‘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.’

‘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.’