“Food poisoning,” I offered. “We all ate some bad shrimp.”
Freddie smiled at us. “Let’s not tempt fate into actually serving us bad shrimp,” he said. “Father did offer to let me off the hook, but he was good to me when I needed it, so I said no.” He looked guilty. “But I accidentally double-booked. Daphne’s in for a quick shopping trip with her mum, and we were meant to have dinner.”
“If anyone understands, it’d be her,” Nick said.
“Thank God for that,” Freddie agreed. “I don’t have to explain any of the hows and whys of the family job to her. That’s rare in a friend.”
On the word friend I made an inadvertent doubtful noise around the glass of water I’d grabbed from a passing waiter, and Freddie shot me a quizzical look.
“I, uh, my underwire snapped and it stabbed me a little in the boob,” I said.
“Save that one for someone who doesn’t know you as well as we do,” Freddie said.
Nick nudged me. “Is this about Daphne’s crush on Freddie?”
“That’s ridiculous,” Freddie scoffed. “Daphne is like a sister. She’s going to marry some disgustingly respectable Dutch landowner and I’m going to end up with…” His voice trailed off. “I don’t know. To be determined. Maybe no one.” He looked around the party, which had gotten crowded over the last forty-five minutes. “I can’t imagine coming to these things by myself forever.”
His voice sounded a strange combination of resolute and resigned.
“You’re not by yourself,” I said. “You’re with us.”
“A lifetime of being the fifth wheel,” Freddie said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Delightful. You’re a couple, Gaz and Cilla are a couple, Lacey and Olly, Bea and Gemma. Even Aunt Agatha is blazing her way through Tinder.” He sighed. “One of the things I liked about the Boat Service was that it was just a bunch of people on their own, coming together to figure things out as a team. I don’t have a team here.”
“Yes, you do,” Nick said. “The three of us are a team.”
“You’re not a fifth wheel,” I insisted simultaneously. “You’re…a third wheel. Tricycles have three wheels, and if I remember correctly, they are rad.”
“That’s a terrible metaphor, Killer.”
“Then we’re a tripod,” Nick said. “Without one of us, the other two would fall over.”
Freddie laughed, the most genuine one he’d let out in a long time. “That means a lot,” he said, patting Nick on the back companionably. “Thank you. But we’ve already learnt that you two are your own little team, too, and at the end of the night, I’m just one person.” He looked off into the distance, at something neither Nick nor I could see. “Daphne understands that, too,” he said. “Except, in this analogy, I think her parents are playing your role.”
“There are worse comparisons,” I said to Nick, who nodded.
“Hardly anyone gets that kind of love, though,” Freddie continued, more to himself than to us. Then he shook his empty glass. “I’m going to give my heart to a fresh vodka soda.”
Once he was out of earshot, Nick turned to me. “I know this is an odd comment,” he began. “But it feels good to be discussing his romantic life again without wanting to vomit.”
“You are a paragon of personal growth,” I said. “Dr. Kep is worth every penny. Maybe he’s the fourth wheel that turns this tricycle into a car.”
Nick put his arm around me. “Stop trying to make ‘tricycle’ happen. Tripod was the clear metaphorical winner.” When I frowned, he amended, “But I wouldn’t have got there without you, so…”
“We are a good team,” I told him. “In all our permutations, whatever they turn out to be.”
Two hours later, I was standing next to a massive World War II–era tank and having my ear talked off by a man who owned a company that claimed to “disrupt Big Candy,” which really meant selling less of it in fancier bags for more money. He’d regaled me for fifteen minutes about the history of Turkish delight before switching to the offensiveness of hard licorice.
“I’d sooner eat bog paper,” he was saying. “Who decided to shove that at people? Big Candy at its most insidious.”
“I love licorice,” said Freddie, appearing at my side. “I’ve got loads of it in my pockets so I can snack on it through the night. Would you like some?” He pretended to feel for it in his suit jacket. “Which one is it in…I can smell it…”