Husband Material (London Calling #2)(100)

“Didn’t I just do that,” said Oliver, archly.

Christopher scowled. “You just made a whole speech about how crap your childhood was.”

“And yours as well,” Oliver pointed out with a level of pedantry I didn’t think was totally well judged in the circumstances. “I didn’t think it was fair to speak on your behalf.”

“You could have consulted me?”

“Again, it wasn’t planned.”

“Or”—for a moment the look in Christopher’s eyes was a lot like the one Oliver got when I was being particularly difficult with him —“you could have talked to me at any time in the last thirty years?”

“I would have, but you were in…” Oliver began. Then he stopped. Then he tried again. “I’m sorry, I’m trying to be reasonable but”—he took a deep I-am-going-to-articulate-a-complex-thought breath—“it wasn’t easy for me when we were younger. Nothing I did was ever good enough for our parents, whereas you—”

“Whereas I what?” demanded Christopher.

“Come on, you were always the golden boy.”

At that, Christopher gave a hollow, single-shot laugh, like a bark.

“Oh, was I? ”

“Do you know how long they kept reminding me that you got better A-level grades than I did?”

“Well, I did.” Christopher gave a near-defiant near-smirk.

“That’s because the A-star grade didn’t exist when I did mine. I got the best grades I could at the time.”

The near-smirk vanished, but the defiance got more defiant.

“And I didn’t. They had a go at me for only getting an A in maths until I was three years into my medical degree.”

Mia took half a step forward. She looked like she was about to pull out one of the last six pins in a game of KerPlunk. “Is it possible,”

she asked, “just possible that they might have made you both think they liked the other one more?”

“Nonsense,” said Christopher and Oliver at once.

“Every time I spoke to them,” Oliver went on, slightly faster than his brother, “it was Christopher is going to be a doctor, Christopher has the loveliest girlfriend, Christopher said the most interesting thing to us the last time we spoke to him.”

“Oliver wouldn’t be out so late on a school night,” Christopher shot back, “Oliver knows how to do what he’s told, Oliver makes time for us.”

“Well, I did,” Oliver snapped back. “Instead of spending all my time backpacking and sightseeing and running around with my friends. Friends, by the way, who they made very certain to tell me all about.” He lapsed back into his parents voice. “We don’t see nearly as much of Christopher as we’d like, but then you have to give young boys their freedom and he’s so very popular.”

Mia gave me a look of desperation, and I did my best to intervene. “Guys,” I tried, “one of you is a barrister, the other one’s a doctor. You are both way too smart to still be falling for this shit.”

“What shit?” asked Christopher, and to my dismay, he seemed to genuinely mean it. “Ollie here did everything they wanted, so when I didn’t, I got hell.”

Oliver sneered. He actually sneered. It was like I was dating the evil one in a costume drama. The one who’s determined to steal the hero’s tin mine. “You mean you did whatever the hell you liked, and they still thought the sun shone out of your backside, so I had to work twice as hard to get half as much—”

“I can’t believe you would even suggest—”

“Mia”—I announced over the top of the Blackwood brothers—“do you want to just run off together? I know I’m gay, but I reckon I can work something out.”

Stepping pointedly in between Christopher and Oliver, Mia took my hand. “Yeah, let’s go to Paris.”

Christopher flung a glance at us. “What are you two doing?”

“We’re leaving you for each other,” Mia explained, “because you’re both awful.”

“I mean,” I added, “you’re both in your late twenties or early thirties, and you’ve been talking about your fucking A-level results.”

There was a little silence. Not a this-man-has-made-a-good-point-and-we’re-chill-now kind of silence. More an O.K. Corral kind of silence.

At last, Oliver took one of his trademark I-am-being-calm-and-mature-and-you-are-not breaths. “Perhaps we are being a little heated. Christopher, I understand that what I did today caught you unawares. And in an ideal world I should have said something to you beforehand.”

He’d been trying to be conciliatory, but Christopher didn’t look conciliated. “‘I should have said something to you beforehand’? Is that the best you can do?”

“I shouldn’t have asked you to read ‘If’?” Normally I loved Oliver’s dry half jokes, but this clearly wasn’t the time.

“How about if you were going to find the backbone to talk back to our…to our…to our complete prick of a father…” The moment the words were out, something lifted from Christopher Blackwood—a small something, admittedly, but something. “You should have done it when he was alive. When it could be at least a tiny bit of use to either of us.”