I've just been going through AE's WS and it struck me for the first time just how great a gap there was in ages between her and Sheila. Ann was nearly 9 years Sheila's senior. That alone would have made difficult a relationship if they'd been siblings, 7 years being the cut off point beyond which they would have been referred to as "only" children. But Ann and Sheila weren't biological siblings, they were cousins by adoption, which I suspect, for all manner of reasons, made their relationship difficult almost to the point of non existence.
I have always said that I think Ann and her brother grew up hearing thir father whinge about the money the Bambers were "wasting" on Sheila and Jeremy. Money which he believed should have eventually have come to HIS children, but taking on board the HUGE age gap, I think they'd probably been told all their lives, long before the advent of their adopted cousins, that as the Bambers were childless, one day what they had would come to Ann and David. If this was so, I imagine that 9 year old Ann, when she first saw Sheila in a pram, looked on her without warmth.
IMO, it's now certain that Ann knew NOTHING of Sheila's life, save the snippets she had passed to her second hand. I can say this with total confidence because if ALL other variables are removed, there is still the 9 year age gap. When Sheila had no more than just started school, Ann was almost at the point of leaving school. Ann didn't have the luxury of modelling school, for her it was the graft of secretarial college. In Ann's eyes, even if she's been told that Sheila may not be quite well, I imagine that all she saw was Sheila wafting around and being supported by money, that was it not for her adoption, COULD have come her way. We hear it in almost every sentence where she speaks of Sheila. She speaks of the Bambers spending their OR might that be "THEIR" money on her as if they are giving it to a stranger rather than their own daughter.
But it seems she knew Sheila well enough to say of her that "she couldn't put beans on toast" but she didn't stop to think about, having received from her, but not bothered to reply to, the only letter which had ever passed between them, how Sheila had managed to hold the pen to write it.
I think as a small girl, Sheila may have liked to be friends with her big cousin and I believe that as an adult she went on trying. I find it very poignant when I hear Ann talk about how Sheila told her she looked pretty, and the times that Sheila wanted to talk but she, Ann, was too busy, had things to do. I find myself wondering if she ever once willingly spent time with Sheila and really listened to her but I suspect that the angry indoctrinations of her father deafened her.
