3.7

 

She cocked her head to one side. "Ah. Yes. That would have compounded the whole problem." She laughed. "Did he intend for it to come out like that?"

Paul smiled, the corner of his mouth going up further on one side than it did on the other. The lower side revealed a scar that split his lips from nostril to the bottom premolars on his left. She wondered how it had happened. It was a question for another time, one when they knew each other better.

"I don't think so," he said. "I think he was trying to be really impressive to a girl from his course he'd just cooked a meal for, only she was far less impressed when he turned around with his finger still on the nozzle of the can and sprayed her face and chest with Metro Royal Blue."

"Oh God!"

"Needless to say, she did not succumb to his charms and wiles that night. Or any night thereafter." He chuckled. "She cleaned herself off as much as she could and phoned for a cab home. His name was trashed in college the next day, and he never brought a girl here again. This is a smaller town than you'd think, and gossip gets around fast."

"A sobering thought."

"It might not have happened if he'd stayed sober."

"True." She finished her inspection of the wall and stood again, looking across at the bed. "Are there any sheets? I was a bit limited as to what I brought with me."

"You can borrow my spare set, if you like." Paul looked behind him, out of the room to the bedroom door opposite. "They are clean. I change them every laundry day. I'd need them back by the next time I did laundry, though. I've only got the two sets."

"Cool. Yes, please." She thought of the sketch she'd sold to the disabled man on the train. "I could get some tomorrow, I expect. Especially if you could tell me the best place to buy some."

"There's a big Maxwell store on the ring road." He rubbed pulled a face as he rubbed at one eye. When he pulled his hand away, the eye looked reddened and sore. "Or you could just go on Amazon. I've got Prime if you want to use my account and transfer the payment across to me."

Roisin nodded. "That's probably better. Anything on the ring road is a bitch to get to without a car, as I recall."

"That's true." Paul went to the door opposite hers and opened it. A cloud of dust drifted out, going a long way to explain the colour of the carpet.

"Do you do your stone carving in your room?"

"Not often." He looked back at her and pointed vaguely south. "I rent a little studio on Bricklin Street, but sometimes I get an idea and just have to work on it immediately, yeah?"

"I get that." She nodded. "I suppose I should be grateful I work in two-dimensional media."

He nodded. "Sometimes I wish I still did." He went inside and opened a cupboard. She couldn't see into his room very well from the angle she was at, but the walls seemed to be covered with drawings, though she couldn't tell what they depicted. Something with tentacles, from what she could make out. Octopuses. Or aliens. He pulled a bundle of cloth from the cupboard and returned to her room. "They're probably not to your taste, but you can have them until laundry day."

"Thanks." She looked at the sheet set. A fitted bottom sheet, a duvet cover and a pillowcase, in a somewhat faded Star Wars motif she recognised as the poster for the very first film, long before she was born.

Paul shrugged. "Me ma gave them me to bring. She didn't want me ruining a good set by bringing it to the land of the heathens."

"Ah. She's in Ireland, then?"

"That she is. She'd have been happier if I'd got a job there, but there's fuck all jobs in Ireland and here's not much better."

"Do you sell many or your pieces?"

"One or two, though not enough to make a living. I work in the Kentishman." He pointed vaguely north this time. "Just up the road in Staveley, next to the chippy. Quite handy for living here, actually, and I get free food from the chippy if they're closing at the same time as I finish."

Roisin frowned. "Why is a pub in Wolverhampton called the Kentishman?"

"Ah." Paul wrinkled his nose in merriment. "It's a bit of an in-joke, to be truthful. It's because the landlord's a cunt."

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