“If this is going to work”—he gazed at me solemnly—“we need to get to know each other, Luc.”

“You can call me Lucien,” I blurted out.

“I thought you said you didn’t—”

“It can be your special name for me. I mean”—suddenly, I could barely catch my breath—“your fake special name for me. That’s a thing, right? That couples do.”

“But I don’t want to have a fake special name for you that you genuinely don’t like.” There was that light again. Those secret flecks of silver in the cold steel of his eyes. “That would make me a terrible fake boyfriend.”

“It’s fine. I overreacted. I don’t care.”

“That’s hardly an endorsement.”

“I mean I don’t mind.” Was he going to make me beg? Who was I kidding? I was probably going to.

This was why relationships sucked: they made you need shit you’d been perfectly happy not needing. And then they took them away.

He gave me one of those too-searching, too-sincere looks. “Well, if that’s what you want.”

I nodded, quietly hating myself. “It’s what I want.”

“Then, I’ll see you on Sunday…” He smiled. Oliver Blackwood was smiling. At me. For me. Because of me. “…Lucien.”

Chapter 9

“So,” I said to Alex Twaddle, “a man walks into a bar. And he sits down and there’s the bowl of peanuts. And a voice comes from the bowl of peanuts, saying Hey, your hair looks great. And then this other voice comes from the cigarette machine on the other side of the bar, saying, No it doesn’t, you look like a prick, and so does your mum.”

Alex’s eyes widened. “Oh I say. That’s a bit much.”

“Yeah, keep that in mind because it’s sort of integral to the joke. Anyway, the man asks the barman what’s going on. And the barman says, don’t worry, the nuts are complimentary but the cigarette machine’s out of order.”

“Well, I suppose they wouldn’t have bothered to fix it because you’re not allowed to smoke in pubs anymore.”

I should have seen this coming. “You’re right, Alex. It’s the accuracy that makes it funnier.”

“I’ll keep that in mind too.” He smiled at me encouragingly. “What’s the rest of the joke?”

“That was the joke. The nuts are complimentary, but the cigarette machine is out of order.”

“Are you sure that’s a joke? It just seems like facts about a bar.”

“Once again,” I told him, resigned to my fate, “you’ve hit the nail on the head. I’ll try and do better tomorrow.”

I toodled back to my office, actually in a pretty good mood for once. My date with Oliver had been, as predicated, a disaster. But, somehow, not in a bad way? And there was something strangely liberating about having a pretend boyfriend because it meant I didn’t have to worry about all the usual relationship things. You know, like being shit at them. Even my morning tabloid alert had been borderline positive. Someone had snapped us at the restaurant but, crucially, they’d got the moment before Oliver recoiled from me in disgust. So it had come out looking kind of romantic, with Oliver’s coat billowing around us and his face turned up to mine as my lips came down. The headlines were mostly variants of “Package Judge Club Kid Son In New Gent Squeeze Shock,” which I liked because it suggested I had good taste in new squeezes. New fake squeezes.

As I sat down and checked the donor lists to see if anyone else had dumped me, the phone rang.

“Oh my God,” cried Bridge. “You won’t believe what’s happened.”

“You’re right. I probably—”

“I can’t really talk about it, but we’ve just got the English language rights for a really prestigious Swedish author. And everybody has been clamouring to read her debut novel, which is being billed as A Hundred Years of Solitude meets Gone Girl. But there was a lot of debate amongst the team over whether to give it an English title or stick with the Swedish original, and it all wound up being sorted out very last minute and so now the book’s gone to press as I’m Out of the Office at the Moment. Please Forward Any Translation Work to My Personal Email Address.”

“I don’t know. I think it’s got a certain meta-textual cachet.”

“I’m going to get fired.”

“You’ve not been fired yet, Bridge. They’re not going to fire you over this.”

“Oh.” She perked up. “That reminds me. How did your date go?”

“It was awful. We have nothing in common. I think I might have sexually assaulted him. But we’re going to pretend to give it a go anyway because we’re both desperate.”

“I knew you’d work it out.”

I rolled my eyes, but only because she couldn’t see me. “That’s not working something out. That’s making something up.”

“Yes, but you’ll slowly discover that you’re not as different as you initially assumed, and then he’ll surprise you with how thoughtful he is, and then you’ll come to his rescue in an unexpected moment of need, and you’ll fall madly in love with each other and live happily ever after.”

“That’s never going to happen. He doesn’t even like me.”

“What?” I could hear the look on her face. “Why would he agree to go on with a date with you if he didn’t like you?”

“Remember that bit where we’re both desperate?”

“Luc, I’m sure he likes you. How could anybody not like you? You’re lovely.”

“He told me he didn’t when I tried to kiss him.”

She gave a little squeak. “You kissed?”

“No, I attacked him with my lips, and he was so repulsed he jumped into a potted plant.”

“Maybe he was surprised.”

“I was surprised when you guys threw me a surprise birthday party. Okay, I wasn’t surprised because James Royce-Royce accidentally told me. But I didn’t pull away in horror, saying I only go to parties with people I like.”

“Wait. He actually said that?”

“Pretty much, if you replace go to parties with kiss.”

“Oh.” There was a moment’s silence. “I thought you were just being obsessively negative. You know, like usual.”

“No. No. Those were his exact words.”