I squeezed his arm. I heard Nick cough, but when I looked up at him, his eyes were on Olly.

Lacey and Olly, in fact, made for a great social lubricant. The common ground of the Sands preserve gave way to casual, amusing anecdotes, like the time five-year-old Olly burst into tears at the London Zoo because he’d thought all the animals were under arrest, or Nick’s subsequent embarrassment that he technically owned one of the elephants there (a birthday gift), or the admission that we all lived for watching Cotswolds Coroner and that Freddie had screamed when the bell ringer had been butter-churned to death. By the time we were rubbing our full bellies, I was feeling misty and proud. Finally, a plan of mine had worked.

“That was shockingly not terrible, Killer,” Freddie teased, nibbling on one last piece of turkey. “I might even survive the night.”

“Wow,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve gotten higher praise than that for anything I’ve ever cooked.”

“I have to admit, I had some concerns coming over here tonight,” Olly said. “Lacey once microwaved a Pot Noodle without the water in it.”

“Mom and Dad loved cooking,” I said. “So we kind of…let them do it.”

“That was doing them a favor,” Lacey said.

I retrieved two Tiffany-blue paper boxes from the old rolltop in the corner, which was working as a de facto sideboard. The most amazing smell of apple and sugar and cinnamon wafted out of one of them, and the other held a stunning array of macarons artfully arranged in ROYGBIV order.

“Speaking of favors,” I said, clearing some space on the table and placing the boxes on it. “Please thank your father, Olly. These are gorgeous.”

Nick peeked at the lid of the box. “Macaron and Cheese,” he read. “I suspect I’m going to like your parents.” He bit into a white one crusted in pink salt crystals. “White truffle,” he announced. “Don’t tell Gaz but these are the best thing I’ve ever eaten.”

Olly smiled. “My father says they were the hardest thing to perfect,” he said. “His parents wanted him to run their hotel in Lagos, but then he went to France and fell in love with pastry cream, and that was that.”

“Please do not let me have more than two of these, or else my official portrait is going to end up with a giant zit in it,” I said.

“Isn’t the whole point of a portrait that you can gloss over certain bits?” Freddie asked. “Although for some reason Edwin’s still makes him look like a walrus.”

“I can’t wait until you’re hanging in a museum,” Lacey said to me. “Imagine having generations of people visiting you on their vacations, buying postcards of your face.”