We concentrate on the washing-up. We have a system. He puts a piece of crockery or glass on the draining board, I pick it up, run the cloth over it and then monosyllabically ask where it lives. ‘For the third time, Gil, those go in the glasses’ cupboard in the dining room, the one your parents gave us when they moved back from Oxford.’

‘Sorry.’ I take it to the cupboard. I remember fighting with Clare in front of it when we were little. I had Clare in a wrestling hold and was pushing her too close to the glass front. ‘Gil. You’re too close. You could go right through it. Be careful of her head.’

I put down the tea towel, turn and try to make eye contact with Charles. ‘I’m really sorry, Charles.’

He is wrist deep in suds. ‘It’s just a bit annoying you keep forgetting where things go.’

‘I didn’t mean that. I meant I’m sorry for being such an arsehole brother-in-law. And more than anything I am really sorry for putting that stuff in the paper about you. I was a piece of work. I should have had the guts to straighten things out years ago.’

Charles lifts a large white rustic bowl, decorated with pink flowers, from the sink, places it on the draining board, and sighs. ‘To be honest, it was never really about you and me. It was about you and Clare.’ I am not sure what he means. And he seems to sense that. ‘Look, I’ve thought about this and it was naïve of me to think I could pretend forever I’m not that man’s son. I can’t say it wasn’t painful when it came out. But I learned that real friends judge you on who you are, not who your dad is. I stopped cursing you quite a long time ago. But for Clare you crossed a line. She could just about forgive you writing up that funny story about the PM and the rugby guy. But this was different. She thought you were deliberately trying to wound us. That was unforgiveable.’

I pick up the bowl and start to wipe it; neither of us say anything for a minute or two. I’ve rarely thought about any of this since we fell out and, as if for the first time, I realise it wasn’t an accident – I was trying to hurt. This wasn’t just me blurring the line between family and work, friends’ confidences and a story, the private and the professional. It was an attack on Charles and, more particularly, on Clare.

‘Charles, this is a funny thing to say, but I was jealous of you. I think. The thing is, it was always me and Clare. We were the double act. We looked after each other. Actually, that’s not right. She looked after me. Did Clare ever speak to you about our childhood?’