ESTHER FREUD ON LOVE AND LINEAGE

In my family, it was the women who were at its heart, at least that’s how it seemed to me, but it may have been that there were just so many of us – the men standing singly on the sidelines, powerful but removed. I was one of two daughters, brought up by a single mother, who later joined forces with the father of three girls, merging us into a troupe of five. We lived in the English countryside in a sort of 1970s world of Laura Ashley offcuts and home baking. For the most part relations were cordial,