Some people stand in the darkness…

My sister. Not the little one, but Eve, my ‘big little sister’. 25. Small. Staggeringly beautiful. (This is true. I once spent an entire teenage holiday on a campsite with her and my parents, surrounded by a queue of teenage boys too shy to approach her, who spent days sidling up to me by the pool to ask me the same question over and over again, with different intonation, "Is she your sister?" "Is she your sister?" "Is she your sister?") Prickly. Generous. Quick to take offence. Grumpy. Very silly. Worried what people will think.

She has a boyfriend of whom I approve very much. I think he relaxes her. I think being with him has calmed her worries about what people will think, and has centred her, given her a sense of balance and stability. Enabled her to laugh at herself again. I didn’t realise quite how much until I spoke to her on the phone the other day.

"Yeah. We went out to Mixers the other night." Mixers is the name of the only nightclub in Markettown, where my parents life. Irredeemably naff, and a complete meatmarket, its continuing financial success is based purely on the self-flagellating tendency of drunk people to want to find somewhere else to drink when the pubs have thrown them out. "It was a bit dull, really. I didn’t really enjoy it that much until the Baywatch theme came on. Then Allie and I started running laps of the club in slow motion, Baywatch style. We kept bumping into people; I think they got a bit annoyed."