“Oh, come on. That is the worst reason for breaking up with someone I have ever heard.” I made a messy grab for his hand. “I can’t promise you forever because that’s…not at all how it works. But I literally can’t imagine not wanting to be with you. Not wanting this. Whatever we call it.”

“That’s because you barely know me.” With a depressing finality, he untangled his fingers from mine and stood up. “You keep telling me how perfect I am, and must know by now that I’m anything but. In two months you’ll realise I’m not that special, and a month after that you’ll realise I’m not that interesting either. We’ll spend less time together, and mind less about it, and one day you’ll tell me things have come to a natural conclusion. You’ll move on and I’ll be where I always have been: never quite what someone is looking for.” He turned his head away. “I’m just not strong enough to go through that with you.”

There was a pause.

And then, in a moment of epiphany that deserved a full fucking chorus of angels, or at least the Skenfrith Male Voice Choir, I got it.

“Hang on a second.” I actually wagged a finger at him. “I know this because I do it all the time. You like me and you’re scared and you’ve been through something and it’s shaken you up and your first instinct is to run. But if I can work through that, then so can you. Because you are way smarter and way less fucked up than me.”

Another pause.

“How about,” I suggested, somewhere between hope and desperation, “you go into the bathroom for a bit.”

A third pause, and definitely the worst yet.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck. This was seriously nonideal. I’d legitimately gone all in on this. I’d said some pretty intense things and put myself way out there. And if after all that it blew up in my face, I didn’t know how I was going to—

“I can’t be what you need me to be,” he said. “Goodbye, Lucien.”

And by the time I got past the “wait, stop, please don’t go” stage he’d already gone.

Which pretty much ruined my Sunday.

And my Monday. And my Tuesday. And possibly my life.

Chapter 49

When I’d arranged Dad Meeting 2: Electric Boogaloo, I’d been counting on Oliver not breaking up with me three days earlier and me not having to trog out to the Chiltern Firehouse feeling useless and heartbroken. At the time, I’d been weirdly touched—I mean, it wasn’t my sort of place, and to be honest, it probably wasn’t his sort of place either, but it was where you went if you were a celebrity or looking for celebrities. So by taking me there, Jon Fleming was publicly upgrading me from “estranged wastrel son” to “legit family member.” And while I hadn’t snorted quite enough of his Kool-Aid to believe this was totally for my benefit—it would clearly play well as a chapter in the Jon Fleming rehabilitation story—I’d still benefit from it. A bit. To some extent. In the not-nothing sense that I was coming to accept was my relationship with my father.

Of course it struck me that getting something I thought I’d always wanted and losing something I never thought I’d want in the same week was kind of a pisstastic irony. And not the most helpful thing in the world emotional-stability-wise. Anyway, there I was, sitting at a corner table in a converted Victorian fire station, three seats away from someone I was pretty sure had been in One Direction, but wasn’t Harry Styles or Zayn Malik. And half an hour later, I was still sitting there, and the waiters were circling like very polite sharks.

After an hour, three unanswered texts, and a straight-to-voicemail call, a very nice young woman had gently informed me that I’d need to order in the next ten minutes or vacate the table. So I was left trying to work out if I’d be more embarrassed slinking away from a Michelin-starred restaurant at eight in the evening or sitting alone, working my way through an expensive three-course meal like this had totally been my plan all along.

So I left, getting heartily papped on my way out, but right then, I did not give two fucks. At least, not until one of them asked if Oliver had got bored of me, at which point I suddenly gave a whole lot of fucks. And, a few months ago, I’d have had one of those embarrassing freak-outs that the paparazzi are constantly baiting you into having so they can photograph you having them. But, apparently, the new mature me was just sad about it.

Being mature sucked.

I put my head down and walked, and this time there was nobody to wrap a coat around me and keep me safe from the flashes and the questions. Mostly I was… Actually, I wasn’t sure what I was mostly, especially now Oliver dumping me and my dad dumping me were getting mixed up in my head like a rejection smoothie. As far as Jon Fleming was concerned, I was this frustrating blend of disappointed and not at all surprised. But then there was also this bitter aftertaste, reminding me that if I got pissed off at Jon Fleming for standing me up, and then it turned out he’d tragically died of cancer that afternoon, I’d have felt shitty for possibly the rest of my life. But, apart from checking the internet for obituaries, I didn’t have any way of knowing what was really happening with him so I was stuck in this fucked-up quantum state where my dad was simultaneously an arsehole and a corpse. And Oliver…Oliver was gone, and I had to stop thinking about him.

So I rang Mum. And she made some concerned French noises, and then suggested I come over. Which I knew meant it was bad news. The question was, which bad news was it? And an hour or so later, I was getting out of a taxi on Old Post Office Road while my mum hovered anxiously in the doorway.

“He better not be dead,” I told her as I marched into the living room. “I’m going to be so annoyed if he’s dead.”

“Well, then there is good news, mon caneton. Because he is not dead. In fact, he is probably not going to be dead for many years.”

I threw myself onto the unusually dog-less but still faintly dog-smelling sofa. There was only one way this was going. There was only one way this had ever been going. “He never had cancer, did he?”

“The doctors had said some worrying things, and you know these old men. They are very nervous about their prostates.”

I put my head in my hands. I’d have cried but I was cried out already.

“I’m sorry, Luc.” She squeezed in beside me and patted me between the shoulder blades like I’d swallowed a penny. “I don’t think he was lying exactly. I’m afraid this is what it is like when you are famous. You’re surrounded by people who are paid to agree with you, so you get these ideas in your head and you forget they’re not necessarily true. Also, don’t get me wrong. The man is a total prick.”

“So…what? Now he’s not dying, he doesn’t want to know me anymore?”

“I mean”—she sighed—“yes?”