He laughed. “If you recall, I encouraged you to explore opportunities in the fast-growing field of Dogstagramming.”
“Don’t tempt me. Spud’s not safe from the sailor suit yet.”
“He will be if Jaz has anything to say about it.” We both fell silent for a second or two, or as silent as you could be with a Welsh male voice choir belting out “Men of Harlech” in the background. Then Oliver said, “You know I’m very proud of you, don’t you?”
“For doing something that wasn’t my job?”
“There are a lot of things that are nobody’s job but still need doing. And if more people stepped up and did them, the world would be a better place.”
“Like recycling and fostering and shit, right?”
“Particularly recycling. The other day, you put a paper bag full of orange peel into the general waste.”
“I was busy,” I protested. “I was busy stepping up and being the change I want to see and whatever.”
“It was a compostable inside a recyclable. The definition of adding insult to injury.”
“You can punish me later.”
“Don’t get my hopes up. You’re bound to be exhausted this evening.”
“Then you can punish me, like, slowly and tenderly.”
His eyes shone their softest grey. “It’s a date.”
Leaning in, he kissed me in that Olivery way I never got tired of. Like there was nothing in the world more important than me, and him, and us. Except then my arse slipped off the amp and I went straight down into the mud, dragging him on top of me.
And, honestly, it didn’t make much of a difference.
We just kept on kissing. Because, sometimes, it didn’t matter how old you were, or how many grown-up things there were to think about; you just needed to be with the person you loved.
* * *
Eventually, both of us slightly the worse for wear, we went to join our friends.
“Fucking hell, you two,” said Jaz. “What have you been up—actually, don’t answer that. I’m too traumatised already.”
“It was very romantic,” I insisted.
Jaz clapped her hands over her ears. “Fuckofffuckofffuckofffff.”
“She’s great, isn’t she?” said Priya. “James, I’m expecting Baby J to be able to swear at least as well as this by the time he’s nine.”
James Royce-Royce, who was looking after Baby J while James Royce-Royce was running his Gourmet Street Food Experience, looked sceptical. “Not sure James would like that.”
“He would”—Priya smirked—“if you told him most kids only start dropping f-bombs at eleven.”
There was a ripple of slightly nervous laughter. We’d mostly got to the stage where James Royce-Royce’s compulsive need to treat babies like Top Trumps was an in-joke, but we were still working on it.
Sophie was lounging on a picnic blanket wearing dark glasses,a white sundress, and shoes that were way too expensive for the ground, the weather, or the whole overall vibe. “If you’ve got a thing for terrible children,pleaseconsider taking the twins off our hands. I’ve become quite bored of them.”
Ben looked glum. “I really don’t think we can just give them away. There’s probably laws about it.”
“Who’s the barrister?” asked Sophie, raising an eyebrow. “I’m sure I can find a loophole somewhere.”
Bridge, who had for some reason decided that because it was a music festival, she had to go full Woodstock, with a caftan and flowers in her hair, took Autumn to sit next to Sophie on the picnic blanket. “Auntie Sophie pretends to be mean,” she said to Autumn in the universal talking-to-babies voice, “but deep down she’s made of chocolate and marshmallows, isn’t she? Is-n’t-she?”
“She’s fucking not.” Unlike his wife, Tom had chosen to dress like a sensible person.
