“I’m a guest, Justice Mayhew.” I was really trying to be polite, but I was also a world of not in the mood for this bullshit. “I’m a friend of Alex’s and we’ve met. We’ve met several times.”

“Nonsense. Fine upstanding chap like Twaddle wouldn’t be caught dead in a French sewer with a reprobate like you. Now tell me who your manager is, or I’ll—”

Fuck it. “Or you’ll what? I don’t work here. And the next time we meet, you won’t even remember this conversation, so the way I see it, I have no reason to stand around and put up with your bullshit.”

Justice Mayhew’s face was turning exciting shades of crimson. “In all my days,” he said, “I have never.”

“I’m sure you haven’t. Now if you’ll excuse me, I don’t have time for you right now.”

I think I might have broken Justice Mayhew’s brain because he just stood there fizzing. It would have been kind of satisfying if exhaustion and misery hadn’t been taking up all my feel space. Abandoning my half-empty champagne flute to someone who did work in catering, I made my way outside without falling foul of any more malignant toffs.

I wasn’t the only guest on the terrace, despite the light drizzle which had just set in to anoint Alex and Miffy’s wedding with the spirit of pure, unsullied Britishness. Oliver had wandered into the formal gardens and was now walking aimlessly through one of those shin-high mazes that had apparently been fashionable in the narrow window of history where people had decided that a hedge maze was a bit too much but hadn’t worked out you could, for example, not have a maze at all. Half jogging, half ambling, I made my way down to meet him. And although I was still mildly peeved at him, the look of genuine pain in his eyes when I ignored the path through the maze because stepping over the walls was easier was so Olivery that I couldn’t quite hang onto the feeling.

For a moment we stared at each other over a pointlessly tiny hedge.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted out. “I don’t do well with…” I made an expansive gesture. “This.”

Oliver’s expression was less relenty than I’d have liked it to be. “Yes, I noticed. But, and I’m aware this is oversimplifying a complex issue, you do realise that your parents are both richer than mine and probably than several people in that building?”

Oh, so we were still doing this. Maybe I should have left him a bit longer. “Oliver, I just said sorry. Not please encourage me to check my privilege.”