“She was so talented … so creative. She found a way to turn her artistic bent into a career. Dad used to joke all the time, when Mum found inspiration, ‘Don’t expect a home-cooked dinner for the rest of the week.’ She’d get so fixated on creating that she couldn’t think of anything else.

“I … I thought when you started your degree that maybe you were going to turn out like her—and maybe you have, you certainly seem to be very … focused on your ferret costume hob … business. But when you … well, when you let me think that you’d dropped out in your final semester of uni, I didn’t know what you wanted to do with your life, or if you even had any aspirations at all!”

“So instead of talking to me about it, you just lectured me, and belittled me, and made me feel like shit at every turn!” I shouted, nails digging into the lounge fabric.

Joe scoffed. “Well, you didn’t talk to me about what happened with … with that Chad bloke.” Joe rubbed his forehead, scowling. “You sat there, at that table, and you let me tell you to … to look up to him, and the whole time he’d cheated you out of your degree!”

I laughed bitterly. “You know what? It doesn’t even matter that I have history with him. This is your MO, Joe! You take me to brunch, sit me down and remind me how much of a disappointment I am to you because I haven’t lived up to your lofty expectations … and then you proceed to harp on and on and on about how I could be better if only I did this, or that … or changed everything I like about myself.”

My head fell back against the lounge. “If you’d known about Chad, sure, you might not have chosen that particular café. But there would have been another café and another person I should try to emulate. There always is. Ever since high school, you’ve been like this. Not a brother, not … not a father figure. Just a perpetually disappointed taskmaster.”

My words were met with silence and an empty feeling inside me that I realised was because all these thoughts and feelings I’d been bottling up when it came to Joe … I’d just vomited them all out.

Wow. I felt so much lighter. Who would’ve thought?

I cracked an eye, peering over at my brother. His head was in his hands again, shaking the way I’d thought was laughter earlier.

Guilt started creeping in, taking root in all the places I’d just emptied out. Had I gone too far? It was nothing more than the truth, but maybe I’d been too harsh?