Gemma faced an agonising decision – did she really want to bring more strife into her family?
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 a shelf in her room laden with certificates and cups.
She dropped into a kitchen chair. ‘It’s so weird,’ she said. ‘Grandad having two families. Will Hilary be a regular visitor?’
‘Calm down, Ali,’ I said. ‘It’s early days. Nothing may come of it.’
‘Yeah, chill, Ali,’ said Kate in her serious voice. ‘You never think. Let Mum take this at her own pace.’
Alexis rolled her eyes. ‘How come you always want to tell me what to do? And you think I don’t know that Mum needs time and space?’
My youngest, Rebecca, wandered in wearing pyjamas – my pyjamas. She sat down and took a sip from my cup of coffee.
‘Aren’t you going to stop her doing that, Mum?’ Kate asked, glaring at Rebecca.
‘I’ve got too much in my head to worry about coffee,’ I said. ‘This is a big deal for me.’
‘Too right.’ Rebecca reached out to help herself to Alexis’ toast. Alexis slapped her hand, and I switched off from them and took my mind back to Hilary.
It was a very big deal. My older half-sister had made contact for the first time and suggested that we meet. A few days ago, I’d thought I was the top of my own family tree, an only child of deceased parents. But now, apparently, this wasn’t the case. My father had produced a child before he met my mum, a child who had ended up in care and had followed a different
