‘We didn’t think this would be coming to our door, did we, Martin?’ Dad says, his chin tilted up in a way that tells me he is fighting back tears. ‘Only last night we were having dinner with the two of you and loving how happy Matthew was at last, and now … one day later. One day later.’

My father breaks down and both me and Emily race to his side, wrapping our arms around his waist like we used to when we were little girls.

So my brother’s special person is not a woman like I’d automatically assumed, but a man, and he was going to tell me today. Just as Matthew had paired me up in his mind with Mr Sensible who teaches Year Fives which drove me insane, I too had made my own assumptions about his love life without pausing to notice who my brother really wants to be with. So why the big reaction over Tom Farley? Was it because …? Oh my God.

I might even love him a little bit myself.

The words he said so lightly on that very first day I met Tom come back to me.

I slowly let go of my father and stumble down the corridor, grasping my phone in my pocket. I push through two swinging doors, briefly noticing a strange double-take from a doctor on his way past me, and I charge out through a glass-paned connection until I find a soft seat by a potted plant. I collapse down on it and hit Tom’s number.

‘Charlie, thank God,’ he says after the first ring. ‘Please tell me you’re OK? I was going to call you but didn’t want to in case I interrupted you and Matthew. So did you tell him? What did he say?’

I close my eyes tight, wanting the glare of prissy celebrities on the fronts of the magazines that share my space on the hospital sofa to piss away off.

‘Tom, you said you thought there was more on Matthew’s mind than some petty jealousy between you and him, or me and him or me and you or whatever—’

I don’t sound like myself. I am breathy and panicky. I need to slow down. There is a pause. A very long pause.

‘I had my suspicions, but I could never say to him, Charlie. Did he tell you? Did he tell you what it was?’

I’m so unbearably hot right now. A glare of winter sun scorches through the floor-to-ceiling windows beside me and I try and catch my breath to keep calm.

‘Tom, did you ever think that Matthew might be gay?’ I ask him. ‘Do you think that all the fuss and over-the-top reaction over you and your popularity with women was because he wanted to be with you?’