Then, hands shaking slightly, I called my dad.
At first I was relieved when he didn’t pick up, but then I felt bad for being relieved because I was doing this to fix Bridge’s wedding and I loved Bridge and wanted her to be happy. So I tried again. And again. And again.
Eventually Bridge and Liz came home, several relaxes to the wind.
“Have you and Tom had a fight?” Bridge asked with mock gravity.
I looked up with what I hoped was a not-traumatised expression.
“No, I just didn’t want him to see me before the wedding.”
“Seriously, though, what’re you doing on my doorstep?”
“Calling my dad. I thought he might be able to strong-arm a venue into taking us.”
Bridge looked at me with the biggest big eyes I’d ever seen. “Oh, Luc, you don’t have to.”
“I know. But I want to. Think of it as an early wedding present.”
She stooped and hugged me. “It’s the best present.” Then after a moment she added, “But just to be clear, I do want a real present too.”
“Of course.”
Bridge opened the door, and she and Liz squeezed past me into the house. And I gave my dad one more go. Which was kind of the story of my life.
Once again it rang and once again there was n— “Hello?” There was no mistaking that voice. As if top-shelf whiskey could speak. If you liked whiskey. And if whiskey was a prick.
Part of me, the part of me that had thought this was a bad idea from the start, wanted to hang up straight away. But I’d come this far, so bottling it at the last second would have been the worst of all possible worlds. “Dad, it’s Luc.” I felt small and was worried I sounded smaller. “I was wondering if you could help me out.”
He gave me that low, narcissistic chuckle that I’d once mistaken for affection. “So you need the old man for something, do you? What can I help you with?”
“I was…I was wondering if you had any contacts who could get us…get us a nice place for a wedding at literally no notice? We were thinking maybe a park or a house with a garden? If you can’t, that’s fine.”
“No, no, that seems like it should be pretty straightforward. After all, what’s the point of being famous if you can’t help out your own family?”
This was worryingly easy. Suspiciously easy. “And we need to know as soon as possible because it’s this weekend and we need to work out how to get everybody to the new venue.”
“I said I have it covered, Luc.” Technically he hadn’t said anything of the sort. “Trust me.”
And for a moment, against all the odds and against all evidence, I did. “Thanks.”
“Leave it to me,” he said. “You’ve got nothing to worry about.”
And then he was gone.
Honestly, the whole thing started to feel unreal three seconds after he’d hung up. Partly it was just the image my dad worked so hard to project. That larger-than-life sense of magic and wonder, like he was a grizzled angel from rock heaven who you’d be lucky to have touch your life for an instant before he moved on. And it was partly that I knew from experience that relying on Jon Fleming to do anything for anybody not named Jon Fleming was a complete sucker’s game.
I buzzed the buzzer, and Bridge let me up to the flat where I gave her the good news.
“You don’t seem very excited,” observed Liz.
“I know.” I sat down on the sofa. “It’s…it’s—”
“He has a complicated relationship with his father,” explained Bridget. “Which is why it was so sweet to reach out to him for us.”
“It’ll probably not come to anything,” I told them. “He’s not exactly reliable.”
But that didn’t stop me hoping. And hoping didn’t stop me being surprised when, three hours later, my phone rang.
Except it wasn’t my dad; it was my mum.
“I just wanted to find out how it went with your father,” she said.
“About how you’d expect.” I tucked the phone against my shoulder and mouthed “It’s my mother” to the room before putting it back to my ear.
“The thing is, mon caneton, after you called, I spoke to Judy and she said that if your father couldn’t help you or if you—um, well—if you wanted to tell him to go and fuck himself, then you could have the wedding in her garden.”
I shouldered her again. “We do have a backup, Bridge,” I relayed. “Apparently you can have the wedding in Mum’s friend’s garden.”