It was lunchtime, apparently. Ollie had lost track of time in Arrowtown. He had a habit of doing this as a reader and it was worse, he’d discovered, as a writer. This time, his mother had needed no pretence to get him to Queenstown, so no elaborate arrangements had been made or staff employed. They were there for a quick visit to admire the trees before it became too late for Letty to fly. They had meant to be there for the craft fair, obviously, but she had been taken ill in Singapore and they’d delayed their onward flight by a day.
So much had happened to Ollie in twenty-four hours that he found it almost impossible to believe that only yesterday morning he’d believed Tom Collins lost to him for good.
Now it seemed to Ollie that he had almost a lifetime of good memories of Tom to draw upon when he needed them—the kiss in the kitchen, the mutual spilling, kneeling in the shower…Ollie almost tipped his head up once more to the memory of the taste of Tom on his tongue…Thoughts of Tom glowed like a tiny heartstone of courage in Ollie’s chest. As if reading his mind, his mother asked, “Did you keep in contact with Tom at all?”
Ollie shook his head, which was technically true—he hadn’t kept in touch. “It didn’t seem appropriate to write to him.” Which was also true.
His mother was staring off into the mountains, possibly waiting for someone to shout action, but perhaps she heard her own cues in her head. “Are you still in Cambridge?”
“Yes.”
“Thesis?”
“I got a bit distracted. I’ve taken another extension.”
“Oh, Oliver, how long have you been—?”
“I wrote a novel. It’s being published.”
He hadn’t intended to tell her, given their history. But Ronnie Fitzroy was still his mother, when all was said and done—who wouldn’t want to tell his mother that news?
§§§
The lunch turned into a bit of a boozy affair as his mother led the celebration of Ollie’s triumph. Leticia, noticing Ollie wasn’t drinking either, slid closer to him and raised her glass of water. Ollie smiled and clinked glasses with her.
“Congrats.”
“Thanks.”
“And for…” She waved vaguely at him. “You look incredibly beautiful too.”
Ollie chuckled. “Better than I did, I’m thinking.”
She nodded. “So, a novel.”
He made a self-deprecating gesture. “And yours?”
She smiled. “My novel was titled how to persuade the man I adore that he’s not too old to fall in love and get married.”
“Successful book then.”
“Very. Am I a traitor to the cause? Should I be writing feminazi polemics instead?”
“You could do both.” They tipped their faces up to the weak sun, and Ollie said before he’d thought it through, “I should read your book. I might get some good tips.”
“You’ve met someone? What, here, or back home?”
Ollie frowned and was about to answer when an inquisitive voice joined in, “Met someone? Who? Do tell, dear boy, all the salacious details.”
Ollie groaned inwardly. Luke. “It’s nothing. A guy I met. In Arrowtown, coincidentally—at the festival.”
“Oooh. Cock and craft. I love it. Actually, I love it a lot…” Luke produced a notebook from his inner pocket and began theatrically and audibly making notes about a new book where two men supposedly running a craft stall were secretly gay. Leticia watched this display for a moment then commented dryly, “You could call it Crafty Cock.”
Luke’s eyes widened and he scribbled furiously once more.
She turned back to Ollie with a conspiratorial smile. “So, how is this great romance going?”
Ollie wrinkled his nose. “He doesn’t want a relationship.”
“Ah.” She glanced at David then patted her stomach absentmindedly.
“I’m winning him around. I think.”
“Be careful, Ollie. That’s treading a fine line with tricking someone. I should know.”
“Is my little Ollie being tricky?”
Ollie rolled his eyes. “Yes, Luke, I’ve met this absolutely gorgeous guy who’s poor as a clichéd church mouse and to get him to fall in love with me forever and live on my trust fund I’m pretending it’s all nothing more than a plot for a book. I’m writing his story for him, line by bloody line, and I’m going to give it a fuckingly happy ever after ending.”
Luke nodded, taking all this in. Ollie felt a bit angry at himself. He’d meant to make it a funny, ironic diatribe to shut the irritating man up, but listening to himself he realised that basically it was all true. But it
wasn’t
tricking Tom. It was helping him to help himself. Tough love. And wasn’t that ironic as he watched his mother chatting to David and Jonas? Tough love.
Luke was making notes, and Ollie said casually, “If I ever read a book with that as a plot I will personally track you down and eviscerate you.”
Luke made another note.
“And if you end the book with the characters being tracked down and eviscerated by their author, I’ll add in burning you in painful places first.” Freddie had done both of those to a prefect who’d made Patrick Bateman seem like a nice chap to introduce to your mother, but Ollie was fairly sure Lord Posthumous Oughtred and the battle in the groundsman’s shed with the weed flamethrower might get cut by his editor. Or at least amended to metaphorical evisceration. Maybe he’d have Lord Posthumous Oughtred in a kitchen being told the man he adored had been paid to fuck him until he was gay. That would work.
Luke had wandered off and was in a huddle with Jonas. Ollie sighed. Leticia patted his arm. “Don’t worry. They’ve only just started
Persuaded
. I think that’ll keep them busy for a while. I’m going to take a nap. I’m sleeping for three these days.”
Seeing his wife lever herself from her chair, David immediately jumped up to help. Jonas and Luke took their conspiratorial murmurings into the kitchen, which left Ollie alone with his mother.
She gazed across the length of the table at him, then slipped her sunglasses on and tipped her face to the sun. As she was under the parasol, this was clearly little more than an affectation. It made Ollie smile.
“So, all’s well that ends well.”
“I think it’s been done.”
She smiled.
“How is the film coming along?”
She made a small gesture, which Ollie took to mean either very well or it was all a complete shambles. He didn’t really care. He sensed she didn’t either. Oliver Fitzroy lived an entirely real life in her head. It must be very hard, he reflected, suffering someone else’s interpretation of that world. He wondered how much editorial control she had and suspected she hadn’t even got past the casting stage.
“Maybe Derek Jacobi could play Oliver.”
“Shut up, darling.”
“Too old? Simon Callow?”
“I was thinking Matt Bomer.”
Bugger
. That was a good repost, Ollie had to admit.
Mother had always been good at this game.
This time, even Bartleby seemed to hear the squeaky knife noises, for the dog whined a little.
“So, you’re still seeing that vet?” This was a useful assumption Ollie hadn’t considered. But if he said yes, to deflect her thoughts from Tom, she’d have James invited to a party and tucked up in his bed before teatime. “Invite him to the party tonight, if you’d like.”
What!
“What?”
“Tonight? Oh, Oliver, do you ever listen to a word anybody ever says to you? I was telling you all about it and you sat there and…I should have guessed you weren’t listening. I thought I’d have been here since yesterday of course, so it’s a little inconvenient, but I’m having some people around…you know…in-Queenstown-for-the-festival types…”
Ah, people who thought flying to New Zealand to see craft and dying trees was a weekend jolly. Those sorts of people. “Please don’t tell me this is Oliver-film related.”
She swished this aspersion away, then added with a tiny lip quirk, “But please don’t be rude to a tall, good-looking Canadian or offer him any meat.”
§§§
As the taxis began to arrive at the homestead, Ollie kept repeating to himself how glad he was that Tom was in Te Anau and not about to turn up to an Oliver Fitzroy nightmare made manifest. Ronnie liked her books and so she surrounded herself with people who also shared this trait. Like an aging actress, she tended to prefer sycophantic people or those who had their own fragile egos attached—those who never risked any assessment on anything too harsh unless it all came shattering down around their ears.
He heard the word gorgeous many, many times.
Ollie, of course, was always a bit of a star of his mother’s parties. Everyone wanted to meet him, because they’d all read the books and believed that they were biographical. Who wouldn’t want to meet a guy called James Bond at a party for spies in a foreign embassy? Ollie didn’t know if they had parties for spies in embassies, clearly, but if they did and someone said to him, “Do meet Bond, James Bond,” he’d have expected to be introduced to Daniel Craig. Who wouldn’t? And, if you were then introduced to a Daniel Craig
twin
, wouldn’t you expect him to actually do James Bondy type stuff? Tumbling to the floor, preferably, with a gun…but without his shirt. Ollie would.
So, he couldn’t entirely blame his mother’s guests when, on being introduced to him, they became a little expectant…He had no intention of taking anything off or getting down on the floor, but he did regale them with a few salacious stories, and, by dint of much play-acting, implied he could tell them a lot more only…
As he’d once concluded, he, book Oliver, and his mother were locked in this tiny prison together now, and sometimes Ollie had to play the good bunkmate. After all, Oliver had once paid for everything he had. No one got left behind. No stragglers; even, he supposed, Oliver bloody Fitzroy.
Fortunately for Ollie, the tripod came to his rescue most of the evening. Apparently, Ollie’s lies couldn’t compete with Bartleby’s fuzzy topknot or his endearing way of leaning on people to take a rest from balancing. He made a very convenient talking point, and as long as Ollie remembered to keep those lies straight, the evening passed away very smoothly indeed.
It was getting very late—that point in any party when the volume of noise becomes unbearable. Even the dog was flagging. Ollie decided it was a good time to slip out and give them both some fresh air.
The guests had spilt out onto the patio, too, clearly also enjoying the fresh air and the chance to pollute it with some cigarette smoke. His mother was there with David and a tall man with a funny accent. Ollie assumed he was the Canadian vegan he wasn’t allowed to speak to. Luke and Jonas were gesticulating to a man who was standing slightly in the shadows next to Letty, who was sitting down with a glass of water balanced on her belly.
Ollie was about to slide past when Bartleby began to wag his tail. At that exact moment, one of the guests swooped on the dog to tell him what a brave boy he was and Bartleby succumbed to the temptation to play the wounded veteran once more. But Ollie wasn’t really observing the dog now.
Bartleby was apparently more faithful than he was—he’d recognised Tom before he had.
Tom was talking to Luke.
This was not good.
Not a complete disaster yet, because as far as Ollie could tell his mother was engrossed with the Canadian and hadn’t seen him.
He sidled closer. His mother had a habit of tracking who he spoke with at her parties, presumably so she could grab them later and stuff them into bed with him, which was, of course, a total exaggeration of the real situation, but he was panicking and trying to make it unobserved through the patio furniture.
He had a brainwave and dived behind the huge barbecue pit and then, in the cover it provided, he sneaked past his mother and her little group entirely unseen.
He was about to emerge triumphant and drag Tom to safety, when he heard Luke announce in a gleeful, bitchy tone, “Oh, God, yes, some utterly gorgeous homeless chap from a shelter, apparently. Not a penny, and dear old Ollie feels sorry for him, of course. You know Oliver—always picking up the helpless and hopeless. But the really funny thing is, he’s tricking this complete duffer into believing he’s working for a living so they can pretend to be
equals
. Dear God, you do know what Fitzroy means…wrong side of the royal-blanket? Ollie’s father is well known to have been the…nod, nod, can’t say too much.
Equals!
But seriously, Ollie work? It’s too droll. But you can’t blame him. If I had six million a year from a trust fund, I wouldn’t bloody work eith—are you going?”
Luke’s voice carried a very long way. Ollie caught every word.
Tom did too, obviously.
He also apparently heard Luke say cheerfully on seeing Ollie, “Oh, hello, old chap. Didn’t see you there,” for he stopped and turned.
Luke had the grace to glance between them, do a slight retake on events, and then shuffle away.
Letty rose with difficulty and gave Ollie’s arm a little squeeze as she passed.
Ollie tried to seamlessly shift away into the various unrealities of fiction because this—real life—was too bloody painful to face. He was a little bit braver, but he wasn’t brave enough to face this heartbreak head on.
Tom seemed completely frozen on the horror of it all.
Ollie was hoping it was just Luke’s use of the gorgeous word making him so, but knew it probably wasn’t.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Help came from the most unexpected quarter Ollie would have expected. Bartleby, he wouldn’t have found at all odd as his saviour—the dog doing something amusing and both he and Tom breaking the awful moment by laughing together and living happily ever after. It was his mother, sweeping imperiously across the patio, embracing Tom and capturing him, that almost undid Ollie, turning the awful into the nightmarish.
“Tom, darling. This way.”
His mother had created Oliver Fitzroy; she was more than capable of controlling and corralling Tom Collins, it appeared. As if in a daze, Tom allowed himself to be propelled in through the patio doors.
Ollie, still frozen himself, felt a jab in the small of his back, clearly indicating that he should go too. It was Jonas. “That was from Luke as well.”