If left unchecked, Mum could talk about reality TV basically forever. Unfortunately—with wellactually69 and friends buzzing around my head like internet hornets—my attempt to check her came out as “I got papped yesterday.”

“Oh, baby. Again? I’m sorry.”

My own shrug was very non-Gallic.

“You know how these things are.” Her tone softened reassuringly. “Always a squall in a…a…shot glass.”

That made me smile. She always does. “I know. It’s just every time it happens, even when it’s trivial, it, well, it reminds me.”

“You know it was not your fault, what happened. What Miles did, it was not even truly about you.”

I snorted. “It was specifically all about me.”

“Someone else’s actions may affect you. But what other people choose to do is about them.”

We were both quiet for a moment.. “Will it…will it ever stop hurting?”

“Non.” Mum shook her head. “But it will stop mattering.”

I wanted to believe her, I really did. She was, after all, living proof of her words.

“Do you want to come round, mon caneton?”

It was only an hour or so away if I cadged a lift from Epsom (1.6 stars on Google) Station. But while I could more-or-less justify ringing my mum every time something bad happened to me, literally running back to her literal house slipped under even my low bar for self-respect.

“Judy and I have found this new show that we are watching,” offered Mum in a way that I think was intended to be encouraging.

“Oh?”

“Yes, it is very intriguing. It is called RuPaul’s Drag Race—have you heard of it? We were not sure we would like it at first because we thought it was about monster trucks. But you can imagine how happy we were when we discovered it was about men who like to dress as women—why are you laughing?”

“Because I love you. Very much.”

“You should not be laughing, Luc. You would be very impressed. We are often gagging on their eleganza. That means—”

“I’m familiar with Drag Race. Probably more familiar than you.” This was what happened when you won an Emmy. Your audience became your audience’s mums.

“Then you should come, mon cher.”

Mum lives in Pucklethroop-in-the-Wold—this tiny, chocolate box of a village where I grew up—and spends her days getting into scrapes with her best friend, Judith Cholmondely-Pfaffle. “I…” If I stayed home, I could try and achieve grown-up things like plates and clean clothes. Although in practice, I would probably pick at my Google alerts until they bled.

“I am making my special curry.”

Okay, that settled it. “Fuck no.”

“Luc, I think you are very rude about my special curry.”

“Yes, because I prefer my arsehole not on fire.”

Mum was pouting. “For a gay, you are far too sensitive about your arsehole.”

“How about we don’t talk about my arsehole anymore?”

“You brought it up. Anyway, Judy loves my curries.”

Sometimes I think Judy must love Mum. God knows why else you would brave her cooking. “Probably because you’ve spent the last twenty-five years systematically murdering her taste buds.”

“Well, you know where we are if you change your mind.”

“Thanks, Mum. Talk to you soon.”

“Allez, darling. Bises.”

Without Mum talking nineteen-to-the-dozen about reality TV, my home was suddenly very quiet, my day very…long seeming. Between work, friends, acquaintances, and sporadic attempts to get laid, I usually managed to use my flat as an overpriced, badly maintained hotel. Turning up only to crash out and leave again the next morning.

Except Sundays. Sundays were tricky. Or had got tricky as the years had got away from me. At university they’d been for brunch and regretting what you’d done on Saturday and sleepy afternoons. Then, one by one, I’d lost my friends to dinners with in-laws or decorating the nursery or the pleasures of a day at home.

It wasn’t that I blamed them for their changing lives. And I didn’t want what they had. I wasn’t cut out for it. Since, as far as I could remember, Sundays with Miles had spun pretty quickly from marathon sexfests to smouldering resentathons. It was just moments like these. When it felt like my world was notifications on my phone.

Notifications I was trying very hard to ignore. Because I knew Mum was right: if I could get through today, they wouldn’t matter tomorrow.

Though, as it turned out, we were both wrong.

Super, super wrong.

Chapter 3

Monday started out as it usually did—with me late for work and nobody caring because it was that kind of office. I mean, I say office. It’s actually a house in Southwark that’s been half-arsedly converted to the headquarters of the charity I work for. Which happens to be the only charity or, indeed, organisation of any kind that would hire me.

It’s the redheaded step-brainchild of an elderly earl with a thing for agriculture and a Cambridge-educated etymologist who I think might be a rogue AI sent from the future. Their mission? Saving dung beetles. And, as a fundraiser, it’s my job to convince people that they’re better off giving their money to bugs that eat poo instead of pandas, orphans, or—God help us—Comic Relief. I wish I could tell you I’m good at it but, really, there are no metrics to measure something like that. I mean, we haven’t gone bust yet. And what I tend to say at interviews for other jobs I don’t get is that there isn’t another faeces-based environmental charity that raises more money than we do.

Also, we’re called the Coleoptera Research and Protection Project. The acronym for which is definitely pronounced CEEARAYPEEPEE. And definitely not CRAPP.

Working at CRAPP has a number of drawbacks: the central heating that blazes all summer and cuts off all winter, the office manager who never lets anybody spend any money on anything for any reason, the computers so old they still run a version of Windows named after a year, to say nothing of the daily realisation that this is my life. But there are some perks. The coffee is pretty decent because the two things Dr. Fairclough cares about are caffeine and invertebrates. And every morning, while I’m waiting for my Renaissance-era PC to boot up, I get to tell jokes to Alex Twaddle. Or rather, I get to tell jokes at Alex Twaddle. While Alex Twaddle blinks at me.

I don’t know much about him and I certainly don’t know how he got his job, which is, theoretically, executive assistant to Dr. Fairclough. Somebody once told me he had a first-class degree, but didn’t say in what or from where.