Page 79 of For Real

I went down to the bedroom. “What?”

Toby was wriggling into his jeans, an activity that took a while and tended to be diverting. “It’s on the side. Like, who sends letters these days?”

“Is that what led you to conclude I’m in correspondence with the Queen?”

“Hah. No. It’s just all fancy. Gold and shit.”

He’d left the letter on top of the chest of drawers. I recognised the style and laughed. “It’s not the Queen. It’s an old friend of mine.”

“You’ve got weird friends, dude.”

“Tell me about it. He’s an academic.” I sat on the end of the bed, eased open the wax seal on the envelope, and slipped out the invitation. It wasn’t the first I’d received, so I knew what it would say: Dr. Jasper Leigh requests the pleasure of your company at High Table, and so on.

Toby pulled his T-shirt over his head, emerging from it, if possible, even more floppy and tousled, and padded over. “What is it? A wedding?”

“Just dinner.”

“That must be some dinner. Can I see?” I passed him the piece of card, which was tastefully cream, edged in gold, and embossed with the college crest. “Um, is this for real?”13

“I’m afraid so.”

He gave me an odd, slightly anxious, slightly hopeful look. “It says you can bring a plus-one.”

“Yes, but—”

“Can I be your plus-one?”

“You don’t want to come to a college dinner,” was my instinctive answer.

“With you? I totally do.”

I gazed up at him and offered rather pleadingly, “It’ll be boring, Toby.”

“‘It’ll be boring, Toby,’ or”—he glared—“‘I’m ashamed of you, Toby’?”

“God, I’m not ashamed of you. If I’m ashamed of anyone, it’s me.”

He put his hands on his hips, like a very small but very determined fishwife. “That doesn’t help. I don’t want you ashamed of anybody. I just…” He sighed, the anger fading from his voice, leaving it full of tenderness and a kind of yearning. “I just want you to be as happy to be with me as I am to be with you.”

I could too easily imagine Jasper’s smirk as I turned up at college with Toby on my arm. The malicious bastard had a face designed for smirking, all thin lips and glittering eyes. Why darling, he would say, how terribly Uranian of you. And then I would have to remind myself he was one of my oldest friends. It was that or punch him.

A stricture that, in the past, had not always been successful.

But that was the strange comfort of long-standing friendship, ribbons of familiarity and old love woven through your life.

I took Toby’s hands, tugging him closer. “You mustn’t blame me if you hate it.”

“I won’t,” he breathed. “Hate it or blame you.”

“Also, it’s black tie so you’d better let me take you to—”

“Oi, I’m not a complete pleb. I can do black tie.”

“Really?”

He laughed and kissed me. “No need to look so scared. I won’t embarrass you.”

“And,” I went on sternly, “you’ll need a note from your parent, teacher, or guardian because we’ll be staying over.”

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