Alexis Hall

This is why I like Laurie so much—he has absolutely no culture.

Point is, my dad’s a dick who treated my mum like shit, and now he’s doing this big comeback where everyone’s acting like it’s okay, and it’s not okay, and it fucks me off.”

just sort of aware that anything you wanted to know about me you could Google.”

“Would it be the truth, though?”

I cringed. “Some of it. And not only the good stuff.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my line of work, it’s that ‘some of the truth’ is the most misleading thing you can hear. Anything I want to know about you, I’ll ask.”

You need to go back to being the sort of harmless sodomite that Waitrose shoppers can feel good about introducing to their left-wing friends

and I believe Bridget said you work with dung beetles.”
“I work for dung beetles.” Okay, that didn’t sound much better.

Leaving me to scrape the bottom of the barrel of my GCSE French, for which I’d received a D. “Um…um… Je voudrais aller au cinema avec mes amis? Ou est la salle de bain?”

shit. For a second or two, I tried to do that British thing where you pretend nothing untoward is happening in the hope it’ll sort itself out quickly and amicably, and then you’ll never have to talk about it again. Except Oliver was crying, and not stopping crying, and this was definitely a boyfriend job—one that, as an aspiring boyfriend, I was failing hard at.
It didn’t help we were in a car, both of us responsibly wearing seat belts, so I couldn’t even inadequately hug him. Instead, I was reduced to inadequately petting his shoulder like he’d come third in a primary-school sack race. And I desperately wanted to say something supportive but “don’t cry” was toxic bullshit, “it’s okay to cry” was patronising, and “there, there” had never made anybody feel better ever in the history of emotions.

“That’s not true. I just think it’s important to be useful.”

“Useful, dear, is for dogs and crescent wrenches. Friends and lovers should care for you even when you’re not a blind bit of good to anybody.”

This was hard. Romance was hard. How did you romance?

“Lucien, I feel bad enough about this already.”

“You shouldn’t be the one who’s feeling bad,” I insisted. “You’re a good person.”

“But not a very good son.”

“Only by the standards of the arseholes you’re unfortunate enough to have for parents.”