"I miss oranges," I admitted.
"Don't they have oranges in Japan?" she asked. "What kind of country doesn't have oranges?"
"They do, they're just expensive."
"Chocolate ones?"
"No."
There was a shocked silence.
"You need to come home," she said in a serious voice. "We've got lots here."
Then there was another little break in the conversation while we both imagined a world made up entirely of oranges, because that's how both our brains work.
"Have you heard anything?" my sister asked eventually - after the orange world had worn off - in the voice that all my friends and family now use whenever they refer to the Japanese boy: wary, worried and totally pissed off.
"A text."
"What did it say?"
"I don't really feel much right now, but I know I must be stressed because my neck hurts."
There was a pause.
"Wow. He's like Keats, Shakespeare and Thom Yorke all rolled into one, isn't he."
"Mmm."
"Sensitive prick," my sister added as an afterthought.
I didn't say anything. There's no point when there's nothing left to say.
"So," and my little sister cleared her throat. "You would not believe how much Marmite mum has bought in preparation for your return. Seriously. It's enough to give you a yeast infection just by looking at it."
And so that's it. Enough. This chapter of my life is now closed, and I am not looking back. It has caused me enough sadness, and enough pain, and enough damage. It has taken enough from me. I will not spend another minute of my life thinking about, or talking about, or writing about, a man who feels nothing.
It's time to move on and find happiness. And I refuse to pine for a man who measures the pain of a breakup somewhere other than his heart.
No matter how much his neck bloody hurts.
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