Technically, of course, he wasn’t that sort of barrister. I was just hoping that Jon Fleming’s inability to pay attention to anything that wasn’t himself meant he wouldn’t realise.
“I’ve never had much time for lawyers,” Dad replied. And perhaps I was imagining it, but he sounded cagier than he would have if he’d considered it a totally empty threat.
“Yeah, but lawyers are like gravity,” I told him. “It doesn’t matter if you’ve got time for them, it matters that they’ve got time for you. And if you did start telling the Mail or the Mirror anything about Mum that could be considered, y’know, libellous, then I’d actually know who to talk to now. In fact”—I decided to push my luck—“these days I even know a high-court judge or two.”
At the other end of the phone, Jon Fleming made a contemplative noise. He didn’t seem bothered exactly—it took a lot more than the threat of legal action to bother Jon Fleming—but one of my dad’s most useful qualities was a very specific kind of apathy.
If fame or money were on the line, he was unstoppable. But for everything else, he’d always take the easiest possible road to get what he wanted, and if something looked like being even the slightest bit difficult, he’d drop it like he had his marriage and his child. “I was just giving you a call,” he said at last, “to see if you wanted me at your wedding. But if you don’t”—he gave an infuriating pause—“that’s your choice. And I respect it.”
“It is.”
And, with that, I hung up. In some ways, that had gone better than any other conversation I’d ever had with my dad. But you couldn’t win with him. You could only make losing feel marginally less shitty. And so I showed up for my very special, emotionally resonant date with my fiancé who I loved, tired, hungover, late, and mentally drained from dealing with an arsehole.
Oliver was already at the table, where he’d probably been for some time. It was the same table we’d sat at nearly three years ago, and he was wearing the same pinstriped suit—including the pocket watch, that I’d since realised was another of his sly nods to a personal style that only masqueraded as conformity.
“Oh God.” I half eased, half tripped onto the banquette. “I’m so sorry. Things got out of hand last night.”
One of Oliver’s eyebrows twitched upwards in a meaner way than I was expecting. “I’m aware.”
Fuck, it really was like our first date. I was rubbish and Oliver was annoyed. “And then,” I hurried on, “just as I was getting here, my fucking dad rang.”
Oliver de-iced immediately. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Fine. He wanted to come to the wedding to prove what a big damn ally he is. I told him to piss off.”
Normally Oliver championed my taking of no shit from my dad.
But normally we had twice as many dads between us. “Lucien,” he started. Then broke off. Then tried again. “I…I’m sure you made the right decision. But I’m rather conscious at the moment that—all going well—one only has one wedding. And, indeed, in the majority of cases one father.”
He had a point. It’s just his point was about him, not about me.
And now he needed me to be all sensitive and shit. Poor bastard.
Catching the waiter’s eye, I requested literally all the water and then turned back to Oliver. “I’m really sorry your dad, y’know, can’t. But my dad is not your dad. And my dad definitely shouldn’t.”
“I do know that,” said Oliver, with the air of someone who did not, in fact, know that.
“Look.” I slid a hand across the table to take his. “I was there at the funeral. I heard the…the everything. I get that it’s a headfuck and a half to have all these questions about who your father was and what he could have been to you and not have any answers.”
Oh God. Oliver was biting his lip and his eyes had gone soft in the bad tearsy way, not the good gazing adoringly way. Not only was I late and hungover to our superspecial emotionally resonant date night, I was going to make Oliver cry in a fancy restaurant.
“But the thing is,” I added, probably too quickly, “I have those answers about Jon Fleming. You were there when I got them. When someone drops you like a secretly recorded studio album the second they discover they don’t have cancer, you know everything you need to know about them. And one of the things you know is that you don’t want them at your wedding.”