Oliver was concentrating very hard on the pile of index cards. “Actually he’s… He didn’t make it to the hospital.”

“Fuck, I’m sorry.”

I tried to hold him, but he wasn’t in a mood to be held. And that shouldn’t have hurt—he was shocked and grieved, and we’d just had a giant fucking fight about nothing, and different people processed feelings differently—except it did hurt. It hurt quite a lot.

“I need to see my mother,” he said. “I should leave.”

“Of course.” I dithered in a kind of I-want-to-support-you-but-I’m-not-sure-how way. “Shall I come with you?”

“I think”—and, again, I shouldn’t have read rejection into his voice but, again, I did—“it would be best if I went alone.”

That made sense. Obviously, it made sense. His mother hated me. I was the worst person he could possibly have brought. “Whatever you need. And, like, call. Or don’t call. Just…do…do what you have to. I’ll be here. I mean, not here. I’ll be at home and—”

He gave a nod, cutting me off. Then turned and strode purposefully away.

Chapter 28

I WAS SITTING IN MY pants on my sofa, eating kung po chicken direct from the container, when I realised that maybe I wasn’t exactly smashing it coping-wise. Oliver had been at his parent’s house—well, his mum’s house now—for almost a week, dealing with…death logistics. And it wasn’t like we hadn’t been in contact—there’d been texts and a couple of phone calls—but Oliver had seemed distant. Which I got because, between the administrative faff of arranging a cremation, the emotional sucker punch of your father dropping dead not long after you’d told him to go fuck himself and, oh yes, that enormous fight we’d been in the middle of, he had a lot on his mind. I just wished he’d let me, I don’t know, be there? Help? Do something? Feel less useless.

Except I guess that was kind of selfish. The thing was, in all the time we’d been together, there’d never been a point in our relationship when what Oliver had needed from me was absence. Space, occasionally, sure, when work was demanding or when I was being annoying. But this was different. Like, I had no idea what he was thinking, and there was some tiny, messed-up part of my brain that was worried he was hating me. Because if going to bed angry was bad for your relationship, going to organise your father’s funeral angry had to be a whole other level of fucked up.