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This is what he does. He’s a liar. A liar who lies in the moment, who says whatever will spring him from the trap. If you pick him up on inconsistencies later, the story will adapt and change shape. He scripts things to produce an effect in his audience. Personally and professionally. Joe Powell is not a fixed set of beliefs and behaviors. He is a chameleon with a vocabulary and a major hard-on for pulling the wool. He feels no guilt, and he’ll do it again. Do liars always know they’re lying? If Joe knows, he doesn’t care.
She realized she didn’t trust a word he’d said, and that trust couldn’t be restored.
But looking at them both, Roisin knew she had to, or it would forever hang over them. These women mattered to her more than anyone and she couldn’t dupe them by withholding this sorry episode. She couldn’t stand for their friendship to feel tainted. If she had to withstand a tirade from Gina, so be it.
“Yes. Did you discuss his feelings for you, at last?” Gina added.
“No, course not, but you don’t have a doomed obsession with someone for as long as I have and not sniff out a few things about them. Trust me, Matt McKenzie has yearned hopelessly for you since forever. YEARNED. I would go so far as ‘pined.’”
Wouldn’t glance within three feet of Roisin in a swimsuit.” Roisin squinted.
When you’ve thought about someone naked a million times, you can’t act casual when there’s skin on show.
“You’re modest and not ever looking for it, and Matt has a scarily good poker face,”
could never hate you for it, Rosh. I’ve always thought you were a goddess too,” Gina said. “I can’t believe I was caught in this web of sexual psychodrama the whole time,” Meredith said.
was sick and tired of myself more than I was actually in love,
I realized that I want that. I want to be wanted. Matt can’t give me that.”
said I couldn’t bear to try to be friends with whoever Matt found, but if she’s my friend already, that problem is solved,”
The conversation moved on, and Roisin was left pretending to listen while she was consumed by what Gina had said. Matt had feelings for her? Long-standing ones? Big, serious ones? She resisted something so seductive and
extraordinary being true. It also forced her to ask herself what her interests were, here. She’d revealed what she had with the aim of being completely honest with her friends, but she feared what it had shown her was that she hadn’t been completely honest at all. With them, with Matt, or with herself.
Roisin was experiencing every symptom, while stubbornly denying she had the sickness. His name appearing on her phone was as if someone had stabbed her chest with a syringe of adrenaline.
Hmmm, large kiss. Emphatically positive, but also a full stop. Also, are they possibly easier to send to people you don’t fancy? Analyzing text kiss sizes was another symptom. Oh God, she missed him. The Mallory was drab without the sound of Matt’s laughter and, to be candid, the way his arms looked when he was hefting heavy crates.
Then they were forever united as one, on an inexorable track to marriage and babies, and Roisin had to always wonder what would’ve happened if she’d only had the guts? That bitch needed stopping. A plan started to form. A completely crackers plan. He’d told her the name, “festa,” and that was a hint he wanted her to turn up, right? Right! No. That was the kind of thing that stalkers believed.
Matt looked perplexed yet impassive. She worried he would even be annoyed at being dragged out of his evening for this crap. Roisin had rehearsed a more ambitious version of this speech, and she immediately junked it. It turned out life was not like romantic comedy films. Making grand statements about your passion to an unwary person you knew well was not like that scene at the New Year’s party in When Harry Met Sally; it was excruciating. It was raining, and she did notice.
Roisin exactly understood that feeling of being ashamed of something you weren’t ashamed of.
“If you need a self-esteem boost, then I can promise you: you are staggeringly lovely. You won’t struggle to find someone to say yes. But he can’t be me. If it helps, I already hate him.”
“It means, You could’ve led with that,” Matt said, his face suffused with a joy she could honestly say she’d never seen. “Then I could’ve said, Well, that’s a coincidence. I’ve been in love with you the whole time.”
He’s an absolute mess over losing you, whether he shows it or not.”
Roisin tried to sound appreciative. She knew Dom meant well, and maybe it was his manner that grated. But she was being mansplained on how she should perceive Joe, being mansplained on his true amour for her. Did it not occur to Dominic to ask what Roisin thought? Her breakup had become others’ property.
What if his reluctance to be at that event, and his unwillingness to be around Bea specifically, wasn’t because she didn’t matter anymore, but because she did?
The obvious explanation was because she wasn’t in love with Joe anymore and she was in love with someone else. The deeper one was that she felt sure Beatrice had been contracted into it with deceptions.
“Carrying on seeing Joe, on and off, knowing he was with you—it’s the worst thing I’ve ever done. Today you walked in, and it was my nightmare coming true.”
I realized you were his Significant Other and I was his Insignificant Other.
think he hates losing control of people. Control is what he calls ‘love,’”
that when you catch him in a lie, there’s a new lie to cover for the old lie. There’s layers of it. It’s like scraping away old gloss and wallpaper. Together, we’ve found at least a patch of original bricks and mortar, I reckon.”
So . . . you won’t give him another chance because you like him too much?
What if Matt HAD brought a date? What if it was High Ponytail Ivy Legs from festa? Roisin, she said to herself sternly. In the words of Lorraine, A grip should be fucking gotten.
She looked at Joe, hiding his face, and Matt, both pushed out and keeping a distance, and thought, It was always all there from the start, if you looked for it.
The riddle of Joe Powell wasn’t Then Joe turning into Now Joe. He didn’t change; their circumstances did.
I’m telling you this not because I expect it to change anything, or because I think it casts me in a better light. It’s honesty for honesty’s sake. I asked myself why I didn’t tell you. You know, the reason behind the reasons I’d told myself at the time. I don’t think I really, deep down, thought you’d ditch me as a friend. You were right to call bullshit on that. It’s not in your nature. It was because I didn’t trust my motives.”
“I’m talking about Matt.” Someone else cut in, and Dev left Roisin standing on the dance floor, looking comically stunned.
Mothers want their daughters at times like this.”
Roisin tried to absorb this. Her mother had feared she might be dying, she was in so much agony, this whole time? She’d sought no treatment. She’d hoodwinked Roisin. An awful realization dawned: her mum would rather do all this, risk all this, than tell Roisin she loved her, and she needed her. She’d rather do this than risk Roisin rejecting her.
“Matt,” she choked into the receiver, after the beep. “It’s me. I’m at hospital. In Macclesfield. It’s Mum. They don’t know what’s wrong yet . . .” She let out a sob and stifled it. “I found her on the floor, in extreme pain, about an hour ago. The doctors are with her now. I don’t know what the hell she’s been playing at, ’cos she told me she’d had a clear biopsy before I came back this summer. In true Lorraine fashion, that was bullshit. She’s been ignoring pain for ages, using over-the-counter meds to control it . . .” Roisin realized she was spiraling. She paused and gulped.
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Roisin stared and stared at him. She took in every detail and committed it to memory as her heart tripled in size.
“She thinks those are the conditions for being loved, I guess. Partly because my dad was a shallow bastard in that regard. My brother’s long since fled the scene. He takes after my dad like that. And she wouldn’t tell her own daughter, I’m scared, I need your support.”
“I’m not going to make the same mistake. I called you because you’re the one person in the world I wanted to see.” Roisin smiled. “I’m not going to pretend to be more resilient than I am. I need you.”
“Well, this morning there’s nowhere I’d rather be than here. I’m glad you called me. I was actually over the moon you called me, and how often can you say that about three a.m. voice mails?”
