He might have felt that way. But I’d never seen any evidence that it actually helped. Nevertheless, I’d agreed to this. This being a trip up to Milton Keynes to convince Miriam and David Blackwood that they should (a) come to their son’s wedding and (b) not ruin it. Only in more tactful words so they didn’t feel “attacked.” Clearly, it was going to be a disaster. But Oliver and I had committed to the mutual fiction that it would work. Or, at the very least, be worth trying.

“I’m going to have apologise, aren’t I?” I asked, having showered, dressed, and buckled myself into the car we’d hired so often we practically owned it. On the other occasions I’d been unable to avoid David and Miriam, I’d just not mentioned it and let them get back to pretending I didn’t exist as quickly as possible. But this was different. This was about mending fences, whatever that meant.

“I’m not going to ask you to,” replied Oliver, with fatal ambiguity. “But, in all honesty, they might expect it.”

Despite the fact it was twenty past ten and I’d deliberately got an early night, I was already flagging. “I mean, I suppose I did tell them to go fuck themselves at their own wedding anniversary, which was probably a bit aggressive.”

“It was a very charming but very unhelpful gesture.”

“Well, I’m sorry”—it was a good job Oliver liked me pouting because I was doing it a lot—“but I don’t have the lawyer words.”

Oliver turned us deftly onto the B502. “Yes, but do you have words that aren’t fuck?”

“Not fucking many,” I said.

And Oliver must have been in his head because I didn’t even get a pity laugh.

“Look”—I put a hand gently on his knee—“I get I kind of messed this up right at the beginning. And, retrospectively, I really wish I’d de-fuckified my language. But, like, I love you and it’s not okay for people to treat you badly and I’m not going to say I was wrong to stand up for you.”

A faint blush was creeping across Oliver’s cheeks. “Of course it wasn’t wrong.”

We tooled along in silence for a bit.

“And,” I asked awkwardly, “you’re going to be okay if this… I mean, even if I don’t fuck it up, it still might get fucked or stay fucked and—”

“I hope”—Oliver cast me a dry smile from the driver’s seat—“this is you getting the fucks out of your system.”

“I’ll be a fuck-free zone, I promise. But actually, I do think we need to be ready for the possibility that today ends with your parents not on side with this.”