We sit for a moment, listening to some tripping garage music. I wipe toast crumbs off my sweater.
'So...' she murmurs, glancing from her teacup to the stained glass of the window, without making eye-contact.
'I didn't know whether to call you. Jes didn't want me to,' I stammer clumsily.
'I know. It's okay.'
I should have a great opening line to knock her sideways, to kick her passion into life and rekindle the love in her heart. But I don't.
I launch in anyway. 'I don't have any answers, Sam. I just want to tell you what you already know. He loves you. More than anything.'
She remains silent. I really wish I'd planned this better. I wish I had a list of cogent arguments, killer points to persuade her to return to Jes. Instead, I've got a bagful of cliches.
'That's not enough,' she says eventually. This seems like a line she's been repeating to herself, a mantra to make her feel stronger.
I wade back in with another from my collection of bland and meaningless statements for use in complex emotional situations. 'He needs you.'
'This isn't just about Jes.' I nod, I hope sympathetically. She seems to soften slightly. ' I know you think Jes and I are so great together, bu maybe we're not. Maybe you just like to think we are, because you -' She stops.
'Because I what?'
'Because you need us to be together. You need us to work, after everything that's happened with Ellie, with your mum dying...'
She's right. I do need them to be together. I need them to prove that relationships can work and that real love exists outside Mills and Boon books. Is this clouding my judgement? How do you know when two people are right for each other? It's not like there's a chemical reaction and they both turn the same colour - although that would be a profitable invention.
Sam looks away again, staring at the stained-glass window. I know I need something, I need some words to stir the tenderness in her heart. Then it comes to me. 'Do you remember what you told me on Mum's birthday in Grantchester, that loving someone is all about choice? That's what you said. A choice you make every day for the rest of your life.'
She sits there, fixated on the stained-glass window and the blurred shapes walking to and fro like coloured ghosts.
'You were right,' I continue. 'You have to make that choice, to take someone as they are, warts and all, whatever their problems, their imperfections, their hang-ups. Because everyone has them, don't they?'
Sam looks at me, a little puzzled, perhaps wondering why I suddenly sound like I'm on a mid-morning television talk-show. I bluster on:'Okay. I don't know if you're perfect for each other. But I know Jes has chosen you, and he'll choose you every day for the rest of his life, whatever, however you are. The question is, can you decide to choose him again?'
To my surprise and relief, this seems to work. She bites her bottom lip, gently, just like Jes does. I think she's fighting the desire to cry. She's trying to be strong. I want to put my arms round her and tell her she doesn't have to be strong, that we spend too many hours and too many days trying to be strong.
The music changes, a haunting, depressingly classical piece. Sam still stares at the window. Then I remember another line from Grantchester and I go for gold:'Look, you said yourself that loving someone is harder than not having someone to love...' This time it works: she bursts into tears.
