When she got there Frank was outside watering the hanging baskets. He looked at his watch and grinned. She always turned up with only a second to spare. Frank was the manager, fat and forty, divorced. He’d been the one to give her the job. She’d chatted him up when he’d had a few drinks and allowed them a lock-in, then she’d turned up next morning for an interview he couldn’t remember having arranged. She thought he’d given her a job out of embarrassment. It was only after learning about her dad and Miss Petrie (she couldn’t bring herself to call her Eve) that she wondered if he might fancy her. He’d never tried anything on but she always made sure to keep her distance.
It was only twelve o’clock and the pub was nearly empty. Two old ladies with wispy hair and floaty dresses sat by the window in the dust-speckled sunlight, sipping brandy and lemonade. When Rosie went over to collect their empty glasses they continued to sit, engrossed in conversation, making no move to leave or to order more drinks. They were lost in memory. They had come to the coast when they were girls on charabanc trips from town. Back behind the bar, Rosie heard them giggle suddenly over a shared memory. It was a slightly awkward giggle. A boy was involved. Rosie thought, Is that how Mel and I will be when we’re old? We’ll sit in the Prom getting pissed on brandy and reminiscence, laughing about Joe. If Mel lives long enough to get old, that is.
Then, almost as if the thought had conjured him out of thin air, there Joe was, standing at the door, skinny as one of the pipecleaner men her granda used to make. She had to make an effort to compose herself, to breathe slowly and regularly. Joe saw her and smiled, showing a mouth of gappy teeth. He looked crumpled, as if he’d slept in his clothes – baggy cotton trousers and a T-shirt so tight that she could see the frame of his ribs. What could anyone in their right mind see in him? He had bigger feet than anyone else in the world. Black hair tied back in a loose ponytail. He loped to the bar.
‘Mel said you’d be working.’
‘You’ve seen Mel this morning?’ She was surprised. She thought Mel would be dead to the world.
‘Spoken to her on the phone.’
‘Everything OK?’
He frowned without answering. She poured him a pint. Mel was usually the subject of their conversations. She demanded their attention. She had an eating disorder – anorexia, Rosie thought. Rosie didn’t know the details, didn’t like to ask. She suspected Joe knew more than she did.
Joe fidgeted in his pocket for money. ‘Has she said anything to you?’
‘What about?’
‘She’s really stressed out about something.’
‘Isn’t she always?’ Rosie regretted that immediately. It sounded petty. But what was Mel about? She was bright and gorgeous and her parents doted on her. And so did Joe. So why all the shit?
Joe took the pint, stared into it. ‘Have you started doing food yet? Any chance of a burger?’
Although he was so thin, there was nothing wrong with Joe’s attitude to food. She shouted his order through to the kitchen. Frank came in with the watering can still in his hand, letting it drip on the carpet. He nodded to Joe, winked at Rosie. She knew she was blushing but Joe seemed too preoccupied to notice.
‘We’re going away,’ he said. ‘Mel and me.’
‘I thought you were skint.’ Joe worked all night shifts at the big supermarket on the ring road, but he never had any money. He spent it on drink, junk food, music, stupid presents for them all. His parents were both doctors and could have bailed him out but they said he had to learn to budget before going to university. They took university for granted; Rosie wasn’t so sure. Joe hadn’t done much work before the exams. He’d been too busy obsessing over Mel.
Joe shrugged. ‘Mel says she needs to get away. It’s like she’s really spooked by something. She won’t let go. But she won’t talk about it either. Haven’t you noticed?’
No, Rosie thought. I’ve had my own problems lately. If you hadn’t realized.
Joe was continuing. ‘Her mum and dad say they’ll pay. We’re only going for a week. They think she could do with a holiday. It would do her good. A friend of theirs has a villa in Portugal.’
‘Very nice.’ This time Rosie managed to keep her voice noncommittal. She was thinking, It’s not Mel who wants to go away. It’s their idea. They’ve just had enough of her illness. They’re fed up with seeing her like that. They want the problem to disappear for a while.
They’d sent Mel away before and Rosie couldn’t blame them.
‘I’m not sure I can handle it,’ Joe was saying. ‘It’s the responsibility. What if something happens while we’re away?’ He paused. ‘They want her to think about going into hospital but she’s dead against it. They want me to persuade her.’
‘She doesn’t seem too bad to me,’ Rosie said. ‘No worse than usual.’
A punter came up to the bar. A salesman, she thought. Suit and a briefcase. He was sweating. It was very hot out now. From where she stood she could see the glare on the water as far as the horizon. Families walked past in shorts and skimpy tops and they seemed to turn pink as she watched them. Making the most of the summer. She expected the man to order a meal and a bottle of lager, but instead he barked, ‘Scotch. A large one.’ His voice was desperate. She watched him take it to a table in the shade, knew he’d be back in five minutes for another.
Joe slid back along the bar so he was facing her again.
‘You don’t have to go,’ she said reasonably. ‘Explain how you feel.’
‘I can’t let her down.’
They teased him sometimes because he’d been a choirboy as a kid. He said he’d been dragged along to church by his parents but she thought some of it had rubbed off. He had too many principles.
‘When do you leave?’
‘A couple of days.’
‘Mel didn’t say anything to me.’ Rosie convinced herself that was why she was so angry. She felt herself close to tears. They were supposed to be best friends.
‘She wanted to keep it a secret. I don’t know why.’
Because she likes secrets, Rosie thought. She likes keeping things to herself. She’s a hoarder. Perhaps that’s what the stuff with food is about.
‘What was all that with your mum last night?’ he asked with a complete change of tone. He pulled a prim, schoolmistress face. This was the Joe the others knew, the gossip and the clown.
Rosie was cross. Hannah was an easy target. ‘She’s had a bad time. All the talk. You know what it must be like, finding out that your husband’s a rat after twenty years. And she has it rough at work. It’s not a bunch of laughs in the prison.’
‘No,’ he said quickly, seeing that he had offended her. ‘It won’t be. I didn’t mean…’
The businessman came back to the bar. He held out his glass to her. She saw that his hand was shaking.
‘Your mum’s all right,’ Joe said. ‘We were being stupid.’
Rosie served the customer and let it go.
His burger came. He ate it quickly, holding it in his hand and tearing away at it as if he were ravenous. He stood still when he’d finished and she thought he was going to say something else about Mel. Perhaps he wanted to enlist Rosie’s support in finding out what lay behind the paranoia. But he just nodded.
‘See you in a week then. If I don’t catch up with you before we go.’
And he was gone.
That evening at a different pub, Rosie’s local, it was still warm enough to sit outside. She’d eaten the veggie lasagne her mother had cooked for dinner, had a shower and changed into a sleeveless frock. The beer garden was at the back, away from the road, though there was still a far-off hum of traffic. A row of conifers separated the pub from playing fields. There were tubs on the terrace and shrubs under the trees, a faint exotic smell of flowers and pine.
‘Melanie and Joseph are going away,’ Rosie said, using the full names as if it were a formal announcement. As in ‘I, Melanie, take you, Joseph’. That wouldn’t surprise her either. Joe was besotted enough to do it and he’d always been into crazy gestures. Melanie’s parents would be delighted. Melanie would have a full-time minder and they could go back to the real business of making money.