“Fuck you, James.” She grinned.

“And,” he asked warily, “the long answer?”

“Because in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not a very good Muslim. I fuck women, I drink alcohol, and I don’t believe in God. But I grew up not eating pork, and so it still feels weird to eat an animal that rolls around in its own shit all day.”

“Actually, pigs are very clean animals.”

“Yeah”—she shrugged—“still not gonna eat ’em.”

There was a brief period of calm while we all attempted to put a dent in James Royce-Royce’s characteristically excessive picnic.

Eventually, Theresa—who clearly had better manners than the rest of us—said, “Priya tells me you have a new boyfriend, Luc. Will he be joining us?”

“He’s got a work thing.” I waved a hunk of James Royce-Royce’s delicious home-made bread slightly sheepishly. “He’s a barrister.”

“What speciality?”

Help. I hadn’t prepared for the quiz. “Um…criminal stuff? He defends them and stuff.”

“That’s very admirable. I had a friend from university who went into criminal law, but he recently moved into consultancy. I understand it can be very draining and not particularly lucrative.”

“Well, Oliver’s got a lot of passion for it. I can’t imagine him wanting to do anything else really.”

She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Then he’s lucky. Although in my experience there’s no one thing you need to make you happy.”

“Is this,” said Priya, “your way of telling me you want a threesome?”

Theresa gave her a wry smile. “Absolutely. In front of your friends at a picnic in a flat that still looks a little bit like the Siege of Constantinople is exactly how I’d choose to have that conversation.”

“That sounds like it’s probably bad”—I went for another piece of infidel pie—“but I don’t actually know what the Siege of Constantinople looked like.”

Theresa looked thoughtful again. I guess thoughtful was kind of the default in academia. “To be fair, it depends which siege you’re talking about, but I was thinking of the one in 1204.”

“Oh good. Because if it had been any of the other ones, I’d have been deeply offended.”

From which point the conversation degenerated into a mixture of quite a sophisticated description of the sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade (from Theresa) and some rather juvenile speculation about the presence, or otherwise, of my stripy underpants at the event (from everybody else). I would have tried to steer us onto practically any other topic, except knowing my friends, any other topic would have been just as bad. So, while they were trying to work out which bits of my laundry would be most useful against a crusading army, I found myself surreptitiously checking my phone. Turned out while I’d been dragging bags of rubbish between flat and truck and truck and dump, I’d missed a text from Oliver.

He’d sent me a picture of Richard Chamberlain.

Nice Dick, I sent back.

“Oh my God, Luc,” cried James Royce-Royce. “What’s happened to your mouth?”

I glanced up, startled. “If there’s hummus on my face, just tell me.”

“It’s far worse than that. You were smiling.”

“W-was I?”

“At your phone.”

From the uncomfortable hot feeling and the way everyone was looking at me, I was pretty sure I was blushing. “I saw something funny on the internet.”

“Wow.” Priya put on her extra specially sardonic face she only used when I was being a total numpty. “A+ lying. Really good detail. Really sells it.”

“It was a cat. Being scared of…something.”

“It’s cucumbers. It’s always cumbers. And that was not a cat-meme smile. That was an ‘I’ve got a sweet message from someone I like’ smile.”

I threw my hands up. “Fine. Oliver sent me a dick pic, okay?”

There was a long silence.

“Well.” James Royce-Royce drew in a long breath. “I enjoy a good penis as much as the next man, but I don’t normally go misty-eyed over them.”

Somewhat shamefacedly, I turned my phone around and showed them the young Richard Chamberlain in a brown velvet coat, holding a glass slipper. “It’s…sort of…a joke we have.”

Suddenly, with the exception of Theresa—who was looking very slightly confused—everyone had their phones out. And my own lit up with notifications from the WhatsApp group, which had just been renamed Don’t Luc Back in Anger.

Bridget we have something very important to tell you

Luc and Oliver are totally in wuv

We are not!

He sent him a dick pic and he got all smiley over it

WHAT THAT MAKMES NO SENSE OLIVER WOULD NEVER DO THAT!!!!1

It was a picture of Richard Chamberlain

Which means they have private jokes. They’re getting married in August.

YAAAAAAY

Nobody is marrying anybody. It’s just a bit of friendly banter about men called Richard. It doesn’t mean ANYTHING

IM REALLY CONFUSED BY THE MEN CALLED RICHARD THING

I think it’s a pun on dick pic. It’s about Luc’s level.

OMG THAT IS SO SWEEEEET LUC SEND HIM A DICK PIC BACK RIGH TNOW

I’m not sending my boyfriend either a picture of my penis or a picture of a famous guy called Richard just because my friends told me to

OH MY GOD YOU CALL HIM YOUR BOYFRIEND!!!

ALSO G2G

ONE OF MY AUTHORS IS BEIN G SUED BY THE STATE OF WYOMING

Also my girlfriend is in the room and we’re ignoring her and she’s too fucking polite to mention it

I was used to my friends teasing me about basically everything—it was how we related to each other—but that afternoon they’d hit a survivalist’s bunker’s worth of ammunition. Apparently the idea of me actually giving a shit about someone was such a novelty that it supported an endless stream of jokes, jibes, and ribbings. And, for some reason, I was totally defenceless, reduced to stuttering and blushing, when I was sure once upon a time it would all have just bounced straight off my armour of apathy.

It took a bit of getting used to because I’d spent a long time pretending I was invulnerable. But they were so obviously happy for me, and their goal was so obviously to get me to admit that I was happy for myself, that even I couldn’t quite justify being a prick to them about it. Which meant they got to laugh at me, and I got to take it…and it didn’t entirely suck.