Page 81 of Where Do We Go From Here?
‘OK.’
‘Yeah, see. I shouldn’t have told you.’
‘Not, it’s fine. It’s just… a bit strange. I mean, he’s my brother, after all. Sue was, for many years, my best friend. Myonlyreal friend.’
‘Well, he’s our uncle too. And Sue’s our aunt. So it’s not that strange.’
‘No, I suppose not. And they stayed the night, you say?’
‘They did. And it was lovely.’
‘Good,’ Wendy says, but even she can hear that her voice is sounding brittle. ‘And you’re sure they’re drinking again?’
‘I don’t think they ever stopped.’
‘Oh, they did. I can assure you of that. And they got very, very judge-y about me not following suit.’
‘Judge-y?’
‘Yes.’
‘And that’s why you stopped seeing them?’
‘Partly.’
‘Hum.’
‘Oh, please do stop with the “hums”, Fifi. You’re starting to sound like Sue. If you have something to say, then say it.’
‘Well, it doesn’t sound like a brilliant reason to me.’
‘A brilliant reason for…?’ Wendy asks, momentarily distracted by a roundabout.
‘For not seeing your only brother. And your supposed best friend.’
‘OK,’ Wendy says.
‘I mean, if I stopped talking to Todd because he was a bitjudge-y – which by the way, he totally is – then I don’t think you’d be thrilled, would you?’
‘No, I don’t suppose I would. But there was other stuff. Of course there was.’
‘Like when Gran was ill?’
‘Oh, you know about that, do you?’
‘Dad mentioned it vaguely.’
‘He did, huh? What did he say?’
‘Just that they weren’t brilliant when Gran was ill.’
Wendy laughs sourly at this. ‘Bit of an understatement,’ she says.
‘So that was it? That was the big one?’
‘Yeah, more or less. I’m not sure about there being a “big one”. It was more of a drip, drip, drip really. Sometimes you just realise that a relationship isn’t… I don’t know. That it’s becoming too much like hard work. There’s a sort of accounting you do in your head at some point: energy put in versus benefits received. And ours was in deficit.’
‘It still doesn’t sound like a reason for ex-communicating your only brother.’
