‘No one ever said it was your fault that I can’t walk,’ Matthew told me, sipping his wine as if I should just forget the twinge in his earlier comment. ‘What I mean is that you’re married to a doctor, you’ve a few years of teaching behind you, you live in a spectacular home with no health concerns whatsoever. I just don’t get what you have to complain about when you say “now I’m nothing”.’

Ah, now we were getting somewhere.

‘So you think that just because I have it all on paper I should automatically be ecstatically happy?’ I questioned him. ‘Why do you always think you know what’s best for me, Matthew? You’ve no idea how I feel or what my ambitions once were or what they may be now. Being a doctor’s wife with a nice home I worked hard for doesn’t define me. I’m more than that, so please don’t judge me. I don’t cast the same judgements on you.’

Matthew rubbed his forehead.

‘Don’t tell me you’re going to say how you could have been off living a high life of fame and fortune with you know who.’

‘Tom!’ I said, knowing that just by saying his name I’d hit a nerve. ‘Tom Farley, yes, sometimes I do wonder! You know, I pressed pause on my life and the path it was going on to stay at home and help you get better, so don’t pass idle comments about how I “should” be happy with my lot when sometimes I do think that things could have been so different for me.’

Matthew took a deep breath.

‘I see him on posters everywhere I go,’ he said, more sternly now. ‘Do you think it doesn’t hurt when I see how he’s tasting all the fame and fortune I once dreamed of? But that’s where it ends, Charlotte. I’m over him in every other way, but I’m not sure I can say the same for you.’

Martin came back to the table and we both went quiet.

‘And I’m not saying you should be happy with your lot,’ Matthew continued moments later when we both had simmered down. ‘I just hope you’re being honest with yourself because, otherwise, the only person you’re fooling is you.’

He poured me more wine and Martin picked up the cue to change the subject, choosing instead to ask me how I was settling into life in Ardara and asking if I knew Peter who runs the bar there and Mary who runs the art gallery. I took the bait. I didn’t want to fight with my brother, nor could I stomach hearing what he had to say to me about Tom. I’d hoped we had crossed that bridge and burned it. I didn’t want to go back to that conversation again.