“It didn’t sound like that was what you were saying,” said Barbara, clinging to Gabriel’s hand.
“She’s right,” agreed Rhys, “it didn’t.”
They were both right because it wasn’t. “Would it help if I said I was really sorry?”
Barbara Clench got to her feet. “I think I need a walk.”
Her husband got up and went with her, leaving me and Oliver alone with Rhys and Ana with one n.
“She can’t have…” I tried. Then. “How did…？”
“Don’t look at me,” said Rhys. “I always thought you two got on.”
That made no sense. “How could you possibly think that?”
“Well, you’re very similar.”
Was it hypocritical to be offended that somebody had compared you to a woman you’d just vehemently denied hating? “We bloody well aren’t.”
“You’re both rude and think you’re better than everybody.”
“Hey, that is not…” I stopped. Probably best to rephrase. “I’m nowhere near as bad as I was a couple of years ago.”
Rhys gave a shrug. “And neither’s she, but you’re still both awful quite a lot of the time.”
Words clearly weren’t working for me so I made a grah kind of noise. “Oliver? Back me up here. I am not an arsehole.”
With a gentleness that people normally reserved for angry children and frightened dogs, Oliver patted my leg. “You’re a wonderful human being, and I love you. But you can be a tiny bit mean sometimes.”
Betrayal. Rank betrayal. “So can you.”
“This isn’t about him.” Rhys was looking as serious as he was capable of, which wasn’t hugely serious. “You’re the one who isn’t inviting us to your wedding.”
“It’s his wedding too,” I pointed out.
“And I never said you couldn’t invite your work friends,”
murmured Oliver, traitorously. “I just thought we agreed we wanted to keep it small.”
I wasn’t letting Oliver lawyer his way out of this one. “How can we keep it small if I invite my entire office?”
“It’s not a very large office,” he pointed out.
Exasperated, I turned pleadingly back to Rhys. “Why do you even want to come? You can’t actually like weddings. No sensible person likes weddings.”
“Bridget likes weddings,” said Oliver, continuing to jam knives into my spine.
“Bridget isn’t sensible. Not where romance is concerned.”
Oliver gave me a smile that almost made me forget how cross I was with him. “True, she thought we’d be a good couple.”
“You see.” I jabbed my finger at him triumphantly. “He’s mean as well. We’re a mean couple. A couple of mean people who say mean things and are mean to each other.”
“If it helps,” said Ana with an n, “I agree that weddings mostly suck.”
I slumped back in my chair with unexpected relief. “Thank you.
Why is the only person who has my back the one I’ve never met before?”
“Because…” Oliver shuffled around to kneel facing me. He still had that mischievous look on his face that was making it hard to stay pissed off with him. “She’s new, and she’s trying to make a good impression.”
“And also,” Ana with one n added, “weddings really do suck.”
Rhys was shaking his head. “Oh, no, I love a good wedding, me.
Everybody dressing up nice, people being all happy. Only a complete knobhead would have a problem with that.”
“And now”—I turned my jabbing finger toward Rhys—“you’ve just called your girlfriend a complete knobhead. Why am I the bad guy?”
With her head in Rhys’s lap, Ana with one n gave a little shrug. “I suppose because a lot of the time I can be a complete knobhead.”
“You see?” Rhys gave a vindicated nod. “A good relationship is based on honesty.”
Somehow I was still outnumbered. “Look.” I gave up. “If it means that much to you…of course you can come to our wedding.”
“And Alex and Miffy and Barbara and Gabriel and the Professor?” asked Rhys.
Alex and Miffy we’d have been pretty much obliged to invite anyway since they’d invited us to theirs. To be honest, I was increasingly convinced that weddings were just an elaborate cycle of vengeance that had got really out of hand. Some pair of selfish bastards had forced their friends to come to a tedious party two thousand years ago, and their selfish bastard friends had decided to pay them back by forcing them to come a tedious party, and then some wholly independent group of selfish bastards had built an industry around it and here we were. An eye for an eye leaves the world overpaying for table settings.