“I heard that,” said Mum from shoulder height, “and I will have you know it is a very nice garden.”
“Apparently it’s a very nice garden,” I clarified.
“Luc, I think you are being very dismissive of Judy’s lovely garden.”
I scooped the phone back to my ear. “Sorry, Mum, it’s been a long day, and a long few days, and while I’m sure Judy’s garden is lovely, I really want this to be special for Bridge.”
“Just have a look on the internet and see if you would like it.”
It was the least I could do. “Tom,” I said, “can you grab the laptop and Google something for me?”
Tom obligingly opened up a browser.
“Is she on Facebook or something?” I asked. It seemed improbable, but then again everybody was on some kind of social media these days.
“No, they have a proper website. Well, English Heritage does.”
I made an I’m-not-sure-I-heard-that-correctly noise. “English Heritage?”
“Pfaffle Court is a very old building. According to Judy, the hedge maze goes back to the Restoration.”
I passed the words Pfaffle Court, no, Pfaffle, with a P and English Heritage to Tom. “Hang on, so when you said ‘in her garden,’
did you mean ‘in the grounds of her palatial estate’？”
“I did say it was a very nice garden.”
Bridget was staring over Tom’s shoulder with a look of mounting joy. “Oh, Luc,” she said, “it’s perfect.”
“Was that Bridget?” asked my mum, who was never one to stay out of other people’s conversations. “Does she like the garden?”
“Yes,” I told her. “Yes, she likes the garden very much. But why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?”
“You never asked. And you seemed so set on talking to your father, I thought maybe it was important to you.”
“Mum, he’s never going to be important to me. He’s a cockweasel.”
“With a small penis,” she added. “Actually, he doesn’t, but I can pretend. So shall I tell Judy you want her help?”
I glanced at Bridge and Tom for confirmation, and they both confirmed enthusiastically. “God, yes, please. Thank you so much.
You are the actual best.”
“I know. And you should try to remember that instead of running off to your cockweasel father when you need a favour. In any case, Judy will be very pleased. She said she hasn’t officiated at a wedding since 1987.”
Wait one tiny minute. “Officiated?”
“Of course, it’s her garden. She should be involved.”
I was about to protest, but this was getting far too complicated, and there was still the massive logistical task of shifting a large, meticulously planned wedding with over a hundred guests from West London to somewhere in Surrey. “You know what,” I said. “I’m sure that’ll be fine.”
After all that, I didn’t get to try Oliver’s sticky miso peppers. But then, neither did Oliver because he came to Bridge’s. Where he helped us reinvite the entire guest list and arrange transportation and accommodation for everybody who’d already arranged transport and accommodation for somewhere else entirely.
By the time we’d got everything sorted, or as sorted as it could possibly be given the circumstances, we were exhausted—the good kind of exhausted you got from doing something hard but rewarding.
And I barely even noticed that my dad had never called me back.
AS IT TURNED OUT, I didn’t only miss sticky miso peppers, I also missed asparagus and lemon spaghetti with peas, stuffed butternut squash with maple syrup and freekeh, and spicy aubergine with Szechuan sauce. And Oliver didn’t make a big deal out of it—what with being a lawyer he wasn’t exactly a stranger to things coming up at the last minute—but I felt bad anyway. Yes, we were in a good place, a good enough place that adapting to each other’s lives was just a part of being together that we both accepted and were cool with. Except I was beginning to worry I wasn’t so much adapting as bailing. It had been nearly a week of staggering home after another evening of intense wedding planning to find Oliver already in bed— and not in bed in a sexy “I’ve been waiting for you, tiger” way. More in an “I’ve put on my pyjamas and read my book” way.
And it was temporary. I knew it was temporary and Oliver, I’m sure, knew it was temporary too. Or at least I hoped he did because if he didn’t, then he was being worryingly calm about being in a relationship where we were never conscious in the same room. It didn’t help that since the wedding was in Surrey now, Bridge and all her bridesmaids were going to be spending the night before in Judy’s enormous stately home for a kind of non-gendered-person’s night, which I assumed would involve braiding each other’s hair, drinking champagne, and talking about boys.