"Tina, or Christina, is eight years older than me. We grew up in a lovely middle class home just on the border of Notting Hill and Kensington. She was a very talented singer, and also quite a rebel. This was, of course, back in the sixties, in the days of Swinging London. Things really began to get lively with her when she was fourteen, or in 1962. To spare some of you the mental strain of doing the math, my sister was born in 1948, and I was born in 1956, making me sixty-five, and Tina now would be just about to reach seventy-three.
"Tina, shall we say, began to ripen on the early side. She was barely twelve when she already had the body of a voluptuous young woman. And even then she was hauntingly beautiful. For me, just four, it was very strange. For me, she was a grown woman. She was already a lady. I have no memory at all of thinking of her as just being a girl the way that I was a little girl. So, it could be said, there was always a distance between us. Of course she did babysit, and often, but she really seemed to resent it. And she could be rather brutal at times. She rarely actually hit me, but her voice, when angry, had for a little girl, quite a terrifying edge.
"I was six, and Tina was fourteen, and one night our parents were away at the cinema, and she of course had to take care of me. So, it was about seven in the evening, and we were both curled up in the sitting room watching the telly. But Tina was all dressed up. She was wearing makeup and earrings, and a tight green dress with a slit up the side. And high heels. She looked so glamorous and I felt oh so very proud of her. but she was waiting for someone. There was a blast from a car horn, and without telling me a word or even saying goodbye, out she went and was driven away somewhere..."
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