I was terrified of the whole thing. I couldn’t help thinking that this was the worst time to be meeting my sister, the only person (except for my kids) who shared my genes. Family life was hard enough without an addition to the dynamics. But Hilary had reached out to me. How could I say no?
‘OMG!’ my middle daughter Alexis said a few mornings after the email arrived. ‘I can’t stop thinking about this, Mum. I had no idea you had a sister.’
‘Neither did I,’ I replied. I was still reeling from the news.
‘I’ve always been jealous of you being an only child,’ Alexis said. ‘Now you’ve got a sibling, you’re just like me.’
‘Charming,’ my eldest daughter Kate said, entering the kitchen in her work uniform.
‘How cool would it be,’ Alexis went on, ‘not to have sisters older and younger than me, both idiots with a history of being lame and annoying?’
Alexis, my middle child, is the clever one. She is the star of classroom and music exams, the one with
