaf video.
‘Matt, what the FUCK?’ she said, in a ragged voice, and Matt physically started. Everyone else looked at each other in amazement, too. That Matt could’ve committed fresh atrocities and be down in the kitchen, freshly showered and crisply shirted by half nine, seemed improbable.
‘What have I done?!’
‘Your message. Was that meant to be funny?’
‘What message?’
‘YOU KNOW WHAT MESSAGE! Those texts!’
The collective gaze fastened on Matt, whose mouth was open, his brow knitted. The toast that had been heading towards his mouth was replaced on the plate.
Gina turned her phone towards him and held the screen in his face.
He frowned, silent for a second. ‘I didn’t send that! Why would I send that?!’
‘You tell me. Fourteen times!’
Matt raised his body out of his chair, back straight, so he had pocket space to fumble his phone out.
‘I didn’t! I don’t know what’s happening here …’ Matt said, tapping at the screen and frantically scrolling to his messages. Another brief and exquisitely taut pause. ‘Fuck. It looks like I did send them, but I didn’t mean to, I promise! It’s a bum dial! A pocket dial!’
‘What did you send?!’ Anita said, unable to contain herself any longer. ‘Dick pics?’
Arm extended fully, Gina marched the length of the table and held her phone up in front of each of them in turn, giving them a second to focus. As if she was a prosecution lawyer, making sure every member of the jury was informed. Roisin squinted. On her iPhone screen was a poo emoji sticker, with hearts for eyes and large grin. A sort of jaunty, laughing turd, a brown Mr Whippy. Unfortunately, Roisin could see how his hearts-for-eyes could be construed as tactless joy in beholding something.
‘Fourteen in a row,’ Gina said, in a stage whisper, as if the number had Illuminati significance.
None of them knew what to say as comfort. Roisin guessed Gina must know it was a cock-up but had been trying to decipher the meaning long enough that her jangled nerves had turned it into conspiracy. Every time her phone pinged, she ratcheted up another notch. Jet fuel couldn’t melt steel beams and Matt couldn’t have missent a coiled pile of anthropomorphic faeces.
‘How could it not have been a mistake?’ Matt said. ‘What message would I have been conveying with those pictures? They’re nonsensical!’
‘I’m supposed to believe you sent this to me, by chance, after what happened last night?! Bit of a coincidence,’ Gina scoffed.
‘Not exactly a coincidence!’ Matt was flushed the colour of beetroot raita. ‘I had my phone open to message you earlier. I couldn’t think what to say. I didn’t send anything. I put my phone away. I must have put it in my pocket unlocked, and then … pushed on it.’ He gestured with open palms at his trouser area, in his seated position.
‘You’re making excuses because the joke has misfired! Because I’ve called you out in front of everyone!’
‘I’m not! Why the hell would I send you a picture of laughing shit?!’
‘I don’t know! YOU TELL ME!’ Gina bellowed at the top of her lungs. She ran from the room, making audible noises of distress.
A pall descended.
‘I don’t know if I should go after her?’ Matt said, looking genuinely upset. ‘I don’t know how to explain if she’s going to insist it was intentional?’
Meredith put down her egg and bacon roll and also stood, wiping her hands on a piece of kitchen paper.
‘You’ll make things worse if you go up to her. I will talk to her and fix it. Gina will be OK for the walk in’ – she checked her watch – ‘half an hour’s time. This is my pledge. But, Matt, while I know you didn’t mean any harm, please, no more incidental … incidents? Give her a swerve entirely, until she’s calmed down. And everyone leave my bap please, I am coming back for it.’
‘Thanks, Meredith. Really appreciate it,’ said a crestfallen Matt.
Meredith headed off. The convivial atmosphere had dissipated like a needle scratch in a jukebox sound effect.
‘Bit of fresh air will sort this out, it’ll be over by lunchtime,’ Dev said, consolingly, to Matt. ‘You know Gina adores you, she’s absolutely besotted with you.’
Roisin cringed.
‘She can’t stay radge for long.’
He toasted Matt with a Bloody Shame, stirring it with the stick of celery and gulping.
Silence fell.
In his ‘puppy in the china shop’ way, Dev’s instinct towards generous overstatement had, on this occasion, merely stated facts. He’d no doubt been trying for a ‘thinks the world of you’ blandishment, off the cuff, and instead had inadvertently spelled out the thing they never said.
‘It’s hard to know what to say to her when she thinks I’d hurt her on purpose,’ Matt said eventually, sounding slightly hoarse.
‘Simply stop attacking Gina’s mental health by accident, then,’ Joe said.
‘Cheers,’ Matt said. ‘Great to have your positive input, as always. A man who himself has never suffered a tech error, I’m sure.’ He raised his eyes to meet Joe’s directly, his anger finally breaking the surface of the water. Joe purposely avoided meeting it, mopping up some egg yolk with his crust.
‘Well, the unsavoury ogling poo farce is definitely not Gina’s fault.’
‘Yeah, and you’re never slow to point out my faults. I wonder why.’
Joe shrugged. Roisin sensed Joe felt a mixture of satisfaction and apprehension at Matt’s hostility. Like a kid pushing their luck, angling for a telling off, and feeling just a little scared at finally getting one.
Matt stood up, abandoning his half-eaten breakfast. He took his plate to the sink in a tense silence.
‘I know I messed up last night, but as if I’d harass her when I know she’s upset. Is everyone’s opinion of me really this bad?’
‘No no no, mate, not at all,’ Dev said and Anita chorused, ‘No!’
Roisin said forcefully, ‘Of course not. You’d never be unkind to Gina.’
Joe was pointedly silent.
She felt the truth of Meredith’s words, nevertheless. Deliberate or not, Matt had thoroughly used up his honest mistakes quota.
16
True to her word, Meredith had a subdued but cooperative Gina at her side as they assembled by the outhouses for their walk. Roisin was relieved to see her in a better state; she’d had visions of their hearing an engine and leaping up to see Ethelred tearing away towards the horizon. However, Gina was still treating Matt as if he was radioactive. He loitered at a distance.
Dev insisted on going in to say hello to the hens, who were much less interested in saying hi to Dev and crowded into a far corner, clucking irascibly at the intrusion.
‘They have a groundskeeper-type guy who pops in twice a day to feed them,’ Dev said.
‘Can you imagine what he thinks of the absolute nobbers that regularly pile into this place?’ Joe said. ‘Hopping from the helicopter, busting out the Freixenet and spraying it all over the rooster.’
‘No rooster. Sir Drumstick recently passed.’ Dev touched his forehead, chest and both shoulders in a cross. ‘You’d know about him if he was still with us, I’m told. Screeched the joint down at dawn.’
‘Was his death a murder?’ Roisin asked.
‘Sir Drumstick, I love it,’ Meredith said.
‘Tasteless,’ Gina sniffed.
‘Why?’ Joe said.
‘Because it’s a cut of meat! Like calling him Lord KFC.’
‘Ah yeah, I see what you mean,’ Joe said. ‘Like prawns don’t think of themselves as lollipops.’
He grinned and Gina pushed, ineffectually and coquettishly, at his shoulder.
She alone won a conciliatory, warmer tone from him. All in all, Roisin was grateful that someone did.
‘Also, who are you calling nobbers?’ Anita said, gesturing at her lilac maribou-trim skirt. Roisin was keen to see her wedding dress: she could only imagine a sort of Tim Burton film level of kitsch drama. A headdress.
‘Other nobbers, obviously,’ Joe said. ‘Nouveau, boozy nobbers who’ve rolled in from the city. Not classy big house appreciators, like us.’
They set off down to the lake, and Dev’s optimism wasn’t misplaced: the weak sun and light breeze did feel as if it was blowing fresh air through Roisin’s mind and body.
Anita thoughtfully seized on Gina and marched her out ahead, so the Matt issue wasn’t an issue. Dev fell lockstep between Joe and Matt, a rose between two thorns, and Meredith and Roisin found themselves at the rear. Actually, Roisin felt Meredith was sticking to her side purposely.
‘What do you think to this, then?’ Meredith said, after ten minutes or so.
‘This?’ Roisin cast a look back at the house. ‘Minibreak location?’
‘No, the weirdness.’
‘The weirdness of … us? That sounds like the title of the worst romcom ever.’
‘The weirdness of the mood since we’ve arrived. It’s as if everyone’s pretending. Not me and you, obviously.’
Roisin suspected Meredith meant apart from the roaring tension between you and Joe.
‘I know what you mean. I felt awful admitting it to myself, but Gina’s streaking was the first authentic moment of enjoyment I’ve had.’
‘Same here. Odd, isn’t it?’
‘Perhaps it’s timing. Few pressures coming to a head.’
‘Dev and Anita had a huge blow-up last month.’
‘Did they?’ Roisin stopped dead, lowering her voice, even though everyone else was way in front. ‘I thought they were on Cloud Nine.’
‘I think they are, but Cloud Nine has a ring road traffic jam. I wanted your advice about it, actually. I might not get the chance again. I have a moral quandary.’
‘Go on.’
‘I was out on a works do last month at The Alchemist, and I see Dev and Anita in a corner. Before I can say hello, I see they’re arguing. To the extent that Anita gets up to storm out. I’m thinking, right, I will pretend not to have seen them, but unfortunately, Anita storms right past me. We make eye contact, I make a kind of gesture like this …’ Meredith stopped and performed a cross hands waving, lip zipping mime to Roisin which she gathered indicated: no worries, I saw nothing, we don’t have to speak.
‘OK.’
‘So please note, as far as I know, Dev still has no idea I know. Anita then messages me the day after and asks if we can meet for coffee, but please don’t tell Dev. I’d really rather not, in those circumstances, but what can you do when it’s an SOS.’
‘Oof. Yes.’
‘We go for coffee, and she says the fight was about the fact she wants to come off her pill and try for a baby before the wedding in Italy. She’s got background factors that makes her think it might take a while. Dev is implacably opposed to her ending up unable to drink and morning sick at a fifty-grand wedding …’
‘Fifty grand!’ Roisin hissed.
‘Oh, and the rest; Anita was probably sparing me the full truth. Over our flat whites, Anita confides in me she’s not taking her pill, and is telling Dev she is. Is that bad, Meredith? Me – yes, Anita, that is bad.’
‘Woah.’
‘Mmmhhhm. I said to her, and what will you do if you do get pregnant, tell him you’re in the one per cent failure rate? Despite him knowing you wanted to try? She says no, he’ll work it out, but once there’s a baby he’ll be overjoyed and my lying won’t matter.’
Roisin looked at Meredith making a grit-teeth gesture. ‘This is not the way to embark on parenthood. With lies. Also, Dev not feeling betrayed is a fuck of a gamble.’
‘Yep. I told her it wasn’t OK. She should take her pill, have the wedding – she’s thirty-one, it’ll be fine. But knowing Anita to be somewhat capricious, I don’t think there’s much chance she’ll take it. The advice, or the pill.’
‘She’s such a party girl, she might actually regret being pregnant on her honeymoon, too. What did Dev say? “Anita’s very bad at anticipating how she’ll feel a short time in the future”?’
‘Oh yeah. Canyons.’
They trudged in quiet for a moment.
‘You straight people, you’re a mystery to me,’ Meredith said. ‘Mind you, serious relationships are a mystery to me, so perhaps I should take a seat.’
‘Seems to me this is not actually mere conception admin,’ Roisin said, frowning. ‘This is quite a large and meaningful difference of priorities. If Anita wants a pregnancy more than far-flung weddings she should tell Dev to scale the whole thing down and even consider delaying it until after kids.’
‘Ah, I said that; no can do. Her Hindu family are liberal but not that liberal. Marriage before babies or there’d be hell to pay. If she gets pregnant it’ll be Gretna Green, accelerator pedal to the floor. A lot of pressure to go against wishes of fiancé and family.’
Roisin blew out air. ‘If you’ve told Anita it’s wrong, what’s your moral quandary?’ she said.
‘Do I tell Dev she’s not on the pill?’ Meredith said.
‘Good God, NO. Is that even a question?’ Roisin said. ‘Or am I a self-preserving coward? But no. I see only bad outcomes if you break Anita’s confidence. It was unfair of her to burden you with it.’
‘Thank you! That’s the advice I came for. The thing I wanted to hear anyway,’ Meredith laughed.
They stopped to gaze out over the rippled water.
‘Lake Como is the problem, you know,’ Roisin said, once again speaking quietly, as if it was profane to say it at normal volume. ‘It’s wonderful Dev’s been so successful, but the attitude to money is spiralling out of control. I’ve realised what it reminds me of – those nights out where we’d be done, and Dev would bang down a tray of shots no one asked for and announce we were “going on somewhere”. The rapid escalation.’
‘That has occurred to me. That he’s going to end up in high-roller rehab next,’ Meredith said.
‘Alternative approach,’ Roisin said. ‘Someone talks Dev out of Miami and Lake Como. This then provokes a proper heart to heart with his fiancée about the marriage-babies timetable.’
‘Someone? Good luck, Rosh!’ Meredith said and they laughed. ‘I hope you don’t mind me burdening you, too. You’re such a solid person about these things.’
‘Honoured.’ Roisin patted her arm.
‘You know, looking at that photo of us from way back when,’ Meredith said, ‘reminded me of what a superstar you are. I’ve never met anyone who’s such a natural leader, always the centre of things, but who has so little ego to go with it. Dev was our manager but you were too, in an unofficial, HR way.’
‘Wow,’ Roisin said, blushing. ‘Really?’
‘Uh huh. We all thought Joe had won the lottery, the first time we spied you holding hands.’
