We’re sitting in The Little Thatch’s beer garden at the table furthest from the pub itself. It’s a lot closer to the kids’ play area, so we’re trying to monitor what words we use in case of tiny eavesdroppers.
Harry had an away game at Exeter earlier today, where he scored the winning try. He missed the corner conversion, but he’s still riding high, sitting opposite me with his chest all puffed out and proud. It’s adorable. There are only two matches left of the season.
“We’re putting on a . . . sort of charity rugby matchnext month.”
“Oh,” he says, his smile dropping. “Yeah, Gadget—I mean Mathias already asked me.”
“What is your beef with him? I’m desperate to know.”
Harry chugs his drink to avoid answering my question for a few moments, and when he does, it’s a non-answer. “I don’t have beef with him.”
“You clearly do.” I sidle up next to him on the bench and inhale a lungful of Lumière du Fantôme. I try not to sniff him like a spaniel in an airport luggage-checking room. “Listen, I don’t care. You know I live for the drama.”
“There’s no drama. No beef. I just. Don’t. Like. The guy.” He’s speaking through gritted teeth, holding himself back.
I try a different approach. “Did I ever tell you about last month when I accidentally cockblocked Mathias?”
“No!” he says, suddenly and unsurprisingly very interested in talking about him.
“Well, my IBS did.”
“Oh my god, no, you didn’t. I need to hear this.”
“So, it was at the sevens ground. Owen and Mathias were having a . . .” I check over my shoulder to the playground to see what kind of language I can get away with, and decide the two kids on the swings are too far away to hear us, but better to be safe than traumatising. “They were having a mutual self-exploration sesh . . .”
“Okay.Oh,I see.”
“In any case, I was extremely, violently hungover, and my as—behind was about to explode, so I had to barge right on in there and napalm the shower block.”
“Oh, Jesus,” he says, and now he’s laughing uncontrollably. “I shouldn’t laugh. By the sound of it, you were all losers there. Did um . . . either of them get to finish?” Harry glances over at the swing set, but again I don’t think they’d hear or even understand.
“Well, if they did, they did it to the sounds of my bowels’ expedited evacuation.”
“Noooo.” He’s howling, slapping a hand over his mouth to stem the noise, because the swing girls are definitely looking over now.
“Naked Mathias is really very stunning, by the way,” I say.
Harry’s mirth vanishes quicker than throwing water onto a fire. “You had to ruin my moment of joy, didn’t you?”
It’s like a light bulb has been switched on inside my head. He’s jealous. Harry’s beef is because he wants what Mathias has.
“Aw, you’re gorgeous too. More so. You, Harry Sebastian Eugene Ellis, are infinitely more beautiful than Mathias . . . Flaffius Jones.” I boop him on the nose for extra measure.
He side-eyes me. “Don’t you full name me, Mr Orlando Reginald Oakham-Goodwin.”
I slap him playfully. “No. How did you find that one out?”
“Your little blonde ponytailed friend told me when I asked her for embarrassing facts about you.” Ah, good old Daisy.
“What else did she tell you?”
He taps the edge of his nose. “All in good time. Though it’s interesting to me why you bothered to research my middle names but not Gadget’s.”
“I . . .” My mouth hangs open for a moment before I snap it shut.
Damn.
“So, you want me to play in the ‘charity’ match?” he asks.
