“Ah, yes,” said Oliver, in a manner that suggested this had been my worst idea since the vegan pie. So my worst idea since very, very recently. “I could call up one of my many married friends and say, ‘Hello, would you like to abandon your spouse for an evening in order to see a moderately well-reviewed musical in place of the man I love?’”

“I mean, Ben or Sophie’d love a chance to stick the other one with the kids.”

“Perhaps, but the stickee would hate me forever and the important part of that sentence was ‘the man I love’ not ‘my married friends.’”

I wrestled with a weird mix of happy-sad cringe. “I’ll make it up to you? I promise?”

He gave a soft, not entirely sincere laugh. “I shall hold you to that, Lucien. Now go help Bridget. I don’t… I’d rather… It’s absolutely the right thing to do.”

“And I love you too,” I added slightly too late.

“Well recovered.”

We hung up. Then I grabbed my coat, shouted a quick goodbye to Alex, who was still stuck in the photocopier, and made a dash for the door. Because I was a good friend. And a good maid of honour. Which I suppose meant that the joke was on me because, despite all that, I felt like a prick.

Chapter 5

I WAS JUST DOING AN emergency Tesco’s run to get sorry-you’re-sad food when my phone buzzed again.

Thankfully, it wasn’t a picture of ambiguous infidelity this time. It was a black-and-white illustration of a man in a tricorn hat jumping a stiffly drawn horse over a fence. Underneath it, Oliver had sent: thinking of you.

Dick Turpin? I texted back.

Yes. I’m amazed we hadn’t got around to using him yet, but I checked and we definitely haven’t.

I paused in front of the freezers with one eye on my phone and one on the ice cream. Choosing the right emotional-support ice cream was important, but some questions demanded answers. What do you mean, you checked? Do you keep a list?

No. It was an unusually short message from Oliver, which suggested he was attempting to use comic timing in text. It’s a database.

You have a dick database. A dicktabase?

Now I’m concerned you think I actually have a database.

I bet you have a database, I typed, relieved things between us seemed to be drifting normalwards. I bet you have an intern who updates it for you.

I think making an intern update my database of dick pics would constitute a hostile working environment.

Depends how nice the dicks are.

That certainly wouldn’t stand up in court. Was it weird that I always heard Oliver’s texts in Oliver’s voice? Or was it weirder that Oliver texted exactly the same way he spoke?

Probably for the best. That kind of thing could get you disbarred.