Husband Material (London Calling #2)(80)

“Lucien.” There was a note of warning in his voice. “You know my relationship with my parents is complicated. And I feel better able to navigate it if I’m confident in my appearance and my punctuality.”

He might have felt that way. But I’d never seen any evidence that it actually helped. Nevertheless, I’d agreed to this. This being a trip up to Milton Keynes to convince Miriam and David Blackwood that they should (a) come to their son’s wedding and (b) not ruin it. Only in more tactful words so they didn’t feel “attacked.” Clearly, it was going to be a disaster. But Oliver and I had committed to the mutual fiction that it would work. Or, at the very least, be worth trying.

“I’m going to have apologise, aren’t I?” I asked, having showered, dressed, and buckled myself into the car we’d hired so often we practically owned it. On the other occasions I’d been unable to avoid David and Miriam, I’d just not mentioned it and let them get back to pretending I didn’t exist as quickly as possible. But this was different. This was about mending fences, whatever that meant.

“I’m not going to ask you to,” replied Oliver, with fatal ambiguity.

“But, in all honesty, they might expect it.”

Despite the fact it was twenty past ten and I’d deliberately got an early night, I was already flagging. “I mean, I suppose I did tell them to go fuck themselves at their own wedding anniversary, which was probably a bit aggressive.”

“It was a very charming but very unhelpful gesture.”

“Well, I’m sorry”—it was a good job Oliver liked me pouting because I was doing it a lot—“but I don’t have the lawyer words.”

Oliver turned us deftly onto the B502. “Yes, but do you have words that aren’t fuck?”

“Not fucking many,” I said.

And Oliver must have been in his head because I didn’t even get a pity laugh.

“Look”—I put a hand gently on his knee—“I get I kind of messed this up right at the beginning. And, retrospectively, I really wish I’d de-fuckified my language. But, like, I love you and it’s not okay for people to treat you badly and I’m not going to say I was wrong to stand up for you.”

A faint blush was creeping across Oliver’s cheeks. “Of course it wasn’t wrong.”

We tooled along in silence for a bit.

“And,” I asked awkwardly, “you’re going to be okay if this… I mean, even if I don’t fuck it up, it still might get fucked or stay fucked and—”

“I hope”—Oliver cast me a dry smile from the driver’s seat—“this is you getting the fucks out of your system.”

“I’ll be a fuck-free zone, I promise. But actually, I do think we need to be ready for the possibility that today ends with your parents not on side with this.”

“I am aware of that possibility,” said Oliver, with an air of reluctance. “I would prefer, however, to address it only in the event it arises.”

“Okay. Only—” I stopped. Because what I could ask? I knew what I wanted to ask, which was for him to promise he’d be fine, no matter how this went, and I definitely wasn’t going to wake up tomorrow to an empty bed and a fully dressed Oliver saying, I’m sorry, I can’t do this. But that wasn’t fair.

Oliver’s eyes flicked to mine in the rearview mirror. “Only what?”

“Sorry. Nothing.”

And while that wasn’t usually the sort of thing Oliver let slide, today I guess we were both trying to trust each other.

I guess we both needed to.

“Podcast?” I offered hopefully—though, what with the proposing and ring buying and parent wrangling, I’d lost track of what Oliver was into at the moment.

He shook his head. “I’d rather not. Is it okay if we just drive quietly?”



“Sure,” I said. Because what else could I say? I mean, it kind of wasn’t okay. Not because I was desperate to listen to a podcast but because I was incredibly worried that Oliver didn’t want to. Listening to documentaries and whimsical radio dramas was the closest he got to vegging out. So I hated to think what he was feeling right now that even This American Life couldn’t soothe him.

It didn’t entirely surprise me that Miriam and David Blackwood had insisted on taking their vegan son to a gastropub with exactly one vegan option on the menu. After Oliver had ordered his superfood salad, and I’d ordered the same out of masochistic solidarity, his parents tortured the waiter for a while—David by demanding a fillet steak with a very specific set of instructions about how it should be prepared and Miriam by politely but unswayably insisting they make her a vegetable risotto that wasn’t currently on the menu.

Once that had been resolved to their satisfaction, we all sat in silence until David Blackwood finally said, “So you’re still getting married, then?”

“Yes,” replied Oliver, sounding calmer than the tension in his jawline showed me he felt. “And we’d like you to be there.”

Miriam, who had been checking the cutlery for cleanliness, set down her fork. “Well of course we’ll be there, darling. That was never in question. We just want to be sure you’re making the right decision.”

Given that the Blackwoods seemed determined to talk as if I wasn’t in the room, I was beginning to wish I hadn’t been.