“That’s a tricky one.” Oliver swivelled around to face her, and I realised with a mix of relief and frustration that he’d gone from being mildly prickly that I’d implied he might be a bad gay to vanishing down a rabbit hole of abstract reasoning. “On the one hand, I can see why if I was religious, I’d feel that way. On the other hand, I think a quirk of the fact that we have an established Church is that the trappings of Anglican Christianity are part of our secular culture. I mean the Church even gets its own MP.”

I came down on the side of relieved, and by way of an olive branch attempted to get interested in the intricacies of establishmentarianism. “It has its own MP?”

“The Second Crown Estates Commissioner,” he said. “Then there are the Lords Spiritual in the Upper House. The Church isn’t just religion in this country, it’s government.”

When you looked at it like that, the whole setup of the country sounded pretty fucked up. “That feels wrong.”

“Oh, you’ve noticed that, have you?” Rhys was carefully following the absurdly expensive car in front of us, but still had the wherewithal to participate in a debate about the British constitution. “Now try living in a country that you English bastards have basically taken over. Tell me how it feels then.” His voice got a kind of grinning lilt to it. “No offence.”

“The problem,” observed Professor Fairclough, who as ever had been staring out of the window the whole time and still was, “is that formulating an equitable system of governance is impossible outside of a eusocial species. And the only eusocial mammals are two subspecies of mole rat.”

There was the sort of silence that often followed one of Professor Fairclough’s interjections. Then Oliver, taking the opportunity to swap an awkward conversation for an obscure one, asked gamely, “Which species of mole rat?”

“The naked mole rat and the Damaraland mole rat.”

Ana with one n gave an involuntary shudder. “Mole rats are just the worst animals.”

“Well, what do you expect”—that was Barbara Clench—“for an animal named after two different kinds of vermin?”

“By most objective metrics,” observed Dr. Fairclough, “humans are by far the worst animals, except perhaps in terms of our ability to survive in diverse environments.” She paused. “Although in those terms we are arguably inferior to our own gut flora.”

Given the alternative was fighting with Oliver about complex shit I didn’t want to fight about, I threw myself into the conversation. “Molerat versus Gutflora sounds like a particularly crap monster movie.”

“You know what,” Rhys said cheerfully, “I’d watch that.”