“I think she probably did,” I began. I’d been about to add But it’s okay, I get that a lot of people think that way, but I never got that far.

David Blackwood surged to his feet. Which was actually pretty intimidating in a cosy gastropub in Milton Keynes. “How dare you. You come up here, you let us pay for your lunch, and that’s how you talk to our son?”

It wasn’t the most furious anyone had ever got with me, but it certainly had the highest anger-to-provocation ratio. If I’d been in a more charitable mood, I might have said that at least he was protecting Oliver and I could understand the instinct to protect Oliver. Except I wasn’t in a charitable mood, I hadn’t asked them to buy me anything, and David Blackwood was an arsehole.

I was just psyching myself up to give a deeply insincere apology when there was a tiny clink as Oliver put down his salad fork.

“Father,” he said. “You’re making a scene.”

David snapped round like a rattlesnake. “Making a scene? I’m not the one arguing with your mother and making snide comments.”

“I wasn’t—”

But Oliver cut me off. “With respect, you’ve barely met Lucien. You know nothing about our relationship and, frankly, you know nothing about me. If we’re going to talk about snide comments, then you have a thirty-year head start on everybody at this table. And as for Mother”—his gaze flicked to Miriam—“I’m sorry, but you were being homophobic. You’re both quite homophobic people.”

“How can you say that?” She blinked in genuine horror. “We love you.”

He sighed. “You know, I think you do. But from everything you’ve said to me today, and the way you interact with Lucien and with every boyfriend I’ve ever had, and with me ever since I came out, you will clearly never see any relationship I have as being as valid as Christopher’s relationship with Mia.”

“Well, it’s different,” protested Miriam, with an unerring instinct for saying the worst possible thing.

“It is not.” Now Oliver was on his feet as well. And raising his voice. “Lucien sees me with all my flaws and makes me feel loved anyway. Something, by the way, that neither of you have ever managed.”

A deep hush had fallen, not just over our table but over the whole pub.

David Blackwood was staring at Oliver with something almost like disgust. “I don’t know who you think you are. Your mother and I have given you everything. We fed you, we clothed you, we sent you to university, we put you through the bar, and now you’ve had your head turned by some artsy fairy who can’t keep his arse out the papers, and suddenly you think you’re better than us.”