“Yeah.” Him and me both. “I’m not used to…any of this. Being with someone and being able to count on them, and wanting them to be able to count on me.”

“If it’s any consolation, I’m not quite used to this either.”

“But haven’t you had loads of boyfriends?”

“Yes, but”—his eyes slid away from mine for a moment—“I never quite felt I was enough for any of them.”

“That makes zero sense.”

“Well,” he said, smiling, “you do keep telling me you have low standards.”

“Hey, I was being self-deprecating. Keyword ‘self.’”

He leaned in and kissed me again—a fleeting brush of his lips against mine. Normally I didn’t do sweet but, well, Oliver.

“So”—I was a bit worried I’d jinx it but I had to ask the question—“is kissing part of the arrangement now?”

“If it…if you…wouldn’t mind.”

I heaved a heavy sigh. “Since you insist.”

“I’m serious, Lucien.”

“I know you are, and it’s adorable. Yes, I think we should add a kissing subclause to the fake boyfriend contract.”

His lips twitched. “I shall draft one first thing in the morning.”

Honestly, I could have taken a lot more teenage-level sofa action with Oliver, but we’d driven to Lancaster and back, and my dad had been a total cock to both of us, and we technically had grown-up jobs to go in the morning, all of which added up to bedtime. Besides, I didn’t have any books, so Oliver would be forced to rely on me for entertainment, and now we’d negotiated kissing, I intended to be pretty darn entertaining.

Gentleman that I was, I let Oliver use the bathroom first and then slipped in to clean my teeth and make sure I didn’t need a shower before I attempted to get snuggly with the attractive man I’d brought home with me. I was at the toothbrush-in-mouth stage when I realised my phone was flashing pretty insistently and, without really thinking about it, I checked my alerts. The problem was, Google had been pretty kind to me recently with its Celeb’s Kid Doesn’t Fuck Up Much stories, which meant my guard was way further down than it should have been. And so A Life Like Ordinary: The Here Nor There of Luc O’Donnell by Cameron Spenser kicked me right in the teeth.

Luc O’Donnell isn’t famous, it began. Even his parents—the so-called “celebrities” in this celebrity lifestyle piece have names more likely to provoke a “who” or an “I thought he was dead” than the universal snap of recognition that you get with the genuinely celebrated. When I met him at a party a month or so back, a mutual friend had told me his dad was that guy from that reality TV show (“that guy” being Jon Fleming and “that reality TV show” being The Whole Package insofar as those details matter). At the time, despite what we’re constantly being told about our “media obsessed culture,” neither the guy nor the show meant much to me, but it seemed like as good an icebreaker as any, so I went up to him.

Okay, this was okay. This was just facts. It was facts about a specific thing that had happened to me recently involving a guy who had sworn blind he wouldn’t do something like this, but it was just facts.

“Hi,” I began. “You’re Jon Fleming’s kid, right?”

I’ll never forget the way he looked at me with these intense blue-green eyes—come-to-bed eyes they’d have been called about a decade and a half ago—full of hope and fear and suspicion all at once. Here was a man, I thought, who’s never known what it’s like to be nobody. And I hadn’t realised until that moment what a burden that must be. It’s a cliché to say that fame has taken the place of religion in the twenty-first century, the Beyoncés and the Brangelinas of our world filling the void left by the gods and heroes of antiquity, but like most clichés there’s an element of truth to it. And the gods of old were merciless. For every Theseus who slays the Minotaur and returns home in triumph there’s an Ariadne abandoned on the island of Naxos. There’s an Aegeus casting himself into the ocean at the sight of a black sail.

This was still okay. This had to be okay. It was just air. Just words. Just self-serving waffle about nothing. But those were my eyes he was talking about. My fucking eyes.

In another life, I like to think that Luc O’Donnell and I might have worked out. In the short time I knew him, I saw a man with endless potential trapped in a maze he couldn’t even name. And from time to time I think how many tens of thousands like him there must be in the world—insignificant on a planet of billions but a staggering number when considered as a whole—all stumbling about blinded by reflected glory, never knowing where to step or what to trust, blessed and cursed by the Midas touch of our digital-era divinity.

I read the other day that he’s seeing somebody new, that he’s getting his life back on track. But the more I think about it, the less I believe there was ever a track for him to be on. I hope I’m wrong. I hope he’s happy. But when I see his name in the papers, I think back to those strange, haunted eyes. And I wonder.

I put my toothbrush carefully down by the sink. Then I sank down on the cold bathroom floor, put my back to the door, and pulled my knees up to my chest.

Chapter 31

“Lucien? Is everything all right?” Oliver was still tapping politely on the bathroom door. I wasn’t sure when he’d started.

I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my T-shirt. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? You’ve been in there rather a long time.”

“I said I’m fine.”

There was a sort of dithery noise from outside. “I want to respect your privacy, but I’m becoming increasingly concerned. Are you ill?”

“No. If I was ill, I would have said I’m ill. I said I was fine because I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound fine.” It was Oliver’s most patient of patient voices. “And if I’m being honest, this doesn’t seem like fine behaviour.”

“Well, it’s how I’m behaving.”

Then came a soft thunk like he’d put his head against the door. “And I’m not challenging that, it’s just… I know that a lot has happened today, and if you’re upset about anything, then I’d hope you could talk to me about it.”

With a somewhat louder thunk, I put my own head back rather harder than I’d expected. The sudden jolt of pain felt like it clarified things, but probably didn’t. “I know you do, Oliver, but I’ve talked to you too much already.”

“If you mean this evening, I… I don’t know what to say. I liked having that connection with you—I liked knowing I mattered—and I don’t think that’s something either of us should regret.”