Husband Material (London Calling #2)(78)
Probably I should have gone after him. Except, no, probably I shouldn’t because part of being a grown-up in a grown-up relationship was trusting the other person. And so, although an irrational voice in the back of my head was telling me, If you don’t go and find him immediately, he’ll realise you’re shit and dump you, I somehow managed to believe more in the two years we’d spent together than the jagged mess of damage that normally dominated my decision making.
Grabbing one of the many glasses of free champagne, I tried to look like an absolutely fine person who was having a nice time at a wedding and happened, just incidentally, to be standing on his own at the moment. Definitely not someone who’d had no sleep and a massive argument with his boyfri—fuck. Fiancé.
I stuck it out for about an honourable ten minutes before deciding I’d made a big enough sacrifice to the maturity gods and could go be needy again.
Unfortunately, the process of finding Oliver involved looking for him, which involved not quite looking where I was going, which meant narrowly avoiding colliding with a guest and narrowly not avoiding sloshing my champagne over him.
I got as far as “Oh shit, sorr—” before Justice Mayhew turned like a stop-motion Medusa and glared at me.
“What,” he roared, “the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?”
Of all the high-court judges in all the weddings in all the world, I’d walked into him. “I’m really sor—”
“Not good enough. You’re being paid to do a job. Do it properly.”
In the one and a half seconds it took me to realise that of course he’d assumed I was part of the catering staff, he decided I’d had enough time to reply and carried on.
“Well? Don’t just stand there gawping. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I said I was sorry,” I protested.
Justice Mayhew was still glaring at me. “And I said sorry wasn’t good enough. That’s the trouble with your generation. Don’t listen, don’t think, don’t care about anything but yourselves.”
“I was looking for my boyfriend…” I knew the moment I’d said it that it was precisely the wrong thing to say.
“Oh, I see how it is.” He folded his arms defiantly. “You think that because you’re some sort of protected minority that you can’t be held accountable for your failure to do your bloody job. Well, I’ve got news for you, sonny lad. That isn’t the way it works. I know you people think you’re entitled to a free ride because you can just run crying to the Equality and Human Rights Commission and they’ll make all your problems go away. Well, I’m afraid in the real world—”
“I’m a guest, Justice Mayhew.” I was really trying to be polite, but I was also a world of not in the mood for this bullshit. “I’m a friend of Alex’s and we’ve met. We’ve met several times.”
“Nonsense. Fine upstanding chap like Twaddle wouldn’t be caught dead in a French sewer with a reprobate like you. Now tell me who your manager is, or I’ll—”
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.