Catching up
Last week my sister came to stay with her two children. I haven't lived near my own family for years and years, in fact all my adult life. I left home to go to London for university and never came back. Despite that, I am close to my family and my sister and I have managed to twine our lives together, picking up where we left off when we see each other, sharing the same sense of humour, the same tendency to take on too much, the same taste in clothes and houses and men. Ten years ago she moved back to Devon and now lives near my parents so we often see each other when I go to see them. We tend to whizz in and out: a couple of days' visit, full of people and snatched conversation, lovely but squeezed. So when she suggested she might come and stay for a few days I was delighted. It was so good to have time to cook together, to eat together, to chat over a glass of wine in the evenings when her teenage children had gone to bed. It was good ...