by Alexis Hall
“Is this okay?” I asked. “Am I okay? Am I dressed okay?”
“You’re fine. This is a nice, relaxed evening. Everyone’s going to be very casual and very normal and—”
The door swung open, revealing a stunningly put-together redhead, wearing a full-length evening gown and an actual fucking fascinator. At which point, my mouth also swung open.
“Oliver,” she cried. “I’m so happy you could make it. And you’ve brought Luc. At least, I assume it’s Luc.” Her eyes widened. “Crap. You are Luc, right?”
I was trying, without much subtlety or success, to hide behind Oliver. This was clearly not the kind of party to wear my artfully ripped jeans to. “Um. Yes. That’s me.”
“Come in. Come in. Brian and Amanda are already here, because of course they are. And Bridge is running late because of course she is.”
We came in, me pulling at Oliver’s elbow like a small child at the supermarket in order to signal precisely how little I had signed up for this. A man in full black tie met us at the door to the living room.
“Hi,” he said, presenting a silver tray with a teetering pyramid of Ferrero Rocher on it. “And be careful because this is actually quite unstable.”
Once again, I tried to safe-word to Oliver with my eyes. But he seemed to be taking this totally in his stride, gently plucking a chocolate from the stack. “Monsieur.” It was his driest, most laconic voice which, believe me, was pretty fucking dry and laconic. “With these Rocher, you are really spoiling us.”
The guy nearly spilled his tray in excitement. “Thank you. Brian completely fluffed it. And this took hours.”
“You know,” called a deep voice from within, “you can buy them in pyramids now.”
“Shut up, Brian. You have forfeited your right to have an opinion on this.”
“Peter,” said Oliver, as we were ushered past the Ferrero Rocher and into the living room, “please tell me that this whole evening isn’t going to be a sequence of pointlessly elaborate ’90s references.”
“No.” Jennifer gave him a wounded look. “Some of it’s pointlessly elaborate ’80s references.”
Laughing, he hugged her. “Happy birthday, darling. Just no Twister and no Pokémon.”
“How do you feel”—her eyes glinted—“about Pogs?”
He glanced at me. “I’m sorry, Lucien. These are my friends. I’m not exactly sure how that happened.”
“Hey,” protested Jennifer. “It’s my birthday. If I want to dress up like an idiot and make you all eat prawn cocktail in celebration of the decades that spawned me, that’s my choice, and you will damn well support it.”
“You could have at least warned me. I’ve been trying to convince this man I’m cool.”
She sighed. “Oh, Oliver. Even when the word ‘cool’ was cool, cool people didn’t use it.”
While she was completely right, I felt I should at least try to defend my ambiguously fake boyfriend from his definitely real friends. “Not true. Bart Simpson said ‘cool.’”
“Bart Simpson was a fictional ten-year-old,” pointed out the man who had failed to Rocher correctly. Brian, was it?
“I’m not sure,” Oliver interjected, “I’m comfortable being compared to Bart Simpson.”
I was probably going to get dumped. But there was really no other response. “Don’t have a cow, man,” I said, at exactly the same time everybody else did.
“You know”—Oliver put his arm around my waist—“Lucien was concerned that he wouldn’t have anything in common with you. He clearly failed to account for the fact that mocking me is everybody’s favourite pastime.”
Jennifer snuck a curious look at me. “Were you, Luc? We were all worried we were going to scare off another of Oliver’s boyfriends.”
“We don’t scare them off.” This was Brian, again, in the too jolly tone of someone about to be slightly more insulting than he intends to be.“Oliver does.”
“I’ll admit”—Oliver had tensed up beside me so I thought it was a good moment to launch myself into the conversation—“that the evening gown did throw me. But I’m totally here for a…a…whatever this is.”
Jennifer thought about it for a moment. “Well, I’m not quite sure what it is, actually. It’s a sort of celebration of things eight-year-old me thought thirty-year-old me would have in the future. Except I thought we’d be having this party on the moon.”
“Now then.” Peter clapped his hands in a hosty kind of way. “Can I get either of you a drink? We’ve got Lambrini, Bacardi Breezers, Cointreau, some things that are actually nice. And Amanda’s in the kitchen with mead.”
I blinked. “Did I miss the ’90s mead boom?”
“We’re reenactors,” explained Brian. “We never don’t bring mead. Also they didn’t say which ’90s.”
Oliver drifted over to one of the sofas and drew me down next to him. “I’ll have one of the things that are actually nice.”
“You”—I poked his knee—“are not in the spirit. What flavour breezers do you have?”
Peter perked up. “Good question. I think…some pink ones? And maybe some orange ones? And possibly a slightly different orange one that might be peach?”
“I’ll take the slightly different orange one.”
“Coming right up. And I’ll see what’s happened to Amanda.”
“And Peter,” cried Jennifer, “bring the vol-au-vents. Or is it vols-au-vent?”
“I think technically…” A woman, who looked remarkably like Brian, apart from the beard—as in Brian had the beard, not the woman—appeared in the doorway “…it would be volent-au-vent. Because vol-au-vent is from the French ‘to fly in the wind.’ And so the plural would be ‘they fly in the wind,’ which would be ‘ils volent au vent.’”
The conversation ricocheted off the way conversations between people who’ve known each other far too long tend to. And even though I didn’t know what the “infamous digger incident” was or what happened at Amanda’s twenty-eighth, I felt surprisingly un-left-out. I mean, I did go through a short routine of emotional gymnastics, remembering how I’d freaked out when we’d gone to dinner with Alex and Miffy, and being slightly protective of the closeness I had with Oliver in private. Especially since he tended to be so buttoned up and polite in public. But, actually, it was nice to see him happy and relaxed, and surrounded by people who cared about him.
Eventually the doorbell rang, and Peter took up his Fererro Rocher station. I assumed this was going to be some people I hadn’t met because I’d had a message from Bridge saying she was five minutes away, which meant she’d be at least another hour. Voices drifted in from the corridor.
“God, sorry we’re late,” boomed somebody about two shades posher than me and three shades less posh than Alex. “The twins were absolute shits. Shit, by the way, being the operative… Oh monsieur, with this Rocher you’re really spoiling us.”
“Suck it, Brian.” That was probably Peter.
“Please,” continued the posh man, “for Christ’s sake, bring me some alcohol. And be careful when you’re hanging up my jacket. I think one of the little bastards threw up on it.”
“I told you when they were born”—another stranger, a woman this time—“we should have left them on a hillside overnight and kept whichever one survived.”
There was a flapping of coats and a shuffling of shoes, and Jennifer and Peter came back into the room, followed by a surprisingly dapper man in a plum waistcoat and a small, round woman in a polka-dot lindy-hop dress.
Oliver—who wasn’t so relaxed as to forget his manners—stood to greet them. “Ben, Sophie, this is Luc—he’s my boyfriend. Luc, this is Ben, who’s a stay-at-home dad, and Sophie, who is Satan.”
“I’m not Satan,” she huffed. “I’m Beelzebub at worst.”
“Jennifer?” Oliver made a slightly imperious gesture. “Who was your la
st client?”
Sophie rolled her eyes. They’d clearly played this game a lot.
“A refugee from Brunei, who’d have been tortured if he’d been deported.” Jennifer lifted her glass of Lambrini in a toast-like gesture. “Yours, Oliver?”
“A barman who stole from an employer who cheated him. Yours, Sophie?”
She mumbled something incoherent.
“What was that? We didn’t hear you.”
“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.”
And, with that, he ran out of the room.
“—mostly avoid childcare emergencies,” Jennifer continued.
Sophie finished her wine. “Darling, that’s not an emergency. That’s our life now.”
“Tell you what.” Jennifer made a fuck this gesture. “Let’s pretend I did a speech. I love you all. Let’s eat.”
Peter sailed in from the kitchen, bearing a tray of martini glasses full of gunge and lettuce. “To start,” he announced in his best MasterChef voice, “prawn cocktail. And I’m sorry, Oliver, we thought about you for the main, but we couldn’t be buggered to do a veggie starter so we just didn’t put the prawns in yours.”
“You mean,” said Oliver, “I’m starting my evening with a glass of pink mayonnaise.”
“Wow. Yes, we really screwed you on that one.”
Bridge and Tom had been whispering quietly to one another, but now she looked up in confusion. “Wait a minute. Why are we having prawn cocktail? Nobody’s eaten prawn cocktail for twenty years. And, actually, why are we all drinkin
g Bacardi Breezers?”
“Apparently”—Sophie had poured herself yet another glass of the good wine—“this whole party is nonconsensually retro-themed.”
Jennifer squirmed sheepishly. “The thing is, I didn’t want people to feel pressured to do costumes or, well, make any effort at all. So I decided to make it a surprise. So…surprise?”
We settled down to remind ourselves why people stopped eating prawn cocktail. Spoiler: the reason is because it’s horrible. Fortunately, we all seemed to agree on that, so nobody felt compelled to politely eat it anyway.
“Don’t worry.” Peter began to clear up around us. “I think the main course should actually be edible. It’s beef Wellington, except Oliver, who gets mushroom Wellington which, I’ll be honest, we sort of made up.”
Oliver handed back his largely untouched glass of pink mayonnaise. “Which is to say the main course should be edible for everyone except me.”
“I’m sorry, Oliver.” Peter gazed at him with mock contrition. “But you should have stuck at being our only gay friend. Trying to be our only vegetarian friend as well is frankly pushing it.”
“You know,” I said, “the mushrooms sound lovely. If there’s enough, I’ll have some too.”
Bridge actually made a squee noise. “And you used to be so grumpy and unromantic.”
“I’ve never been grumpy and unromantic. I’ve occasionally been”—I tried to think of something—“brooding and cynical.”
“And now Oliver’s brought out your inner marshmallow.”
“I’m eating a mushroom, not jumping down the bleachers singing, ‘I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.’”
Jennifer toasted me with a Smirnoff Ice. “Good on theme reference.”
We were just dishing up the Wellingtons, both of which were enormous, when Ben came back looking haggard.
“Drink me.” He collapsed next to Sophie. “In the ‘give me a drink’ sense, not in the Alice in Wonderland sense.”
She drinked him. “Everything all right, darling?”