UR TV CAST

Elizabeth Fischel calls this problem “limited resources”, and you can find it at the core of just about every grievance a sister harbours against her sister.Take my friend Janine, who was furious when her mother and sister drove 500 miles to see her, only to go into the next room to have a private giggle. But, of course, it’s not the money that counts in these things. It’s the memory of how your sister made that adorable little face, played that stinking game, and twisted your parents around her little finger to get more than her fair share of love and attention. But her sister so hates the thought of such a gift from her sister that she has refused it.Her quarrel with my friend has to do with their mother’s estate.

Any outsider can see that there’s more than enough to go round. The sister is soon to die unless she has a bone marrow transplant My friend Susan has offered her sister her bone marrow. The Mitford sisters came to a similar truce – Jessica, you will remember, became a Communist, while Diana married Britain’s leading Fascist. Both Margaret Mead and Simone de Beauvoir were able to have happy, fruitful relationships with their much younger sisters by “playing mother”. But what if your lives and your ambitions are too close? What does Jackie Collins think of Joan? How does Lucy Simon, the other half of the original double act, feel about her sister Carly’s solo success, and how does Margaret Drabble really feel about being eclipsed by her sister?What to make of my friend Susan’s dilemma? She has tracked her estranged sister to the intensive care ward of a hospital in Australia.

She’s a suburban housewife and mother and she claims she and Gloria get along because neither craves the other’s turf. Following another episode in 1980, her younger sister tried to do the same thing. To put all this in perspective, it may be useful to bear in mind that Kate herself once said that half her female lovers reminded her of the older sister, while the other half reminded her of the younger.What a thought! It’s little wonder that so many sisters seek protection from each other by deliberately setting out to be different Take Gloria Steinem’s sister. As Elizabeth Fischel points out in her book, Sisters, the balance of power between sisters is “in constant flux: at times, a relationship of equals, at times, anyone or the other may take control…”When Kate Millett had a manic episode in 1973, her elder sister tricked her into visiting an asylum and then had her committed. The dramas played out by rival sisters are full of such twists – which, of course, is what makes them so addictive and so treacherous. “I decided the time had come to blow the whistle on her,” my friend told me. After all, I am 60.”Which should sound like a very mild statement – unless you know that everyone present knew that Amanda was the elder sister, and so could not possibly be 52, as she had been pretending for so many years.