Miffy nodded. “Yes, do go out with Ally. I could have one of you on each arm. It’d be the most ripping lark.”

“For fuck’s sake”—once again, I was slightly louder than I meant to be—“stop trying to steal my boyfriend. You don’t even like men.”

Alex gave me a genuinely wounded look. “Of course I like men. All my friends are men. My father’s a man. You’re the one who’s being horrid to everybody. Telling Oliver he’s boring when he’s an Oxford fellow and has been dashed good company all evening. And now implying I’m the sort of chap who doesn’t get along with other chaps. When really”—here, Alex turned downright haughty—“it’s becoming very clear to me that you’re the sort of chap who doesn’t get along with other chaps. I really feel I ought to apologise, Oliver.”

“Do me a favour.” I stood up. “Don’t apologise for my behaviour to my boyfriend. I’ve had nothing but fucking Oxford talk for this entire fucking meal. I know it’s stupid to complain about feeling excluded from your little private club when we are literally sitting in a little private club but, sorry, it’s been long day and, yes, you’re trying to do me a favour, but I’m having the worst fucking evening and…and I’m going to the toilet.”

I stormed off, discovered I had no idea where the loos were, asked one of the Jameses, and made an embarrassing U-turn. Once I was safely in the gents—which were tasteful but simplistic like they were saying “Only Americans and the middle classes feel the need to put marble in a water closet”—I stood at the sink and did that thing people do in movies where they brace themselves on the counter and stare meaningfully at their reflection.

Turns out, it didn’t help. It was just a dick, looking at a dick, asking why he was always such a dick.

What was I even doing? Oliver Blackwood was a dull, annoying man I was pretending to date, and Alex Twaddle was an overprivileged buffoon who regularly stapled his trousers to his desk. What did I care if they got on with each other better than they got on with me?

Ooh, ooh, tally-ho toodle pip, which college were you at where did you sit at the annual duck following ceremony go fuck yourselves you self-satisfied pair of testes.

Okay, so calling them names didn’t help either.

And, actually, Oliver wasn’t dull. And he was only a little bit annoying. And Alex was terribly annoying, but he’d done nothing but try to help me. Maybe, and I’d suspected this for a while now, I was fundamentally unhelpable. Because somewhere along the line, I’d turned getting ahead of the story into a lifestyle.

When Miles had thrown me to the tabloid sharks, I’d been completely unprepared, and the only way I’d survived was by making sure that there was enough chum in the water that they’d only eat what I wanted them to. It had only half worked, but by the time I figured that out, the habit was so ingrained that I was doing the same with people.

The truth was, things were easier that way. It meant whatever happened wasn’t really about me. It was about this shadow person who partied and fucked and didn’t give a shit. So what did it matter if someone didn’t like him? Didn’t want him. Let him down or sold him out.

Except he wasn’t dating Oliver—pretending to date Oliver—I was. And so, suddenly it all mattered again, and I wasn’t sure I could cope with it mattering. The door swung open, and for a biscuit crumb of a second I hoped it might be Oliver coming to rescue me. And that was precisely the sort of crap I wanted out of my head. Anyway, it didn’t matter because it wasn’t Oliver. It was an old guy in tweed who looked like Father Christmas if Father Christmas only had a naughty list.

“Who are you?” he barked.

I jumped. “Luc? Luc O’Donnell?”

“Weren’t you once up before me for public defecation?”

“What? No. I defecate very privately.”

Evil Father Christmas narrowed his eyes. “I never forget a face, young man, and I don’t like yours. Besides, never trusted the Irish.”

“Um.” Probably I should have stood up for my mother’s father’s people but I increasingly wanted to get the hell out of there. Unfortunately Racist Santa was blocking the exit. “Sorry about the…face. I really need to—”

“What are you doing here anyway?”

“Using the…facilities?”

“Loitering. That’s what you’re doing. Lurking in a communal lavatory like you’re waiting for Jeremy Thorpe.”

“I really just want to go back to my friends.”

I managed to sidle past him with my hands in the air like I was being arrested. His head did almost a full exorcist as his cold, dead eyes followed me out. “I’m watching you O’Toole. Never forget a face. Never forget a name.”

Back at the table, my so-called companions were enjoying my absence.

“—quarter blue for tiddlywinks in the end,” Alex was saying cheerfully. “Miffy’s the real sportsman. I mean, sportslady. Suppose we’d better be politically correct about these things. Full blue for lacrosse, don’t you know. Invited to join Team GB but turned it down, didn’t you, old girl? Wanted to focus on… Oh I say, what is it you do, Miffy?”

I sat down, trying to figure out if I was relieved or pissed off that everyone was carrying on as if I hadn’t made an enormous scene.

Miffy tapped her perfect lips with a perfect nail. “Now you come to mention it, I have no idea. I think I’ve got an office somewhere, and I might be launching some kind of line, but mostly I just get invited to parties. Not like Ally, who’s got an actual, you know, job. Which everybody thinks is terribly funny. But he goes in every day, which is so good of him, isn’t it?”

This would have been a great time for me to be mature and say sorry. “I’m not sure,” I said instead, “‘good of him’ is the right phrase. Maybe more ‘contractually obligated’ of him?”

“Are you quite certain?” Alex tilted his head like a bewildered parrot. “That doesn’t seem quite cricket. Chap makes a commitment, chap follows through on it. One doesn’t need to get all legal about things—no offence, Oliver.”

“None taken.” Of course Oliver wasn’t taking offence. Oliver was an angel. While I was a slime demon from the planet Jerkface.

“Well, I say it’s splendid. And, of course”—here Miffy bestowed a dazzling smile on me, which in the circumstances felt an awful lot like a participation trophy—“you’re splendid too, Luc. Since you do the same job.”

Great. So now not only did Oliver know that my job wasn’t something I was passionate about, the way he was about his, but he was also going to think you could do it with about three functioning brain cells.