Husband Material (London Calling, #2)

by Alexis Hall

“How about we definitely shouldn’t. My search history is incriminating enough as it is.”

and wound up wandering into a badly lit park that, in a better state of mind, I’d have avoided for fear of being murdered and/or arrested.

I’d just bailed on her non-gender-specific bird do.

So we got up, I put my vulva hat back on my head, and I let Oliver Blackwood—my amazing barrister boyfriend—escort me back to my best friend’s non-gender-specific bird party.

An hour and ten minutes into the one-hour prep time that the recipe had promised, I was covered in flour to my elbows, juggling three different roasting tins that had to go into the oven at different times, trying to work out whether my pastry needed more coconut milk (I’d bought extra in case) or more flour (I’d bought extra in case) or less of one or the other (in which case how was I meant to take it out), and fast returning to my monthly realisation that I should never, ever be allowed in a kitchen.

“Oliver,” I said, because I wanted this on record, “you are actually just a smidgeon jealous, aren’t you?”

“I’m just a filthy sock harlot.”

Argh. Help. My feelings. I made a valiant attempt not to melt everywhere.

We were older and more mature and more sensible and… Wait. Were we just boring? Safe and predictable and full of table lamps.

The thing about our friendship group—and I very much included myself in this—was that we were always helpful but rarely useful.

Because obviously the James Royce-Royces hadn’t just bought a stroller. They’d brought a multifunctional infant transportation device that looked like a spaceship.

Although since it might have put me in line to be Baron Pfaffle, I would at that point have had to admit that Oliver was right and I was posher than I thought.

But we are never going to be friends because you will always be the guy who sold me out for the price of a Toyota Supra.”

Obviously he was banking on sir being too lazy to walk eight minutes down the road to a shop where sir might be treated less rudely. And he had sir bang to rights. Sir would take a lot more abuse than this if it meant dodging a short walk or a long queue.

“Because he’s a lawyer.” “Barrister,” Oliver gently corrected me. I knew the difference, I just thought lawyer sounded cooler and less like he made flat whites for a living.

“I’m thirty. I’m an old man. I can’t cope with this wild, thrill-seeking, field-crossing, tea-stealing lifestyle anymore.”

Oh no, was this a me problem? This was probably a me problem. I mean, let’s be honest, most things were me problems.

Moodily, I munched through the incredibly delicious French toast, trying not to resent how incredibly delicious it was. But it was incredibly delicious. Dammit.

Definitely not crying, I threw away my takeaway container and realised I’d thrown the fork away with it. In retrospect, that might have explained why I had so few forks.

I divided my attention between a lolly in one hand and a beer in the other. And that was some duality-of-man shit right there.

Back at the flat, I took the extremely sensible and grown-up precaution of opening all the windows and taking the batteries out of the smoke alarm.

and my mum’s mum was still very much alive in the south of France, preserved into her nineties by a diet of olive oil and red wine.

I stormed so extravagantly that I ended up at my mum’s house.

“I look happy in those pictures because I’m at a party where I’m celebrating the fact that I’m getting married to the man I love. Who is you. You fool. You numpty. You absolute pillock.”