Page 69 of Love, Accidentally

‘You say ganging up,’ Sarah counters. ‘I say that Tilly and I are working together to help you see this from a better perspective. We’re helping you to grow as a person.’

‘It feels like ganging up.’

‘No pain, no gain. Anyway, the point is that only children aren’t any more selfish than anyone else. They just have a different, and arguably more challenging, set of circumstances to deal with. Who’s going to sort everything out when your parents pass away?’

Mike is looking increasingly uneasy. ‘Louise and my brother David are the executors of the will. That’s not my fault though. It makes sense that the two eldest children would do it.’

‘Yes, but there’s much more to it than that, isn’t there? Who’s going to clear out the house, organise the funerals, all that stuff?’

‘We’ll do it between us. This is a bit morbid, Sarah.’

‘I’m just making a point. Will will be all on his own doing that as well, when the time comes. That’s a big burden.’

‘Yeah, but he’ll walk off with a fat inheritance. Tilly, didn’t you say Jonathan’s house was huge? I’ll only get a small proportion of Mum and Dad’s estate.’

‘My heart breaks for you,’ Sarah says while miming playing a tiny violin. ‘The point is that you’ll never have to carry the kind of burden that someone like Will does because you’ll always have your siblings to share it. Being an only child is a tough gig, Mike. You could do with cutting them some slack instead of censoring them all the time and trying to make them out to be socially inept.’

Mike looks unconvinced. ‘But Caroline?—’

‘Was horrible to you,’ I agree. ‘But was that because she was an only child or because she just wasn’t a very nice person?’

‘Who’s Caroline?’ Sarah asks.

‘One of Mike’s exes,’ I explain. ‘She broke the golden rule by dumping him. He’s never forgiven her.’

Sarah looks like a light bulb has switched on in her head. ‘That explains everything!’

‘Uh-oh.’ Mike looks at her apprehensively.

‘I was never able to reconcile the Mike that I thought I knew with the person everyone warned me off when we first started seeing each other. But, if we factor revenge shagging into the mix, it all starts to make sense.’

‘Revenge shagging?’

‘Yes. Punishing this Caroline by treating other women with the casual disdain she showed to you. The only question is why did you stop when you met me?’

‘I think you’re overanalysing this, Dr Freud,’ Mike tells her, but his facial expression is unconvincing. ‘Anyway, aren’t we supposed to be talking about Tilly and Will?’

‘We’ll come to them,’ Sarah almost purrs. ‘I think I might be on the brink of unlocking the great mystery of Mike, and the opportunity is too good to miss. Tell me about Caroline.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s not the done thing to talk about your exes with your current girlfriend.’

‘I agree it would be weird if you brought her up all the time, but you’ve never mentioned her. It’s like you’ve gone to the other extreme, which is also troubling, because you only excise someone that fully when they’ve done you a lot of damage. So spill. Besides dumping you, what did she do to you?’

Mike sighs. ‘You’ll say I’m overreacting.’

‘I promise I won’t.’

‘Fine. She called me shallow.’

‘Sorry?’

‘When she broke up with me, she said it was because I was shallow and she needed a man with more emotional substance to him. She accused me of skating across the surface of life without ever engaging with the deeper issues.’

‘What on earth did she mean by that?’

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