Sonny pauses for a moment. ‘So you’ve done the fandango?’
‘Maybe. We had sex in a car.’
My brother’s face quickly turns to confusion. ‘OK. Jo, if that’s your scene now, then go ahead, I saw the documentary on Channel 4. Just be careful. Dogging can be pretty risky.’
I push him hard this time and he laughs. ‘Urrrgh, Son… It’s all a bit of a mess. He’s just broken up with someone. He thinks I’m someone I’m not. I met his parents, they’re horrific. On paper, this should not work.’
‘But it does?’
If we’re talking about the sex, then yes, it works. A bit too well. I take another large swig of bubbles. I should have eaten more toast this morning.
‘True love hath a sense of timing that is both a farce and a shitter,’ Sonny adds.
‘Is that Shakespeare?’
‘Obviously. I didn’t think I wanted to go out with Ruby. We work together, I thought I wanted some freedom, I’d just broken up with that model girl…’
‘The one who patented your brand and named your unborn imaginary children on Instagram?’
Sonny flares his nostrils. ‘But sometimes love comes looking for you when you least expect it.’
‘Spoken like a true meme…’
‘With a sunset and two people holding hands on a dock?’
‘The very one.’ The conversation has always flowed with this one. Sonny is likeable, funny, but as is the case with siblings, there is an unspoken language between the both of us.
‘Maybe just see how it goes. If it’s making you this happy, then see if it has legs. I like that you’re a caterer now. I once told someone our parents owned a garden centre,’ Sonny recalls.
‘Did we sell many varieties of bush?’
‘All the bush.’
We used to do this a lot as teens. I mean, you don’t make friends by opening with ‘my dad won an award for his penis once’. Sometimes you lied, sometimes you waited until you knew you could trust people, sometimes you didn’t tell people at all. Sonny is one of the few who gets it. As he’s got older and more famous, people have dug around and things have been revealed. Sometimes with photos that blur out our parents’ bits.
‘Remember when that magazine asked you about Mum and Dad?’ I remind him.
It was crappy tabloid journalism, someone trying to sensationalise our upbringing. Sonny denied it completely. He got quite angry actually, so Sonny pushed that journalist off his high horse. His storming out went viral.
‘That was mainly to protect them, but I get it. It’s not something you mention on the first date. What does he think of me?’ he asks.
‘He doesn’t know you’re my brother.’
Sonny pretends to feign sadness. ‘So I don’t even exist…’
‘I just want to take it slowly. Maybe tell him in stages. Stage one: this is Sonny, he works in soaps. Stage two: I sell vibrators for a living. Stage three: Mum and Dad used to be in porn.’
Sonny nods hesitantly.
‘Just out of curiosity,’ I ask, ‘how is Ruby with all of it? Mum and Dad, the family biz… How long before you told her?’
‘Oh, I think she did her research and found out herself. It was a novelty to start off, a joke, but then she got to know you all and found out it was a just a sidenote, really… And, you know, without wanting to sound like a soppy bastard, those little details don’t matter in the end when you love someone…’
I push him playfully to hear him talk with some depth about the girl he loves. The difference between us is that Sonny is so open, so unguarded with his heart. His has probably been broken more times than mine, in more public and savage ways, but he still never gave up looking, hoping.
‘Speaking of love,’ he tells me. ‘I need some help with the ceremony planning. I need a good poem to read out. I’ve been doing my research and I can’t find a thing.’
I shift him a look of annoyance. ‘Sonny, I can’t do that. It has to be something that’s personal to you guys. Do you have a song?’ I ask him.
