I glowered at him. “Leave it out, this isn’t Tiffany’s. You’ve made it very clear that I’m a middle-of-the road guy, but let’s be honest: this is a middle-of-the-road shop.”

“Sir appears to have taken offence at my manner,” the assistant sneered. “I beg sir’s forgiveness.”

Obviously he was banking on sir being too lazy to walk eight minutes down the road to a shop where sir might be treated less rudely. And he had sir bang to rights. Sir would take a lot more abuse than this if it meant dodging a short walk or a long queue.

Having been momentarily distracted by wiping the dribble from Baby J’s chin, James Royce-Royce took a shufty at the merchandise. “I think that one”—he pointed at the ring with the rose-gold detailing—“is the most Oliver. Then again, you know him better than I do.”

I did, but he was completely right. Of course, the competition was two completely boring rings with no decoration whatsoever, but Oliver was definitely a subtle seam of rose gold kind of guy. “I’ll take it,” I said. “And if my boyfri—fiancé needs to come in to get it resized, I want you to be nicer to him.”

Despite being quite a lot shorter than I was, the assistant somehow managed to look down his nose at me. “I shall endeavour to accede to sir’s wishes.”

Although now I thought about it, Oliver had nothing to fear from this guy. Because he very much came across as white-suit, nice-hat Julia Roberts whereas I was more thigh-high-boots-with-a-safety-pin Julia Roberts. In any case, I forked over my seven hundred quid, pocketed the ominous velvet box, and got the fuck out of there.

The velvet box was still ominousing in my pocket at the point our evening reached the me on the sofa watching old seasons of American Horror Story and Oliver on the floor with his laptop and his case notes, being all hot and diligent stage.

“Oliver,” I said at the same time he said, “Lucien.” And then I said, “No, you,” and he said, “After you,” and we went back and forth like that for a bit until Oliver managed to squeeze in an “I think we should talk about the wedding” and I squeezed back a “Me too.”

Then we sat there in silence for about a million years.

“Can I—” I tried at the same time Oliver said, “Do you—” And this time I followed up quickly with, “Okay, I’ll go.”

I did not go.

Eventually Oliver cleared his throat. “You know that…anything you need to say we’ll…we can. It’ll be fine.”

“I guess…” Why was I so bad at this? “I guess, I just think I…didn’t really think it through.”

Oliver closed his laptop in a we-are-now-having-a-serious-conversation way. “It’s all right, Lucien. I understand.”