by Alexis Hall
“He’s… not my type,” I tried.
Priya was obviously still narked I’d turned down her prostitutes. “He’s exactly the kind of man you said you were looking for. Which is to say, incredibly boring.”
“He’s not boring,” protested Bridge. “He’s a barrister…and…and he’s very nice. Lots of people have dated him.”
I shuddered. “And that’s not a red flag at all.”
“Alternatively,” suggested Tom, “you could look at it like this: between the two of you, you’ve had a completely normal, healthy dating life.”
“I don’t know why it never works out for him.” Bridget seemed genuinely bewildered that her awful friend was single. “He’s so lovely. And he dresses so well. And his house is so clean and tastefully decorated.”
James Royce-Royce pulled a wry face. “I hate to say it, darling, but he seems to be exactly what you’re looking for. Refusing to even meet with the man would be deeply ungracious.”
“But if he’s so fucking perfect,” I pointed out, “with his nice job and his nice house and his nice clothes, what the hell is he going to want with me?”
“You’re nice too.” One of Bridget’s hands landed consolingly on mine. “You just try very hard to pretend you aren’t. And, anyway, leave everything to me. I’m super good at this sort of thing.”
I was pretty sure my dating life was about to go off a bridge and into a river. And quite possibly wind up with spoilers all over the internet. But, God help me, it looked like Oliver Blackwood was my best hope.
Chapter 6
Three days later, against my better judgment and despite my protests, I was getting ready for a date with Oliver Blackwood. The WhatsApp group—One Gay More—was alive with advice, mainly about what I shouldn’t wear. Which seemed to amount to everything in my wardrobe. In the end I went with my skinniest jeans, my pointiest shoes, the only shirt I could find that didn’t need ironing, and a tailored jacket. I wasn’t going to win any fashion awards, but I thought I’d struck a nice balance between “has made no effort” and “is disgustingly desperate.” Unfortunately, too much texting, faffing, and selfie-taking for the approval of the peanut gallery had made me late. On the other hand, Oliver was a friend of Bridget’s so he’d probably developed a certain tolerance for tardiness over the years.
As I cantered through the door of Quo Vadis—his pick; I wouldn’t have dared go for anything so classy—it quickly became apparent he had not, in fact, developed any tolerance for tardiness whatsoever. He was sitting at a corner table, the light from the stained-glass windows dappling over his frown in shades of sapphire and gold. The fingers of one hand tapped impatiently against the tablecloth. The other cradled a pocket watch on a fob, which he was in the process of checking with the air of a man who had done so several times already.
Seriously, though. A fob. Who even?
“I’m so sorry,” I panted. “I…I…” Nope, I had nothing. So I had to fall back on the obvious. “I’m late.”
“These things happen.”
At my arrival he’d risen like we were at a tea dance in the ’50s, leaving me totally at a loss for what I was supposed to do in response. Shake his hand? Kiss his cheek? Check with my chaperone? “Should I sit down?”
“Unless”—one of his brows tilted quizzically—“you have another engagement.”
Was that a joke? “No. No. I’m, er, all yours.”
He made a be-my-guest gesture, and I wriggled gracelessly onto the banquette. Silence stretched between us, as socially discomforting as mozzarella strings. Oliver was much as I remembered him: a cool, clean, modern-art piece of a man entitled Disapproval in Pinstripes. And handsome enough to annoy me. My own face looked as if Picasso had created it on a bad day—bits of my mum and my dad thrown together without rhyme or reason. But Oliver had the sort of perfect symmetry that eighteenth-century philosophers would have taken as evidence for the existence of God.
“Are you wearing eyeliner?” he asked.
“What? No.”
“Really?”
“Well, it’s the kind of thing I think I’d remember. I’m pretty sure this is just what my eyes look like.”
He looked slightly affronted. “That’s ridiculous.”
Thankfully, at this juncture a waiter materialised with the menus, giving us an excuse to ignore each other for a few happy minutes.
“You should start,” remarked Oliver, “with the smoked eel sandwich. It’s a speciality.”
Since the menu came in the form of a broadsheet, with hand-drawn illustrations and a weather report at the top, it took me a moment to find what he was talking about. “It damn well ought to be for a tenner.”
“Since I will be paying, that need not concern you.”
I squirmed, which made my jeans squeak against the leather. “I’d be more comfortable if we went halfsies.”
“I wouldn’t, given I chose the restaurant, and I believe Bridget said you work with dung beetles.”
“I work for dung beetles.” Okay, that didn’t sound much better. “I mean, I work for their preservation.”
Another of his eyebrow twitches. “I wasn’t aware they needed preserving.”
“Yeah, neither are most people. That’s the problem. Science isn’t exactly my strong point but the short version is, they’re good for the soil and if they go extinct, we’ll all starve to death.”
“Then you’re doing good work, but I know for a fact that even the big-name charities pay far less than the private sector.” His eyes—which were a hard, gunmetal grey—held mine so long and so steadily that I actually started sweating. “This is on me. I insist.”
It felt weirdly patriarchal but I wasn’t sure I was allowed to complain about that, on account of us both being men. “Umm…”
“If it will make you feel better, you could allow me to order for you. This is one of my favourite restaurants and”—he shifted position and accidentally kicked me under the table—“my apologies… I enjoy introducing people to it.”
“Are you going to expect me to trim your cigar later?”
“Is that a euphemism?”
“Only in Gigi.” I sighed. “But fine. I guess you can order for me. If you really want to.”
For about 0.2 seconds, he looked perilously close to happy. “I can?”
“Yes. And”—God, why was I always so ungracious?—“sorry. Thank you.”
“Do you have any dietary restrictions?”
“Nope. I’ll eat anything. Um. Foodwise. That is.”
“And…” He hesitated. Then tried to pretend he hadn’t. “Are we drinking?”
My heart did the half-dead fish flop it always did when conversation strayed even tangentially close to any of the things that had been said about me over the years. “I know you’ve got no reason to believe this, but I’m not an alcoholic. Or a sexoholic. Or a drug addict.”
There was a lengthy silence. I stared at the crisp, white tablecloth, wanting to die.
“Well,” Oliver said at last. “I’ve one reason to believe it.”
In an ideal world, I would have behaved with terrible dignity. In the world I actually lived in, I gave him a sullen glance. “Which is?”
“You told me otherwise. So are we drinking?”
My stomach had gone into a wild free-fall. I hardly knew why. “Can we not, if you don’t mind? While I don’t have medical problems with alcohol, I do tend to make a bit of a tit of myself when plastered.”
“I’m aware.”
And to think I’d almost liked him. Although technically I didn’t have to like him, I just had to make him think I liked him for long enough that he’d date me for long enough that I wouldn’t get fired. It was fine. I could do this. I could be charming. I was naturally charming. I was a quarter Irish and a quarter French. You couldn’t get more charming than that.
The waiter returned and, while I sat in sulky silence, Oliver placed our order. The whole experience was slightly strange, since I still hadn’t figured out how demeaning I should be finding it. I definitely wouldn’t have wanted it to happen regularly. But there was also some pathetic, lonely part of me that enjoyed being so publicly possessed. Especially by a man like Oliver Blackwood. It felt perilously close to being worth something.
“I can’t help but notice,” I began, when the waiter departed, “that if this fish sarnie is all that and a bag of chips, you aren’t having one.”
“Yes. Well.” Surprisingly, Oliver went a teeny bit pink around the ears. “I’m a vegetarian.”
“Then how do you know about the magic eel?”
“I’ve eaten meat before, and I like it. It’s just I’ve reached the point that I can’t justify it ethically.”
“But you’re cheerfully going to sit there and watch me chow down on bits of dead animal like some kind of creepy carni-voyeur?”
He blinked. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. I just wanted you to enjoy the food, and I’d never impose my principles on people who don’t necessarily share them.”
Was it me, or had he basically said “I think you’re behaving unethically, but I assume I can’t expect any better from you”? The mature making-this-work-and-saving-my-job reaction would be to let that slide. “Thanks. I always like my dinner served with a sprinkling of sanctimony.”
“That’s rather unfair.” Oliver moved again, and kicked me again. “Especially given you’d have been equally, if not more, offended if I’d ordered vegetarian without asking you. Also, I’m sorry I keep catching you with my feet. Yours are never where I’m expecting them to be.”
I gave him one my meanest looks. “These things happen.”
The conversation hadn’t so much died on us as been taken out back and shot in the head. And I knew I should be playing paramedic but I couldn’t quite bring myself to or work out how.
Instead, I crunched on some of the baked salisfy and parmesan that had just arrived (which was delicious in spite of the fact I had no idea what salisfy was, and didn’t want to give Oliver the satisfaction of asking him) and wondered what it would be like being here with somebody I could actually stand. It was a lovely, cosy place, with the brightly painted windows and caramel leather seating, and the food was clearly going to be amazing. The sort of restaurant you’d come back to for anniversaries and special occasions, and reminisce about the perfect first date you shared there.
The fish sarnie, when it showed up, turned out to be pretty much the most perfect thing I’d ever eaten: buttery sourdough wrapped around smoky slabs of eel, slathered in truly fiery horseradish and Dijon mustard, and served with pickled red onions just sharp enough to cut through the meaty intensity of the fish. I think maybe I genuinely moaned.
“Okay,” I said, once I’d inhaled it. “I was too hasty. That was so good I could pretty much marry you now.”
Maybe I was seeing the world through eel-tinted glasses, but right then, Oliver’s eyes had a touch of silver in them. And were softer than I’d thought. “I’m happy you liked it.”
“I could eat one every day for the rest of my life. How could you know these exist and give them up?”
“I…thought it was the right thing to do.”
“I can’t tell if that’s really commendable or really tragic.”
He lifted one shoulder in a self-conscious shrug. And the silence between us, while still not comfortable, seemed slightly less jagged. Maybe this was going to be okay. Maybe we’d been saved by a dead fish.
“So…uh…” Still riding my sandwich bliss, I felt slightly more able to make the effort. “I seem to remember you being a lawyer or something?”
“I’m a barrister, yes.”
“And what do you…barrist?”
“I—” The toe of his shoe whomped me in the knee. “God. I’m sorry. I’ve done it again.”
“I’ve got to say, you play one hell of a hard-core game of footsie.”
“I assure you, it’s been accidental every time.”
He looked so mortified I took pity on him. “It’s me. I’m all legs.”
We both peered beneath the tablecloth.
“How about if I…” I suggested, swinging my feet to the right.
He shuffled his Italian leather oxfords left. “And I go…”
His ankle brushed against mine as we rearranged ourselves. And it had clearly been way too long since I got laid, because I damn near fainted. Dragging my attention away from our under-table negotiations, I found him watching me with this crooked half-smile—as if we’d single-handedly (-footedly?) brought peace to the Middle East.
And all of a sudden he was a lot more bearable. Enough more bearable that I could almost see myself putting up with a man who smiled like that, and bought me amazing eel sandwiches, even if I didn’t have to.
Which was way, way worse than not liking him.
Chapter 7
“Your…your job?” I asked with all the smoothness of a bowl of granola.
“Ah. Yes. Well, I”—this time, his foot only stroked the side of mine as it jiggled under the table—“specialise in criminal defence. And you might as well get it over with.”
“Get what over with?”
“The question that everyone asks when you tell them you work in criminal defence.”
This felt uncomfortably like failing an exam. In a blind panic, I blurted out the first thing that came into my head. “Do you have sex in the wig?”
He stared at me. “No, because they’re very expensive, very uncomfortable, and I have to wear mine to work.”
“Oh.” I tried to come up with another question. Except now all I could think of was “Do you have sex in the robe?” and that obviously wasn’t going to help.
“The question people usually ask,” he went on, like he was the only one in the play who’d remembered his lines, “is how do you live with yourself when you spend your whole life putting rapists and murderers back on the street?”
“Actually, that is a good question.”
“Should I answer it?”
“Well, you seem to really want to.”
“It’s not about whether I want to.” His jaw tightened. “It’s about whether you’re going to think I’m an amoral profiteer if I don’t.”
I couldn’t imagine that he—or anyone—would care that much for my opinion, good, bad, or indifferent. I spread my hands in a go-for-it gesture. “I guess you’d better tell me then.”
“The short version is: an adversarial justice system isn’t perfect, but it’s the best that we’ve got. Statistically, yes, most people I defend in court are guilty because the police can broadly do their jobs. But even people who probably did it are entitled to a zealous legal defence. And that’s a principle to which…to which I am ideologically committed.”
Thankfully, while he’d been delivering this monologue—which only needed some stirring background music to reach its full dramatic potential—I was served a truly glorious pie. Beef, as it turned out, almost meltingly soft, swimming in gravy and barely contained by its crisp pastry cap.
“Wow”—I glanced up from the pie and slammed straight into Oliver’s hardest, coldest glare—“you seem really defensive about this.”
“I just find it helps to be honest from the beginning. This is who I am, and what I do, and I believe in what I do.”
I suddenly noticed he’d barely touched his…beetroot, I think it was? Beetroot and other virtuous vegetables. His hands were folded against the table so tightly that his knuckles were white.
“Oliver,” I said softly, realising I’d never said his name before, and confused by how intimate it was. “I don’t think you’re a bad person. Which you must know means next to nothing coming from me, because you only have to pick up a paper or Google my name to kn
ow what sort of person I am.”
“I”—now he looked uncomfortable for a different reason—“I am aware of your reputation. But if I’m to know you, Lucien, I’d rather it came from you.”
Shit. This had got real out of nowhere. How hard could it be to get a guy to like you enough to date you for a few months but not so much that you had to deal with those weird emotion things that fucked with your head, ruined your sleep, and left you crying on the bathroom floor at three in the morning? “Well, for starters, it’s Luc.”
“Luke?” Somehow I could always tell when people pronounced it with a k and an e. “It seems a shame when Lucien is such a beautiful name.”
“Actually that’s the English pronunciation.”
“Surely it’s not”—he flinched—“Looshan as the Americans would have it?”
“No. God no. My mother’s French.”
“Ah. Lucien, then.” He said it perfectly, too, with the half-swallowed softness of the final syllable, smiling at me—the first full smile I’d seen from him, and shocking in its sweetness. “Vraiment? Vous parlez français?”
There’s really no excuse for what happened next. I think maybe I just wanted him to keep smiling at me. Because for some reason I said, “Oui oui. Un peu.”
And then, to my horror, he rattled off God knew what.
Leaving me to scrape the bottom of the barrel of my GCSE French, for which I’d received a D. “Um…um… Je voudrais aller au cinema avec mes amis? Ou est la salle de bain?”
Utterly perplexed, he pointed. So I was obliged to go the bathroom. And when I slunk back, he immediately confronted me with “You don’t speak French at all, do you?”
“No.” I hung my head. “I mean, my mother used both when I was growing up, but I still turned out stubbornly monolingual.”
“Then why didn’t you just say that?”
“I…don’t know. I guess I assumed you didn’t speak French either?”
“Why on earth would I imply I could speak French, when I couldn’t?”