"She didn't even attend Mom's funeral. Not that she would have been expected to. I think everything really went to hell between us with my father's death. They always hated each other, and Tina boycotted the funeral, and this caused an eternal rift between us, which is to say the rest of the family. never heard so much as one single peep from that mouldering old ingrate when Mom became ill with cancer, and of course absolutely nothing from her when she died, nor even a word of condolence after the funeral which, of course, she did not deign to cross the pond for."
"I would like to hear your sister's story", says Melissa.
"Well, I could tell you a little more, I suppose. This would have been our last conversation, I think around thirty years ago. I was about to go on a performance tour, and for some reason she wanted badly to see me. She was by then herself a widow, doing rather a bad job of raising her kids unaided. She had just moved into her council flat in Shepherd's Bush. My God, to think she has lived in that dreadful hole for three decades and counting. It wasn't a comfortable visit. They never were, with her anyway. We really quite disliked each other, and my own success as a performer of music simply entrenched in Tina towards me a slow burning toxic hate. Envy, you know. She never met with this kind of success, and now look where she was.
"She was serving Sherry. It was a Sunday afternoon, mid November, as colourless and dreary a late autumn day as could ever be imagined in London. i really disliked her apartment. It was rather cluttered and disordered, somewhat dirty and there was a certain cling odour of, what should I call it, an odour of sadness. And she had really taken to drink..."
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