Something weird happened yesterday when I was talking to my sister April on the phone. She said, `I wonder what happened to Great-Aunt DeeDee.’ I said, `I thought she was dead.’ `Oh, no,’ April replied. `She went missing. Just left home, when she was in her early twenties, and told no one where she was going. No one’s heard from her since.’ Then April added something that was entirely typical of her. She said, `You know that, Sally. For God’s sake, where have you been for the last thirty-five years?’ She was asking where I’ve been all my life, since I am thirty-five, though I’m often told I look younger. That’s one of the things I cling to – that people say I look younger. I don’t see it myself. When I look in the mirror I see honey-coloured hair, brown eyes, highish cheekbones, and wrinkles and crow’s-feet and grey hairs. `Of course I’ve heard of DeeDee,’ I said. `But only a few times. Nobody ever seems to talk about her.’ `Well, they wouldn’t, would they?’ April said. `After what she did.’ `What did she do?’ `I don’t know, but I get the impression people are really pissed off with her.’ `How do you know all this?’ I demanded. I’m the one who is supposed to be privy to the family secrets. `I’ve known it for years,’ April replied, without going into detail. `Look, could you tell Aunt Marie I can’t get to her big do? I can’t believe she expects me to fly over from California for a finger buffet. I have my own life.’ She knew, of course, that I wasn’t going to say this verbatim to Aunt Marie. She knew I would find a way to be more tactful. Aunt Marie, who is my mother’s sister, feels she needs to corral family members every few years and frog-march them into some sort of intimacy. Somehow we all fit into Aunt Marie’s front room, though it’s quite a squeeze. I usually end up saying, `Oh, really? How interesting!’ to the various younger relatives who are involved in important-sounding courses. I seem to come from a family that has a great involvement in further education. Then, of course, there are the ones who are methodically working their way up the Civil Service; they sound impressive too, especially the ones who have to make regular trips to Brussels. And there’s a cluster of lovely bright young women who have married nice decent men and are having children or expecting them, and are teachers or social workers or aromatherapists. I’d absorb more of what they were telling me if I weren’t so fixated on trying to make a good impression myself. In some ways these gatherings feel like school reunions, at which we check up on one another and measure one another’s achievements. But in another way they are nothing like school reunions, which are softened by genuine affection and curiosity and giggles about daft things in the past. Many of the people in Aunt Marie’s front room are almost strangers. It says a lot for the force of her character that we show up at all. We are not the sort of large extended family that gathers for the fun of it. It’s not that we don’t like each other; it’s just that we have other things to do, and other people to do them with.