Rowan half-laughed. ‘Babe, don’t you think you’re getting a bit involved in this?’

‘What do you mean?’ I pushed away and balanced on my elbow to get a look at him. ‘If one of your friends had been dumped for another girl, do you think you and the lads would be okay with it? Let’s say June decides to chuck Hamish, which she absolutely should—’ he opened his mouth to disagree but I pressed on ‘—and then a day later she turns up with Faith and pretends Hamish never happened, like, she was never even with a boy. That’s okay, is it?’

He seemed to put some real thought into it, then said, ‘I’d die if you left me for a woman.’

‘You’re so dramatic.’ I leaned back against him. ‘You seemed to think it wasn’t a big deal a second ago.’

‘Well, now I’ve thought about it and it is.’ His voice was hard-edged and I nearly reminded him that I wasn’t actually leaving him for another woman – or anyone for that matter. ‘Besides, it’s different for men when stuff like that happens. Everyone is straight, so, someone turning gay is major. But not everyone is gay, so, turning straight is just going back to what everyone else is doing.’

I rolled my eyes so hard that I thought I caught sight of my own grey matter. When I didn’t answer for a few seconds, he gave me a little squeeze.

‘I take it you don’t agree?’

‘With what?’ I asked, because playing dumb usually helped with these things.

‘With what I just said about it being harder for men.’

‘Honestly, Rowan, I don’t think I agree with much of what you just said.’ I shifted away from him, then, and leaned back against the opposite end of the sofa, leaving my feet in his lap instead. ‘Maybe it’s best if we just leave it?’

‘No.’ He frowned. ‘No, I want to know what’s so wrong about what I just said.’

‘I mean, to start with, that’s absolutely not how sexuality works.’

‘Oh, Edi …’ He used that tone; the one that implied I was either being stupid, or on the cusp of it. But I was too deep into a psychology and sociology module to doubt myself over him. ‘I know you think you know stuff—’

‘And this is why I didn’t want to talk about it.’

‘Hey.’ He started to rub my feet. ‘I just mean, you only know it from your side, like I only know it from a guy’s side.’

‘Okay, well, from a basic biology and brain chemistry side, sexuality isn’t socially conditioned. Our brains are attracted to lots of different things, including the same gender.’