by Alexis Hall
“You remember that my dad is a recovering druggie on reality TV and my mum is an ’80s recluse with exactly one friend?”
“Yes, but I assume they still have a club?”
“They don’t.”
“Don’t worry. Plenty more options.” A pause. “Just give me a moment while I think of them.”
Oh hello, rock bottom. Nice to see you again. Do you want to be my boyfriend?
After several long moments, Alex perked up like a beagle scenting a rabbit. “What about the chaps you went to school with? Ring them up and ask if any of them has a nice sister. I mean, brother. I mean, gay brother.”
“I went to school in a tiny village. There were three people in my year. I’m not in touch with any of them.”
“How peculiar.” He tilted his head quizzically. “I assumed you must have been a Harrow man.”
“You know there are people who went to neither Eton or Harrow?”
“Well yes, obviously. Girls.”
I was in no state to explain the socioeconomics of modern Britain to a man so posh he didn’t even think it was weird that you pronounced the t in Moët but not merlot. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but can we please get back to you trying to fix my love life?”
“I have to admit I’m a bit stumped.” He fell silent, frowning and fiddling with his cuffs. Then, out of nowhere, he beamed at me. “I’ve thought of something.”
Under normal circumstances, I would have taken this with the giant grain of salt it deserved. But I was desperate. “What?”
“Why don’t you say you’re going out with me?”
“You’re not gay. And everyone knows that you’re not gay.”
He shrugged. “I’ll tell them I’ve changed my mind.”
“I’m really not sure that’s how it works.”
“I thought these things were meant to be fluid nowadays. Twentieth century and all that.”
This was not the time to remind Alex what century it was. “Don’t you have a girlfriend?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, Miffy. I’d quite forgotten. But she’s a terrific girl. She won’t mind at all.”
“In her place, I would mind. I would mind a lot.”
“Well, maybe that’s why you don’t have a boyfriend.” He gave me a faintly wounded look. “You sound very demanding.”
“Look. I appreciate the offer. But don’t you think if you can’t remember you’ve got an actual girlfriend, you might have trouble remembering a fake boyfriend?”
“No, you see that’s the clever thing about it. I can pretend that you’re my boyfriend, and nobody will think it’s strange that I’ve never mentioned you before because I’m such an utter nincompoop that it could very easily have slipped my mind.”
Terrifyingly, he was beginning to make sense. “You know what,” I said. “I will genuinely think about it.”
“Think about what?”
“Thanks, Alex. You’ve been a big help.”
I made my way slowly back to my office, where I was relieved to discover I hadn’t driven off any other donors in the interim. Then I sat at my desk with my head in my hands and wished—
God. I was too fucked up to even know what I was wishing for. Obviously, it would have been nice if my father wasn’t on TV and I wasn’t in the papers and my job wasn’t in jeopardy. But none of those things, either together or individually, were really the problem here. They were just a few more dead seabirds bobbing on the outskirts of the oil spill that was my life.
After all, I couldn’t fix the fact my father was Jon Fleming. I couldn’t fix that he hadn’t wanted me. I couldn’t fix falling in love with Miles. And I couldn’t fix that he hadn’t wanted me either.
It was while I was wallowing that I came to the realisation that Alex hadn’t been entirely unhelpful. I mean, he hadn’t gone so far as to actually be helpful—small steps, small steps—but he was, broadly speaking, right in that people you knew were an effective way to meet people you didn’t know.
I grabbed my phone and fired up the WhatsApp group, which somebody had recently rechristened Don’t Wanna Be All Bi Myself. After a moment’s consideration, I sent a series of siren emojis followed by Help. Emergency. Queervengers Assemble. Rose & Crown. 6 tonight and was secretly kind of touched by how quickly the screen lit up with promises to be there.
Chapter 5
It was slightly selfish of me to choose the Rose & Crown for the meet-up because it was way closer to me than it was to anyone else. But since I was the one having the crisis, I felt entitled. Besides, it was one of my favourite pubs—a gawky seventeenth-century building that looked as though it had been airlifted in from a country village and plonked down in the middle of Blackfriars. With its disconcertingly expansive beer-garden and hanging baskets, it was practically its own little island, the surrounding office blocks almost leaning away from it in embarrassment.
I ordered a beer and a burger and staked a claim to a picnic table outside. As it was what passed for spring in England, the air was a bit nippy, but if Londoners let little things like cold, rain, a slightly worrying level of pollution, and getting crapped on by pigeons bother us, we’d never go outside at all. I was only waiting a couple of minutes before Tom showed up.
Which was ever so slightly awkward as fuck.
Tom isn’t, strictly speaking, a friend. He’s a friend-in-law, being the long-term partner of the group’s Token Straight Girl, Bridget. He’s both the hottest and the coolest person I know, on account of looking like Idris Elba’s cleaner-cut younger brother and being an actual spy. Well, not exactly. He works for the Intelligence Division of Customs and Excise, which is one of those agencies that exist but never get in the papers.
It gets even more complicated than that because, technically, I saw him first. We went on a couple of dates and I thought it was going really well, so I introduced him to Bridget, and she fucking stole him from me. Well, she didn’t steal him. He just liked her more. And I don’t resent it at all. I mean, I do. But I don’t. Except when I do.
And probably I shouldn’t have hit on him again when he and Bridget went through that bad patch a couple of years ago. They were on a break, so it was less shitty of me than it could have been. And, anyway, all it wound up doing was making him realise how much he loved her and wanted to fix things with her. So that felt great.
Basically Tom does to my self-esteem what he does to people traffickers and gunrunners. Although my self-esteem is way less entrenched.
“Hi,” I said, trying not to dig a hole in the grass and wriggle into it like an endangered dung beetle.
Tom gave me a very continental and slightly soul-destroying kiss on the cheek, plonking his beer down next to mine. “Good to see you. It’s been a while.”
“Yeah. Hasn’t it.”
I must have accidentally looked traumatised because Tom went on, “Bridge is running late. I mean, obviously.”
I laughed nervously. Late is her default. “So. Um. What have you been up to?”
“This and that. Big commercial fraud case. Should be wrapping up fairly soon. What about you?”
From three years of hanging out with Tom, I knew that commercial fraud was industry code for something significantly more serious, although I’d never quite worked out what. Which meant having to tell him I was organising a party to raise money for poo bugs was the tiniest bit mortifying.
But, of course, he looked terribly interested and asked a bunch of really insightful questions, half of which I should probably have been asking myself. In any case, it kept the conversation going until the James Royce-Royces arrived.
I met James Royce and James Royce (now James Royce-Royce and James Royce-Royce) at a university LGBTQ+ event. In some ways, it’s strange the two of them work so well together because their name is pretty much the only thing they’ve ever had in common. James Royce-Royce is a bespectacled chef with a way of
expressing himself that… Look, I’m trying to find a tactful way to put it, but basically he’s just phenomenally camp. James Royce-Royce, on the other hand, looks like a Russian hit man, has a job I don’t understand involving unspeakably complex mathematics, and is incredibly shy.
Currently they’re trying to adopt, so the conversation very quickly became about the “truly hellacious” (James Royce-Royce’s term) amount of paperwork involved in what I’d naively assumed was the straightforward process of getting babies from people who don’t want them to people who do want them. I honestly couldn’t tell if it was more or less alienating than talking about actual children.
Next we got Priya, a tiny lesbian with multicoloured extensions who somehow managed to pay her bills by welding bits of metal to other bits of metal and selling them in galleries. I’m sure she’s genuinely very talented, but I am totally unqualified to judge. She used to be the only other singleton in my immediate friendship group, and many were the evenings we spent drinking cheap prosecco, lamenting our mutual unlovability, and promising to cash out and marry each other if we were both still alone at fifty. But then she betrayed me by falling in love with a married Medievalist twentysomething years her senior. And then, even more unforgivably, making it work.
“Where the shit were you on Saturday?” She hopped onto the table and glared at me. “We were supposed to be sitting in a corner judging people.”
I gave one of those I’m-pretending-not-to-be-mortified shrugs. “Showed up, bought a cocktail, got the knock-back from a pretty hipster, left in disgrace.”
“Huh.” Priya’s mouth quirked into a crooked grin. “So fairly normal evening for you.”
“I want you to know that while I do have a comeback, that’s actually completely fair.”
“Which is why I said it. Anyway, what’s this great calamity?”
“Bridget,” said James Royce-Royce, “has not yet graced us with her presence.”
Priya rolled her eyes. “That’s not a calamity. That’s business as usual.”
Since waiting for Bridge could last anything between twenty minutes and never, I spilled my guts. About the pictures, the donors, and how I was totally fucked job-wise if I didn’t get a respectable boyfriend stat.
James Royce-Royce was the first to react. “That,” he declared, “is the most outrageous transgression against all forms of decency. You’re a fundraiser for an environmental charity, not a contestant on Love Island.”
“I agree.” Gorgeous Not-Dating-Me Tom took a sip of his drink, throat working as he swallowed. “This isn’t okay on any level. It’s not my area, but you’ve got a case for an employment tribunal here.”
I gave a sad little shrug. “Maybe, but if I tank our fundraising by being too gay, then I won’t have an employer to tribune.”
“Seems like”—Priya paused to retie the rainbow lace on her Docs—“you’ve got two options. Get fired or get grafting.”
This earned her an over-the-glasses look from James Royce-Royce. “Priya, my darling, we’re trying to be emotionally supportive.”
“You’re trying to be emotionally supportive,” she said. “I’m trying to be useful.”
“Emotional support is useful, you Technicolour reprobate.”
Tom, who didn’t have the same fond memories of their bickering, sighed. “I’m sure we can be both. But I’m not sure we should be encouraging Luc to go along with this.”
“Look,” I told him, “that’s super right-on and very kind of you, but I don’t think I have a choice. So I need you all to get on board and find me a man.”
There was a worryingly long silence.
Finally Tom broke it. “Okay. If that’s what you want. But you’re going to have to narrow the field a little. What are you looking for?”
“Didn’t you hear me? A man. Any man. As long as he can wear a suit, make small talk, and not embarrass me at a fundraiser.”
“Luc, I…” He pushed a hand through his hair. “I really am trying to help. But that’s a terrible attitude. I mean, what are you expecting me to do? Call up my ex and be like, Hey, Nish, great news. I’ve got a friend with incredibly low standards who wants to go out with you?”
“Well, the last time I had high standards, the guy dumped me for my best friend.”
James Royce-Royce sucked in an audible breath. And, suddenly, everyone was studiously looking in different directions.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “I… Sorry. I’m a bit upset right now, and I use being a prick as a defence mechanism.”
“Not a problem.” Tom went back to his beer.
It took me a second or two to realise I wasn’t sure if he meant “not a problem because I’m not offended and don’t consider you prickish” or “not a problem you’re a prick because we’re not actually friends.” Fucking spies. And it’s not like he was wrong. I was asking a lot here.
“The thing is”—I started picking the label off the nearest bottle—“I’ve not been able to do the relationship thing for…for a while. And probably you’re all going to spend the next thirty years arguing with your partners over who gets stuck with me for Christmas. But I can’t—”
“Oh, Luc,” cried James Royce-Royce, “you’ll always be welcome at Casa de Royce-Royce.”
“Not entirely the point, but good to know.”
“Wait a minute.” Priya looked up from her boots and snapped her fingers. “I’ve got it. Hire someone. I can think of at least thirty people who’d jump on the gig.”
“I can’t tell if I’m more disturbed that you’re recommending I solicit a prostitute or that you apparently already know thirty prostitutes.”
She gave me a confused look. “I was mostly thinking of out-of-work actors or performing artists, but whatever works. Though now you mention it, I think Kevin did a bit of escorting in the late 2000s, and Sven still does pro-domming on the side.”
“Wow.” I put up the world’s most sarcastic double-thumbs. “He sounds perfect. Which part of ‘trying to keep out of the tabloids’ do you not understand?”
“Oh, come on. He’s lovely. He’s a poet. They won’t find out.”
“They always find out.”
“Okay so”—Priya seemed a tad frustrated with me—“when you said a man, any man, you actually meant any man who fits into a very narrow, middle-class, and slightly heteronormative definition of acceptability.”
“Yes. I work for an obscure ecological charity. Narrow, middle-class, and slightly heteronormative is our target demographic.”
There was another lengthy silence.
“Please,” I legit begged, “you must have some friends who are neither sex workers nor too good for me.”
Then James Royce-Royce leaned in and whispered something to James Royce-Royce.
James Royce-Royce’s face lit up. “That’s a splendid idea, sugarplum. He’d be perfect. Except I think he married a chartered accountant from Neasden last July.”
James Royce-Royce looked crestfallen.
I yanked the label fully off the beer bottle and crumpled it up. “Right. My options thus far: someone who’s probably already married, thirty prostitutes, and a bloke called Nish who used to date Tom and will, therefore, see me as a bit of a comedown.”
“I didn’t mean,” said Tom slowly, “to make you think that I thought that Nish would think he was too good for you. I’d be happy to introduce you. It’s just, from his Instagram, I’m pretty sure he’s seeing someone.”
“Well, I’m fired.” I thonked my head onto the table, somewhat harder than I intended.
“Sorry I’m laaaaate.” Bridget’s voice rang clarion-like across the beer garden, and I turned my face sideways in time to see her wobbling urgently over the grass in her ever-impractical heels. “You won’t believe what’s happened. Can’t really talk about it. But one of our authors was scheduled to have this massively prestigious midnight
release tonight and the lorry carrying the books to Foyles went over a bridge into a river and now not only are half of them ruined but the other half have been scavenged by extremely well-organised fans and there are spoilers all over the internet. I think I’m going to get fired.” And, with that, she collapsed breathlessly into Tom’s lap.
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in close. “That’s not your fault, Bridge. They’re not going to fire you over it.”
Bridget Welles: my Token Straight Friend. Always late, always in the middle of a crisis, always on a diet. For whatever reason, she and Tom are genuinely good together. And although I’m messed up about Tom because of my own shit, it’s kind of nice that she’s found someone who sees what an amazing, loving person she is and who isn’t also as gay as a box of ribbons.
“Luc, on the other hand,” said Priya, “is definitely going to get fired unless he gets a boyfriend.”
Bridge honed in on me like a laser-guided date launcher. “Oh, Luc, I’m so pleased. I’ve been on at you to get a boyfriend for ages.”
I peeled my head off the table. “A+ priorities, Bridge.”
“This is the best thing ever.” She squeezed her hands together excitedly. “I know the perfect guy.”
My heart sank. I knew where this was going. I love Bridget, but she only knows one other gay person outside our immediate social circle. “Don’t say Oliver.”
“Oliver!”
“I’m not dating Oliver.”
Her eyes went big and hurt. “What’s wrong with Oliver?”
I’d met Oliver Blackwood exactly twice. The first time, we’d been the only two gay men at one of Bridget’s work parties. Someone had come up to us and asked if we were a couple, and Oliver had looked utterly disgusted, and replied, “No, this is just another homosexual I’m standing next to.” The second time, I’d been very drunk and very desperate, and invited him to come home with me. My memories of what happened next were hazy, but I’d woken alone the next morning, fully clothed next to a large glass of water. On both occasions, in uniquely humiliating ways, he’d made it very clear that we each had a league, and his was very much out of mine.