Fuck it. “Or you’ll what? I don’t work here. And the next time we meet, you won’t even remember this conversation, so the way I see it, I have no reason to stand around and put up with your bullshit.”
Justice Mayhew’s face was turning exciting shades of crimson.
“In all my days,” he said, “I have never.”
“I’m sure you haven’t. Now if you’ll excuse me, I don’t have time for you right now.”
I think I might have broken Justice Mayhew’s brain because he just stood there fizzing. It would have been kind of satisfying if exhaustion and misery hadn’t been taking up all my feel space.
Abandoning my half-empty champagne flute to someone who did work in catering, I made my way outside without falling foul of any more malignant toffs.
I wasn’t the only guest on the terrace, despite the light drizzle which had just set in to anoint Alex and Miffy’s wedding with the spirit of pure, unsullied Britishness. Oliver had wandered into the formal gardens and was now walking aimlessly through one of those shin-high mazes that had apparently been fashionable in the narrow window of history where people had decided that a hedge maze was a bit too much but hadn’t worked out you could, for example, not have a maze at all. Half jogging, half ambling, I made my way down to meet him. And although I was still mildly peeved at him, the look of genuine pain in his eyes when I ignored the path through the maze because stepping over the walls was easier was so Olivery that I couldn’t quite hang onto the feeling.
For a moment we stared at each other over a pointlessly tiny hedge.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out. “I don’t do well with…” I made an expansive gesture. “This.”
Oliver’s expression was less relenty than I’d have liked it to be.
“Yes, I noticed. But, and I’m aware this is oversimplifying a complex issue, you do realise that your parents are both richer than mine and probably than several people in that building?”
Oh, so we were still doing this. Maybe I should have left him a bit longer. “Oliver, I just said sorry. Not please encourage me to check my privilege.”
He sighed. “You’re right. I apologise. I’m…” He sighed again.
Fuck. It was a double-sigher. This was going to be bad. “We’re at a wedding, we’re engaged to be married ourselves, and you’ve told me you think I have internalised homophobia.”
Well, that was worth the double sigh. “I’m not sure I did.”
“You did.”
“Okay but”—I tried to smile but it came out as a grimace—“I once told you that you had an eating disorder, and you found that very romantic.”
He didn’t smile back. “They’re not the same and you know it.”
I nodded, reaching a new peak of feel-awful-ness. “I do know.
And, again, I’m sorry.”
We were silent a while, Oliver continuing to idly search for the intended path through the maze, while I kept pace with him on the straightforward one.
“I think,” he said finally, “what I find most difficult is that I can’t tell if you’re right or not. Or what it would mean if you were. Or, indeed, if you weren’t.”
I offered another grimace. “I’m glad you’ve got that therapist.”
Still, he didn’t smile back.
“Um,” I asked, concluding—as I should have concluded a while ago—that I couldn’t joke my way out of this one. “What does this mean? For, like, us?”
Oliver stopped and met my eyes. His had gone all dark grey and sad. Go me. I was the worst. “I’m not completely sure. But I don’t think it means anything for us. I think it just means something for me.”
“Okay.” I felt bad for being relieved this was an Oliver thing, not an us thing or me thing. But I was relieved. “So…what does it mean for you?”
He sighed for a third time. “That you’re right: it’s fortunate I’ve got a therapist.”
“And…and…the wedding?” Oh my God, Oliver was having some kind of serious emotional something. And I was all, but my special day. I was turning into a groomzilla.
“If anything,” Oliver murmured, “it should make things easier.
You have your preferences, and I’m…I’m interrogating my own.”
“What?” I nearly tripped over an ornamental hedgehog. “No. This is…this is not what I meant to happen. I just wanted… Like, I don’t know. Maybe a rainbow balloon arch. Not to make you have a complete crisis of identity.”