"We were on our second glass of sherry and I, being rather a cheap drunk, was already getting tiddly, but still not sozzled. Tina, no longer beautiful, and really quite stout and slovenly looking, she would have been in her early forties, though she had aged something dreadful, such is the fate of many English women, I am so sorry to admit. To my surprise, I actually found myself beginning to like her. I asked about her children, but they were all out playing with their friends. She had actually told them to stay out for a while as she was wanting to have a few words with Auntie. She was reminding me of our mother. Oh, and I did forget to mention, our father was already sick, and soon to pass away from advanced cancer. Aggravated by a chronic heart condition from elevated cholesterol. An entire life of eating that famously healthful and delicious English diet, you know. It was our father she wanted to talk to me about.
"Tina, on the strength of a bit of alcohol, was already confessing that she had been a most delinquent and negligent sister to me, and daughter to our parents. She actually did apologize, and I think very sincerely, for abandoning me when I was a child, when she went off to wherever all tarted up like a fourteen year old harlot and stayed out the entire night. I thanked her. But I didn't forgive her. And you know what? I still haven't forgiven my sister. I simply have not been able to find that place within myself. Perhaps I never will. I don't know. I am actually, right now, starting to feel actually rather badly about it, too.
"But what made it so hard for me to forgive my sister, really had nothing to do with what she did to me, and almost everything to do with what she was about to tell me. She offered me another glass of sherry. Wisely, I think, I turned it down..."
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