Page 68 of Love, Accidentally

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‘Well?’ Sarah asks as I let myself into the flat late that afternoon. ‘Did it work? Did you seal the deal?’ She and Mike are sitting nonchalantly enough on the sofa, with the Sunday newspaper spread out between them, but something tells me they’ve been waiting to ambush me.

‘I’m not sure,’ I tell her honestly.

‘What? How can you not be sure? Either you did or you didn’t.’

If only it was that simple. Although Will and I held each other for ages, which was very nice, we didn’t kiss and neither of us seemed to be able to find the words to move things on either. In the end, we’d gently released each other and headed back to the house where Jonathan had wisely decided to make himself scarce. Our conversation had stuck to safe topics while Will made us a cup of tea and we drank it and then, after another admittedly lovely hug, I’d left and driven home. Although I was elated to begin with because I thought we had made a genuine breakthrough, I then spent most of the journey back second-guessing everything and now I’m completely confused.

‘It’s complicated—’ I begin.

‘It so isn’t,’ Mike interrupts. ‘If it is, it’s purely because yet another only child is showing their inability to communicate properly.’

To my surprise, Sarah is on him before I even get a chance to spring to Will’s defence.

‘Mike,’ she says sternly. ‘I love you to bits, you know I do, but this has to stop.’

‘What?’

‘This only child stuff. Someone has to be honest and tell you that it’s total bullshit, and it looks like it’s going to be me.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ he retorts indignantly. ‘I’ve spent years gathering evidence. When I publish my findings?—’

‘You’re not going to publish anything, and nobody’s going to give you the Nobel Prize either. Well, not for that, anyway. If they introduce a category for kicking vulnerable old ladies out of hospitals on to the street in the middle off the night, you might be in with a chance of that one.’

‘Unfair!’

‘OK, but you’ve got to let the only child obsession go. It’s a dead end.’

‘She’s got a point,’ I add. ‘Look at Luke. He was like a checklist of all the narcissistic traits you say only children suffer from, but he had a brother.’

‘The exception that proves the rule,’ Mike mutters mutinously.

‘Nuh-uh,’ Sarah counters. ‘Sorry, honey, but you don’t get off that lightly. Let me ask you this. Your mum falls down the stairs and breaks her leg. Who looks after her?’

‘Dad.’

‘Yeah, he would normally, except he’s in a wheelchair following a freak accident involving a wheelie bin. Now who helps?’

‘What happened with the wheelie bin?’

‘Never mind that. Who rushes to help?’

‘Louise, my oldest sister. She lives closest.’

‘So, even though both your parents are incapacitated, you don’t have to lift a finger.’

Mike does have the grace to look a little uncomfortable. ‘It’s not quite like that. I mean?—’

‘It’s exactly like that, Mike.’ Sarah is evidently not going to let him get away with anything this afternoon. ‘You might ring up, make a few sympathetic noises, but your life is basically unaffected.’

‘They live over a hundred miles away though, and Louise is just down the road.’

‘Yes, but now imagine you’re an only child.’

‘Like Will,’ I add. ‘He’s had to give up his life to look after his dad because he doesn’t have a handy sister just down the road.’

‘You’re ganging up on me now.’

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