L'esprit de l'escalier

So the phone conversation had been impassioned and lively like it usually was, ranging widely across the far fields of subject matter exotic and domestic alike -- work, travel, family, work, literary gossip, his wife, work, her bloke, work, literary gossip, work -- and then he said, straight out of left field and in a slightly wounded tone she could not account for, 'I do think about you quite often, you know.'

After she had recovered the power of speech, which took a moment, she said, perhaps more tartly than she intended, 'Where did that come from?'

This made him slightly snarky, which for all of the [insert number of decades here] she'd known him had been a fatally easy thing to do. Actually, accidentally provoking a murderous rage had always been a fatally easy thing to do. She said soothing and diversionary things and the moment passed.

But as she stood at the kitchen sink next morning, washing dishes while the coffee made itself, it came to her that what she should have said then, in the interests of truth, was 'Listen, sweetheart: considering that my first impulse was to jump in the car, drive the [insert number of kilometres here] to your place, smash the door down and rip the living heart right out of your chest with my non-existent fingernails, you are actually getting off quite lightly.'