"Does anyone here remember Mary Hopkins?" Carol asks.
"British folksinger, sixties and seventies", says Aaron.
"They were competitors, Mary and my sister. Mary had greater popular appeal, but Tina had a better voice. They still packaged and formed her into a minor success, but she never became rich, she never played to packed houses, but even in the small coffeehouses and other venues where Tina performed, she never failed to bring the house down. We all became proud of her, nonetheless. Family, you know. Meanwhile, I pursued my future as one of the great classical concert pianists of this generation.
"Tina burned out in her twenties and tried to do a crossover into classical music. She was an adequate coloratura soprano, and did rather a decent job of interpreting the works of Vivaldi and Corelli, but she had lost her zeal, and soon had quite run out of money. On the cusp of her thirtieth birthday, she married a bricklayer, a drinker himself, and she simply bred and crapped out three rather miserable and below average children with below average prospects."
"Where is she now, your sister?" I ask.
"I imagine she is still rotting away in her little council flat in Shepherd's Bush. We haven't spoken in years. It is as though we have long been dead to each other."
"What about her kids?"
"Oh, they all turned out abysmally. Drugs and alcohol and petty crime. It is suspected that my niece might even have done a few turns as a prostitute."
"Sex worker", corrects Melissa rather tartly.
"Oh, do spare me the politically correct rubbish!" Carol barks. "She was a bloody prostitute. And hardly much better than her deplorable mother!"
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