Having finished the beer, Priya grabbed the wine from me and took a swig of her own. “I know Oliver’s repressed, but I think even he would stop short of having his own father killed just to get out of a relationship.”

“Maybe his father dying was a coincidence and he made the most of it?” I suggested.

“No,” cried Bridge; she’d been crying things all evening. “You and Oliver are perfect for each other and you’re perfect together and everything’s going to be perfect.”

“If we’re so perfect,” I asked, “why is he in Milton Keynes being sad without me?”

For a moment Bridge didn’t have a reply. Then her face lit up like a Christmas tree which, ironically, it also did anytime she looked at a Christmas tree. “I’ve got it.”

“You’re going to say, ‘Go to Milton Keynes,’ aren’t you?” Priya’s voice wasn’t exactly scornful but had a quality that suggested scorn would be an option.

“Why not?” asked Bridge. “He’s there and he’s lonely and for whatever silly reason he feels like he can’t reach out. His coeur is all cri-ing and he needs you, Luc, he needs you.”

There was a part of me that wanted her to be right. For this—this thorny mess of grief and antagonism—to be fixable with one big gesture. “What if he needs space?”

“Well, which is worse?” Bridge turned her hands into wobbly scales. “If he needs you and you’re not there? Or if you’re there and he doesn’t need you?”

“I think,” I said slowly, “it wouldn’t be so much there and he doesn’t need me as making his father’s death all about my insecurities?”

Priya shot me a sardonic look. “To be fair, you totally are.”

“But”—I wagged a crucial point-making finger—“not to his face.”

“Wow,” said Priya. “You really have grown.”

Reclaiming the wine bottle, Bridge leapt somewhat unsteadily to her feet. “I still think that we should go to Milton Keynes right now.”

“And who’s going to drive you?” asked Priya. “Because I’m quite drunk and also don’t want to.”

Bridge bounced undeterred. “We’ll get an Uber.”

“Oliver would hate that,” I reminded her. “We’d be intruding on his private grief and the grief of his family who dislike me, while using the services of a company whose business practices he disapproves of.”

Deflating slightly, Bridget lowered herself back onto the sofa. “I want to say, it would be so romantic that it wouldn’t matter but…it would matter, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah.” I sighed. “It really would.”

“Why is everything so complicated?” Bridge wondered piteously. “It wasn’t like this when we were younger.”