‘Well, given it’s the last time we’ll ever do this, I thought I’d better push the boat out,’ he says, with a dramatic sigh.
‘Jeff, I’m only going to London. I can come back and visit. And you can stay with me. A ready-made mini-break whenever you want it.’
He glowers at me. ‘It won’t be the same and you know it.’
‘Still taking this move well then?’ I murmur.
‘Oh, I don’t care,’ he says, breezily. ‘We coped without you beforehand, and we’ll cope afterwards.’
‘Touching.’
‘Well, I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m still in shock that you dumped Sam.’
‘I’ve told you, it wasn’t my decision,’ I say, irritably. ‘It was the other way around.’
‘Well, you must’ve done something to piss him off. He was mad about you.’
‘The distance is an issue for him, that’s all,’ I tell him, nonchalantly. ‘And I can’t disagree. It makes sense to just cut all ties. Now I can focus on my future.’
Jeff looks like he’s about to turn and go back to his tagine, but he hesitates and turns to look at me.
‘That’sthe problem though, Jules,’ he says, in a tone I don’t like at all.
‘What is?’
‘You don’t think about the future at all. Not really,’ he says, accusingly. ‘All you really think about – to a frankly unnatural degree – is the past.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘It’s true,’ he says, forcefully. ‘All we ever hear is how much happier you were twenty-odd years ago. And Iknowyou loved Ed and then you lost him, but your head is stuck in the early 2000s.’
‘This is absolutely—’
‘You are the only person I know still watchingAlly McBeal,’ he snaps. ‘Literally.’
‘Just leave Ally out of this.’
He crosses his arms, looking almost as enraged as I am. ‘I hate to break this to you, but this business Sam told you about the distance . . . it’s an excuse.’
I scrunch up my nose. ‘Whatare you talking about?’
‘I think it’s far more likely that Sam got the ick about you.’ There is a sly look in his eyes that I do not like one bit.
‘Now you’re just being deliberately horrible,’ I say, fizzing with anger. ‘Stop it.’
‘Or what? You’ll tell Mum?’
‘Oh, you are such a pain, Jeff,’ I hiss. ‘Anyway, it wasn’t like that at all with Sam.’
‘If you say so!’ He throws me a mock pitying look. ‘It happens to the best of us. Not a biggie. You didn’t let him see you in those awful angora socks, though did you?’
I ignore the question, not least because I think I might have, on that day he came and sat at my breakfast bar.
‘I’m sure he’d have said if that was really the issue,’ I say, through gritted teeth.
He shakes his head. ‘I doubt it. He’s too nice. He wanted to let you down gently.’
I am monumentally pissed off with my brother now. Frankly, I feel murderous. ‘If this is your idea of some kind of reverse psychology, then let me tell you—’
