‘No. I already said she’s beautiful.’ Rory is shifting in his chair, wanting Breslin to put the photo down. Breslin gives it another leer.
‘She’s a stunner. Whereas you . . . well, there’s nothing wrong with you, but you’re not exactly Brad Pitt, are you?’
‘I know that.’
‘So how’d you manage this?’ Breslin waves the photo.
‘We got talking. At a book launch in the shop, at the beginning of December. That’s it.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Breslin gives him another sceptical once-over. ‘What’s your technique? Seriously. Any tips you’ve got, I’d love to hear them.’
Rory’s getting ruffled: sitting up straighter, trying to stare Breslin out of it. ‘I don’t have a technique. I just talked to her. I never even considered that it might turn into anything. I know perfectly well that anyone would take one look at Aislinn and one look at me and bet any amount of money against us ending up together, because I thought the same thing. I only talked to her because she was off on her own in the children’s section, and since it’s my shop, I felt responsible for making sure everyone was having a good time.’
‘And then,’ I say, ‘you clicked.’
I’m smiling at him, and it pulls an answering smile before he remembers. ‘Yes. We really did. Or I thought we did.’
‘What’d you talk about?’
‘Books, mostly. Aislinn was leafing through a collection of George MacDonald fairy tales; I loved that book when I was little, so I told her that, and she said she loved it too – we’d even had the same edition. And from there we just . . . We both like magic realism, and we both like spinoffs, reworkings – Aislinn loved Wide Sargasso Sea; I was telling her she had to read American Ghosts and Old World Wonders. And she told me how, when she was fourteen, she got so annoyed at the ending of Little Women that she actually rewrote it and had Jo marry Laurie. She glued the pages into her copy, so that when she reread the book she could pretend that was the real story. She was funny, talking about that – how furious she was with Louisa May Alcott, till she found a solution . . . We laughed a lot.’ Rory is smiling again, unconsciously.
He’s yapping away like I’m his best mate. I know me and Breslin are doing the business, and I know Rory’s what-if head is throwing out scenarios where one stroppy answer lands him in a cell full of Oz extras, but still: by this time, he should be digging in his heels and asking for answers, not sitting there handing over big wads of whatever we ask for. The accommodating type, the floaters said, but this goes beyond accommodating. The only ones who never push back are the ones who have something to hide.
I want to look at Steve. The one-way glass stares back at me.
‘So you swapped phone numbers,’ I say. ‘And then . . . ?’
‘We texted back and forth a bit, and then we went for a few drinks at the Market Bar. And we got on great again. It felt – I know this makes me sound like a teenager, but it felt like something incredible was happening. We couldn’t stop talking. We couldn’t stop laughing. We got there at eight, and we didn’t leave till they threw us out.’
‘Sounds like the date everyone dreams about,’ I say.
Rory’s palms turn upwards. ‘That’s what it felt like. Aislinn . . . She was telling me she used to be plain – that’s the word she used, “plain” – and now every time a guy tries to chat her up, all she can think is that he wouldn’t have gone near her a few years ago, and she can’t get past that; she can’t respect someone like that. She said with me it felt different; she felt like I actually would have talked to her exactly the same way, even back then – which I would have. She sounded . . . startled by it. More than startled: almost giddy. You see what I mean? We did click. It wasn’t just me.’
That doesn’t sound like the game-playing Rules addict I’ve been picturing. Aislinn’s doing it again: getting blurrier with everything I find out about her. That, or she was feeding Rory bullshit, or Rory is feeding us bullshit.
Breslin says, ‘And at the end of the evening?’
‘I walked her to a taxi.’
‘Come on, Rory. You know what I’m talking about. Did you get a little kiss on the way?’
Rory’s chin goes up. ‘How is that relevant?’ He’s going for dignified, but he hasn’t got the oomph to pull it off.
Breslin snickers into his notebook. ‘Not even a snog,’ he says to me. ‘You were calling this a dream date?’
Rory bites. ‘We did kiss. All right?’
‘Aah,’ Breslin says. ‘Sweet. Just a kiss?’
‘Yes. Just a kiss.’
Breslin grins. I say, ‘And after that night?’
‘We kept texting. I invited her out for dinner. Like I said, it took a while to set it up, but we sorted it out in the end. We went to Pestle.’
‘Very nice,’ Breslin says, nodding. Even I’ve heard of Pestle, although I want those brain cells back. ‘Did you sell a kidney?’
A sad flicker of smile from Rory. ‘I thought Aislinn would like it. I wasn’t thinking about it being super-trendy; I just chose it because it has an enclosed roof garden, so we could look out over the city and talk about, I don’t know, all the people out there and what they might be . . . In hindsight, I misjudged completely. It must have seemed like I was doing the same thing as those other guys: judging her based on her looks. Do you think’ – his face turns to me, suddenly wide-eyed – ‘do you think that’s why she . . . ?’
‘Not enough info to tell,’ I say. ‘Did she seem like she was enjoying the evening?’
‘Yes. I mean . . .’ A shadow slips across Rory’s face. ‘She did. She really did. But she seemed like there was something on her mind, too; like she couldn’t quite relax. Every time things were going well – when we started having a good conversation, or having a laugh – Aislinn would get this worried look, and she’d turn quiet, and I’d have to pick up the conversation from scratch and get it moving again. That was when I started wondering if there was something she wasn’t ready to tell me, like a family situation or—’
‘Or,’ Breslin says, ‘maybe she was starting to realise that she wasn’t actually that into you. And every time she saw you thinking things were going great guns, she got worried because as far as she was concerned this was the date from hell and she didn’t know how to break it to you.’
That gets to Rory. ‘It wasn’t the date from hell. I know I would say that’ – Breslin’s started to say something, but Rory raises his voice to force him down; he’s getting ballsy – ‘but I was there, and I’m not just fooling myself. Most of the time, we were getting on great.’
‘If you say so,’ Breslin says, almost holding back the twitch at the corner of his mouth. ‘And at the end of that evening?’
‘We kissed again. I assume that’s what you’re asking.’