“I.…” For a while Barbara couldn’t say anything else. Eventually she managed, “I never thought…”

“I didn’t mean it like…”

“I knew”—oh God, she seemed genuinely shaken up—“that we were sometimes a little…a little short, but I’d always felt that we had a friendly rivalry.”

Fuck. “I didn’t mean it like… Just that I thought you hated me, and that I was sort of…riffing on that?”

“It didn’t sound like that was what you were saying,” said Barbara, clinging to Gabriel’s hand.

“She’s right,” agreed Rhys, “it didn’t.”

They were both right because it wasn’t. “Would it help if I said I was really sorry?”

Barbara Clench got to her feet. “I think I need a walk.”

Her husband got up and went with her, leaving me and Oliver alone with Rhys and Ana with one n.

“She can’t have…” I tried. Then. “How did…?”

“Don’t look at me,” said Rhys. “I always thought you two got on.”

That made no sense. “How could you possibly think that?”

“Well, you’re very similar.”

Was it hypocritical to be offended that somebody had compared you to a woman you’d just vehemently denied hating? “We bloody well aren’t.”

“You’re both rude and think you’re better than everybody.”

“Hey, that is not…” I stopped. Probably best to rephrase. “I’m nowhere near as bad as I was a couple of years ago.”

Rhys gave a shrug. “And neither’s she, but you’re still both awful quite a lot of the time.”

Words clearly weren’t working for me so I made a grah kind of noise. “Oliver? Back me up here. I am not an arsehole.”

With a gentleness that people normally reserved for angry children and frightened dogs, Oliver patted my leg. “You’re a wonderful human being, and I love you. But you can be a tiny bit mean sometimes.”

Betrayal. Rank betrayal. “So can you.”

“This isn’t about him.” Rhys was looking as serious as he was capable of, which wasn’t hugely serious. “You’re the one who isn’t inviting us to your wedding.”

“It’s his wedding too,” I pointed out.

“And I never said you couldn’t invite your work friends,” murmured Oliver, traitorously. “I just thought we agreed we wanted to keep it small.”

I wasn’t letting Oliver lawyer his way out of this one. “How can we keep it small if I invite my entire office?”

“It’s not a very large office,” he pointed out.

Exasperated, I turned pleadingly back to Rhys. “Why do you even want to come? You can’t actually like weddings. No sensible person likes weddings.”

“Bridget likes weddings,” said Oliver, continuing to jam knives into my spine.

“Bridget isn’t sensible. Not where romance is concerned.”