“Fine.” She threw her hands in the air. “It was a pharmaceutical company whose drugs, let me be very clear, cannot be proven to have killed any children at all. What can I say? I like clients who can actually pay.”

“Just to check,” I asked, having slowly come to the realisation that Oliver’s friends being straight was not the only thing that made them different from my friends, “am I the only person in this room who isn’t either a lawyer or married to a lawyer?”

Peter reverentially returned the wobbly Ferrero Rocher to the Ferrero Rocher table. “Well, you could fix that. It is legal now.”

“By which I think he means”—Amanda looked up from the sofa, where she’d been sitting largely on top of her husband—“that it would be legal for you to marry Oliver. Not that it would be legal to kill every lawyer in the room, whatever Shakespeare had to say on the subject.”

“What?” cried Peter, comically startled. “Why would you go there? Obviously I meant marriage. Not murder.”

“Tell me that again when those three have been talking jurisprudence for three hours.”

Oliver cleared his throat—he’d gone a little pink. “I know you’re all terribly excited I have a boyfriend. But I think that dropping the M-bomb at this stage in my relationship would be an excellent way to ensure I don’t have one for much longer.”

“Sorry.” Peter hung his head. “I wasn’t actually…I didn’t mean…please don’t break up with him, Luc… Have another Ferrero Rocher.”

“And for the record,” Oliver went on, “just because I have legal right to do something doesn’t mean I actually have to do it. Especially not with someone I’ve been dating for less than two months. No offence, Luc.”

I pulled dramatically out of his arms. “Are you fucking kidding me? What am I going to do with the dress?”

This earned a proportionate laugh and made me feel like I was boyfriending appropriately.

“Shall we not”—Jennifer threw the room a stern look—“attempt to make anyone feel comfortable by suggesting they get married. We’re actually thrilled to bits you’re here, Luc. And the good news is only some of us are lawyers.”

“Yes.” Ben was pouring himself a glass of the good wine. “I live off my wife. It’s extremely modern and feminist of me.”

“And I did law at university,” added Brian, “with Morecombe, Slant, and Honeyplace over here. Thankfully, I realised it was fucking awful and I was shit at it, and went into IT.”

“As for me—” began Peter, before he was interrupted by the doorbell. “That’ll be Bridget.”

Jennifer went to let her in and Bridge burst into the front room, still taking off her coat, a few seconds later.

“You are not,” she cried, “going to believe what’s happened.”

The room got about halfway through a chorus of “Careful, Bridge” when the hem of her jacket caught Peter’s lovingly stacked pile of Ferrero Rocher and sent them flying, bouncing, and rolling across the floor.

She spun round. “Oh my gosh. What was that?”

“Nothing.” Peter sighed. “Don’t worry about it.”

He, Ben, and Tom—who had followed Bridget in—began to gather up the wreckage of the Ambassador’s Reception.

“What’s happened?” asked pretty much everyone.

“Well, I can’t really talk about it, but we’ve recently acquired a very promising new author who specialises in high-concept science fiction. And it got a starred review in Publishers Weekly and everything, and there were some wonderful pull quotes and the one we decided to run with especially recommended it to fans of another, more famous author of high-concept science fiction. So we put it on all the posters and there’s big campaign all over the Underground and it’s on the front of the book and it’s too late to change any of it.”

Oliver was looking perplexed in a way that made me want to hug him. “That seems unalloyedly positive, Bridget.”

“It would be.” She threw herself into the nearest free chair. “Except the more famous author in question was Philip K. Dick. And the pull quote was ‘If you like Dick, you’ll love this.’ And no one spotted it until we started getting extremely disappointed reviews on Amazon.”

Peter glanced up from the Ferrero Rocher carnage with an expression somewhere between playful and speculative. “Just out of curiosity, how are the sales?”

“Surprisingly good, actually. I think it might have crossover appeal.” She spotted me. “Oh, Luc, you’re here.”

I grinned at her. “I’m a plus-one.”

“I don’t believe it.” Jennifer Wimbledoned between me and Bridge. “Oliver brings his new boyfriend to my party, and I think, finally, I beat you to relationship gossip. Then it turns out you’ve already met.”

Bridge looked, and there’s no other word for it, smug. “Of course. Luc’s my best friend and Oliver’s the only other gay man I know. I’ve been trying to get them to date for years.”

Chapter 37

It took about ten minutes but eventually we all managed to cram ourselves round a dining table that was strictly designed for six, eight at a push, and taking the piss at ten.

“I will admit,” said Jennifer as she wheeled a desk chair in from God knew where, “I was slightly banking on a couple of people cancelling at the last minute.”

Brian manoeuvred his mead glass into position amongst the tangles of cutlery. “At the very least, you’d think Oliver would have driven his boyfriend off by now.”

“With friends like you, Brian”—Oliver gave a sigh that I worried signalled more than amused exasperation—“who needs opposing counsel.”

At which point, Amanda elbowed her husband sharply in the ribs. “Get with the programme, dude. Right now we’re in the happy-for-you space. In six to eight days, we’ll be in the mocking-you space.”

Oliver had just enough room to put his head in his hands. “Please stop helping.”

“Anyway.” That was Jennifer. “Awkward as this is, I like to feel that ‘slightly more friends than you can fit around your table’ is exactly the right number of friends to have. So I want to thank you all for having managed to avoid work crises, childcare emergencies—”

Some polyphonic bells rang out from Ben’s breast pocket and he leapt to his feet, nearly clocking Tom in the head on the way. “Fuck. Babysitter. I bet the little fuckers have burned the house down.”