Husband Material (London Calling #2)(87)

“And we definitely think,” I said, taking what remained of the wine from Bridge’s hands and swigging direct from the bottle, “that this is an I’m-grieving situation, not an I’m-taking-the opportunity-to-bail-because-I’m-too-polite-to-dump-you situation.”

Having finished the beer, Priya grabbed the wine from me and took a swig of her own. “I know Oliver’s repressed, but I think even he would stop short of having his own father killed just to get out of a relationship.”

“Maybe his father dying was a coincidence and he made the most of it?” I suggested.

“No,” cried Bridge; she’d been crying things all evening. “You and Oliver are perfect for each other and you’re perfect together and everything’s going to be perfect.”

“If we’re so perfect,” I asked, “why is he in Milton Keynes being sad without me?”

For a moment Bridge didn’t have a reply. Then her face lit up like a Christmas tree which, ironically, it also did anytime she looked at a Christmas tree. “I’ve got it.”

“You’re going to say, ‘Go to Milton Keynes,’ aren’t you?” Priya’s voice wasn’t exactly scornful but had a quality that suggested scorn would be an option.

“Why not?” asked Bridge. “He’s there and he’s lonely and for whatever silly reason he feels like he can’t reach out. His coeur is all cri-ing and he needs you, Luc, he needs you.”

There was a part of me that wanted her to be right. For this—this thorny mess of grief and antagonism—to be fixable with one big gesture. “What if he needs space?”

“Well, which is worse?” Bridge turned her hands into wobbly scales. “If he needs you and you’re not there? Or if you’re there and he doesn’t need you?”

“I think,” I said slowly, “it wouldn’t be so much there and he doesn’t need me as making his father’s death all about my insecurities? ”

Priya shot me a sardonic look. “To be fair, you totally are.”

“But”—I wagged a crucial point-making finger—“not to his face.”

“Wow,” said Priya. “You really have grown.”

Reclaiming the wine bottle, Bridge leapt somewhat unsteadily to her feet. “I still think that we should go to Milton Keynes right now.”

“And who’s going to drive you?” asked Priya. “Because I’m quite drunk and also don’t want to.”

Bridge bounced undeterred. “We’ll get an Uber.”

“Oliver would hate that,” I reminded her. “We’d be intruding on his private grief and the grief of his family who dislike me, while using the services of a company whose business practices he disapproves of.”

Deflating slightly, Bridget lowered herself back onto the sofa. “I want to say, it would be so romantic that it wouldn’t matter but…it would matter, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah.” I sighed. “It really would.”

“Why is everything so complicated?” Bridge wondered piteously.

“It wasn’t like this when we were younger.”

I gave her a drunken pat. “I think it was. I just think we didn’t notice. Which”—I cast my mind back a decade—“might explain why we made so many terrible, terrible mistakes.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Priya. “I stand by every mistake I’ve ever made.”

For a while we passed around the dregs of the wine and commiserated. We didn’t have any real answers for each other—not about the Oliver situation or about the wedding situation or about the why-is-everything-so-hard-suddenly situation. But there was a comfort in knowing that, in the tiny space of my flat at least, we were all in the same boat. That we were all in an equally bemused state of making shit up as we went along and then throwing it at the wall to see if it stuck. Which was probably a mixed metaphor, but fuck it, I’d been drinking.

“So how is marriage?” I asked Bridge eventually, mostly because once we’d decided that we weren’t doing a highly irresponsible overnight and over-the-legal-limit drive to Milton Keynes to save a relationship that might not even need saving, she’d started looking almost as down as I felt.

“Oh, it’s wonderful,” she said. She didn’t have wonderful face.

“But…”

For a while we waited for her to continue. When it became clear she wasn’t, Priya asked, “Wonderful but what?”

“Perhaps she was just bragging that Tom has a wonderful butt?”

I suggested in a vain attempt to lighten the mood. “Which to be fair, he does.”

Bridge nodded, slightly less glum than ninety seconds ago. “He does, and it is. I mean, married life, not Tom’s arse. I mean, also Tom’s arse. It’s just…the wedding was so magical and the honeymoon was so so magical but then we got back and it was, well, carrying on as normal.”

“Aren’t you buying a house together?” I asked. “That’s pretty fresh-starty.”

“In theory, but I work full time and he works full time and the market is a mess and there are chains and things so we can’t even put a deposit down until my little flat sells and we’ve had two buyers drop out already and…” She sighed. “It’s so fiddly. Who decided that being happy forever with the person you love most in the universe had to be fiddly?”