Cousin Sophie

Every family has its black sheep. I guess my cousin Sophie would fall into that category in our extended family tree. Our mothers were cousins, and our fathers (though I didn't know it for years) were brothers, so you'd think we would have shared a lot of common genes. Not so much. Sophie was born just three months before me, and had light brown hair, pale blue eyes and flat facial features. Because of the deep friendship between our mothers, we spent quite a bit of time together as children, and the differences in our personalities became obvious, too.

Sophie was an extrovert, never shy when it came to talking to others. She'd try anything once, especially if it had a hint of danger or illegality. She taught me how to shoplift, steal from neighborhood gardens, make prank phone calls, trespass almost anywhere. I recall my mother telling me how mortified Constance was when she had to call the fire brigade to rescue Sophie from the top of the Martello Tower in Rye Harbor.

Sophie was constantly in casts for bones broken during her escapades. I never broke a single bone, though I did dislocate my knee - while playing with Sophie, of course. Sophie was regularly stung by bees and wasps during the summer months. I've never been stung yet, thankfully.

Sophie attended the prestigious and expensive girls' boarding school, Roedean. I attended the much cheaper St Marys Baldslow, an Anglican convent school, as a day pupil, though our education was both funded by trust funds from Great Aunt Sophie. Sophie learned about getting detention and being expelled. I escaped both those experiences.

Sophie's mother lived a Bohemian hippy artist existence, working her way through three husbands (Sophie's father was husband #2). My mother never married, and worked diligently as a nurse throughout my entire life.

When I took my first job at the age of seventeen, working in a local jam factory, Sophie's mother gave me a yellow Honda Express NC50 that she had intended to give to Sophie. I used it to commute the twelve miles each way, buying myself a brown leather jacket with my first paycheck so I could look cool and serious about this motorcycling thing. (Leather jackets still turn me on in a big way!) I felt like the next speedway champion as I trundled along the road doing a maximum of 27 m.p.h. (downhill, with a following wind) in my open-faced helmet, getting off every few miles to unscrew and clean out the fuel filter which clogged up rapidly due to the inside of the fuel tank rusting and flaking off. I even ran into a parked car while turning left, hitting my (previously dislocated) knee against the rear bumper, and somersaulting over the roof to land on the hard road surface. A riding injury! Surely I had arrived in the world of Hell's Angels which my father frequented in his youth!

I got married at the age of nineteen, and Constance had totally given up on Sophie at that point. She took all the linens and kitchenwares she had been saving for Sophie's wedding and gave them to me instead. At this point in time, Sophie was living with a man several years her senior, who made a living stealing scavenging car batteries from junk yards and reselling them. Sophie turned up for my wedding at the last moment, with no gift, so Constance took her shopping quickly and they bought me a large red plastic mixing bowl. In the wedding photos, Sophie is wearing a long grey, plastic raincoat buttoned up to her neck. I have no clue what she was wearing underneath it. I wonder if they bought the coat at the same time they bought the bowl.

I never saw Sophie after that, but my mother tells me she had a daughter, Emily, with battery-guy and left him to raise her daughter alone. I hear Emily turned out well.

I'm not ashamed of being Sophie's cousin. My experiences with her were certainly memorable, and I wouldn't have missed them for the world. But one thing remains true. Despite those doubled-up genes, I am nothing like her.

(I'm way worse!)