I sometimes find myself baffled by my own sisters ways. She has this rather odd traitshe dotes on her child to a fault and genuinely believes that the rest of us should revolve our lives around whatever shes going through. That, of course, couldnt be further from reality.
Her child is just five. Admittedly, no one in the family harbours any ill feeling towards himhes family after all and we care for him as such, but nothing more than that. Frankly, we all have enough to fret over with our own little ones.
But my sister? Shes convinced that her daughter is some absolute rarity, a paragon among children. She insists we refer to her as an angel. And since angels can do no wrong, all transgressions by this angel are to be instantly forgiven.
Thats her expectation, at any rate. Its hardly a surprise, then, that her visitsor ours to hersarent exactly events we look forward to. Still, as luck would have it, we dont just share blood but also an officewe both work at the same company, so sometimes its unavoidable.
This time, I needed to discuss something work-related. She rang me up with, Pop over, will you? Ill whip up your favourite cheese omelette for lunch.
No denying itshe does make an outstanding omelette. I promised Id be round shortly and hung up.
I dashed about, hunting for my car keys, thinking I might swing by Greggs on the way to pick up something sweet. Surely wed have a good natter over a cuppa as well. When I arrived, she was feeding her little girl and beckoned for me to join them at the table.
So there I am, sitting down, chatting along, and then she suddenly says, Tuck in, love, nudging a rather tired-looking plate of omelette in my direction. Emily didnt finish this.
I was genuinely taken aback. Do you not have any clean plates about these days? I asked, struggling to keep my annoyance in check.
My Emily is the cleanest child youll ever meet, my sister shot back, wrapping an arm around her daughter as the little one sat digging away at her nose.
And that was honestly the last straw. I gave a snort of disbelief, and after that, I never agreed to go round for lunch again.
If you were in my shoes, what would you have done?
