I breathe out long and hard, trying to exhale the tension that’s accumulated from telling my least favourite story. It doesn’t work. ‘So there we have it: Drew got to stay chez Hopwood, and got to have a mother who loved him, because he was able to provide evidence of love for Marion early enough to save himself. I didn’t.’

Simon shrugs. ‘I still think it’s more likely to be the boy thing. The rubbish about eyes was a less offensive-sounding excuse.’

‘Less offensive?’ I laugh. ‘How d’you figure that? I’d rather it was because I was a girl, but I don’t think it was. I think Marion just didn’t warm to me. I’d prefer “Marion’s a sexist idiot” to “I’m inherently unloveable” as an explanation.’

Could he be right? Even if he is, I’ll never convince myself.

‘If you’re about to ask me why I sought out the Hopwood family after the only member of it who gave a shit about me had died … I wanted to meet my brother. I thought I might have hit the nuclear family jackpot: at last, a blood relative who was neither dead nor a conspirator in a plot to banish me. Unfortunately …’ I stop. This bit’s going to be harder to convey.

I used to think Drew was simply uninterested in anyone but himself. Then Gabe and I got together and I noticed Drew related to Gabe differently. He asked him proper questions. That’s when I realised how uninterested in me he is. The questions he asks me are always what car I’m driving at the moment, how much I think my house is worth, which airline I think is the most reliable. That’s because he’s interested in cars, houses, travel. He hides his refusal to ask me anything about myself amid an extensive and varied assortment of questions about all the things I know about but care nothing for, bombarding me with trivial enquiries as a way of blocking me – of demonstrating that I’m not someone with a heart and soul that matters, as far as he’s concerned.

Questions Drew never asks when I see him include: how are you? What have you been up to? How’s work going? Are you writing new material at the moment? Have you decided what your next tour’s theme will be yet? Any love life developments?

Gabe, on the other hand … I watched time after time as my brother chose the exact right words that would enable my husband to expand on all the things that mattered most to him: the films of Michael Haneke, the legalisation of marijuana, Gabe’s work for a verbal branding company.

Since Gabe and I split up, Drew’s first question to me is always, ‘How’s Gabe? Have you heard from him? What’s he been up to?’