Why aren’t you replying to my messages?
Lucien has something happened?
Lucien?
Lucien I tried to call you but it went to voicemail.
Is Bridget all right? Have there been complications?
Are you all right?
Are you and Bridget all right?
Are you still with Bridget?
You forgot your keys.
Lucien I would really like to know what is happening.
I am coming to St. Thomas’s now. Please text me if that is not where you are.
Or if it is where you are.
I am coming to St. Thomas’s. I will be driving and not able to look at my phone.
Oh God, I was the worst person in the world. I’d run out on my deeply considerate partner at three a.m. because I was worried about a dog, and then sent him a cryptic text over an hour laterimplying that something bad was happening to two people he cared about. We’d established a while back that marriage wasn’t on the cards for us, but at this rate Oliver was going to be downgrading me fromfucktokill. And I couldn’t entirely say I didn’t deserve it.
I was just trying to compose a reassuring text that wasn’t going to make him plough into a lamppost in frustration when I heard rapid, slightly familiar footsteps approaching down the hallway. And then a tousled, pale-faced Oliver Blackwood with misaligned shirt buttons was in the room. And I was completely fucked. Or possibly completely killed.
“Oliver, I’m…” I started at the same time he said “Lucien, what’s wrong?”
“Well.” I gazed up at him, trying to compose a reassuring sentence that wasn’t going to make him plough into a lamppost in frustration. “Nothing’s wrong, really?”
“You’re at the hospital.”
“Circumstantially. Bridge is having a baby. That’s where people have babies. I mean, a lot of people. Not everyone, obviously. And those choices are completely valid.”
Oliver gazed back at me, his eyes tired, and at their coolest, most washed-out shade of grey. “While I appreciate this defence of the autonomy of pregnant people, it doesn’t explain…anything. Why did you sneak out without waking me up? Why is Bridget at a hospital that isn’t the one she planned to go to? Why—” He paused, frowning. Shit, he was putting the pieces together. He knew me too well. “Let me guess: You had a three a.m. crisis about the fact we’re getting a dog in approximately eight hours. You instinctively called Bridget, forgetting in your panic that she was heavily pregnant, and by the time you tried to course correct, she was already on the way to meet you. Probably on the Millennium Bridge because Bridget thinks doing something once makes it a tradition.”
There was a long silence as I tried to compose a way of sayingYeah, basicallythat wasn’t going to make him plough into a lamppost in frustration.
“Okay,” said Priya, sort-of-not-quite saving me. “That was almost romantic. In a fucked-up way.”
Even a drive across London couldn’t blunt Oliver’s instinctive politeness. Which meant he gave a deeply sincere “Hello, Priya, Andi. I’m sorry you’ve been so inconvenienced” before turning back to me and adding, “I think we might need to have a conversation.”
Normally, I was a big fan of Stern Oliver. Normally, though, I wasn’t in a hospital waiting room with my most sarcastic friend and the younger of her two girlfriends.
“Some-one’s in trou-ble,” sang my most sarcastic friend.
“I’m not in trouble,” I retorted. “We’re going to have an adult discussion about my flaws.”
Priya gave me a look of performative anticipation. “Go on then.”
“Somewhere else,” Oliver said firmly, before escorting me in a totally non-demeaning way out into the corridor.
We wandered a bit, not saying very much, looking for a goodconfront Luc with his failingsspot and eventually settling on a pair of seats bolted to the wall near a very fake potted plant.
I stared at my feet.
