Husband Material (London Calling #2)(19)

I dropped it. Because if Priya was telling you that you sounded like a prick, it meant you’d gone way over the prick line.

The magic of everyone being slightly angry at me got us back into an old groove as we bombed—well, not quite bombed, more travelled at a responsible child-transporting speed—along the north circular. And while I freely admitted that it had been insensitive of me to suggest that having a child made James Royce-Royce a bigger liability friend-wise than, say, me, there’s no getting away from the fact that if you’d rated our emergency marriage rescuing out of ten, we were pulling somewhere between a four and a two. I mean, Bridge had stopped crying so we probably got a point for that. And if there were points for effort, we got at least one of those. But in terms of what we were actually achieving, we…sort of weren’t.

We arrived in Harrow about an hour after we needed to, which meant that even if Tom and his mystery woman had been out getting lunch, they’d have been able to eat, have coffee, tip the waiter, and slink back to their love nest before we’d even parked. This left us sitting outside a random café, with Bridge once again on the verge of tears, not really sure what to do next.

“What should we do next?” I asked, hoping to keep the action ball rolling so no one had to have emotions.

Bridge threw her hands in the air. “I accept that love is for everyone else in the universe except me, so I’m going to die alone surrounded by cats, even though I don’t like cats. And I’ll only be found when the juices from my lonely, suppurating corpse leak through onto the married couple below me while they’re having a beautiful Sunday dinner with their children.”

So score zero for the action ball, then.

“That will never happen,” said Priya. “Your cats will eat you way before you start leaking.”

“I’m so sorry.” That was Liz, who had been sinking farther and farther in the back seat. “I feel this is all my fault.”

“It’s not your fault.” Bridge twisted round. “You’re not the one cheating on me.”

“We don’t know he’s cheating on you. I should never have sent the picture. Jesus would not have sent the picture.”

Melanie glanced up from Baby J’s toes, which she’d been leaning over to this-little-piggy. “Saint Paul might have. I bet he’d have sent it straight to the Ephesians.”

“That doesn’t help,” cried Liz. “I’m a vicar. I’m not supposed to gossip. It’s just you’re my friend and I’m bad at keeping secrets.”

Blowing her nose into a tissue, Bridge made a visible effort to pull herself together. “You did the right thing. I don’t want to marry a man I can’t trust.”

“All is not lost, my little chou bun.” That was James Royce-Royce, and for a moment, it was genuinely unclear whether he was talking to Bridge or the baby. “My marvellous husband has just texted us a set of instructions. It’s a long shot but apparently if we spiral outwards, then we maximise our chances of seeing Tom, if he’s here.”

“And if he’s not here?” I asked.

James Royce-Royce looked apologetic. “Then we’ll have had a rather long afternoon in a rather hot van.”

“Truck,” corrected Priya.

But she followed James Royce-Royce’s instructions anyway, taking us on a spiralling path out to the edge of Harrow, then back in again, then back out, then back in. Then we stopped at a pub so that James could change Baby J and the rest of us could get something to drink before we got back in the truck and went back to spiralling.

The thing about spending hour after hour trapped in a metal box with six other people, one of them a baby, was that it made you acutely aware of all the times in your life when you’d been doing literally anything else. Like, for example, not not-quite-arguing with the man you’d somehow managed to stay in love with for the last two years. And who, miraculously, had somehow managed to stay in love with you.

Suddenly it didn’t seem that all important anymore whose turn it was to text.

I miss you, I sent.

I didn’t get anything back, which I knew rationally meant Oliver was in court, but which I felt emotionally meant I’d destroyed my relationship by being insufficiently committed to Pretty Woman.

“This is hopeless,” said Bridge for the ninth time.

“There’s no such thing as hopeless,” said James Royce-Royce, also for the ninth time.

Bridge pressed her nose tragically against the window as she scanned a gaggle of passing Harrovians. “There is such a thing as hopeless. It is this thing. By which I mean what we’re doing right now. And also me. Because I’m doom— Oh my God, it’s him.”

“What?” I jerked alert. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Bridge was already unbuckling her seat belt. “He went into that Tesco Express. The bastard.”

Priya obligingly stopped dead—and absolutely not suspiciously —in front of the Tesco Express, and Bridge dove out of the passenger-side door. I dove after her, and Mel dove after me. Liz stayed behind with James Royce-Royce because they were all sitting together and diving over a finally sleeping Baby J seemed like an exceptionally bad idea.

We approached the doors of the unsuspecting late-night, reduced-offering supermarketette like we were a crack squad of secret agents. Okay, possibly more like we were a crap squad of secret agents, with Bridge yelling at us to cover the doors and Mel pressing herself against the wall and I swear coming this close to holding her hands like a gun, while I—in a fit of either enthusiasm or paranoia—tried to conceal myself behind a sign advertising massive savings on frozen pizzas.