When I was 20 and madly in love, my jealous and complicated younger sister fooled around with my boyfriend. She had plotted this, I am sure, because she had shown no inclination to come visit me where I was living until she heard I was dating again. She wrote to say something like "I heard you are in love, I must meet this new man. Will such-and-such a date work?". Well, I smelt a rat because of the time she had snogged my first boyfriend when she thought I wasn't looking. So I replied "no, that date won't work as we'll be at a party together".
Long story short, she turned up at my place anyway. The party had been cancelled and I was going to a different event with some friends. My boyfriend was busy studying, but my sister said she still wanted to meet him, and going by the way she was dressed it was clear what she had in mind. He had said he didn't want to meet anyone, I left her in my room as she declined my invite to the other party. While I was gone she found out where he lived - in the next university hall from where I was. She went and knocked on his door, and when I got home late I found them in my room, sitting very close, with her in a very uncompromising pose on my bed. She then kissed him full on the lips as she made to leave. It was definitely her kissing him - he blushed red at how brazen it was but he also knew that in falling for her "charms" in the first place, he had also committed the unforgivable.
Weeks later my boyfriend, whom of course I had dumped, was very clear with me about how far they had gone together: it stopped just centimetres short of full sex as I think my sister was still technically a virgin.
It took me seven years to get over the hurt, and the first three years were the worst. Those two ruined what should have been a very successful and enjoyable degree at a lovely university. I was a total basket case and unable to speak about it with anyone except my parents.
Yet, speaking with my parents proved to be a mistake. Despite me being obviously in pieces, they took my sister's side, because A she got in with her side of the story first - "Wanton's boyfriend made a pass at me, boo hoo it must be because I'm so irresisitible", and B how could they have believed their daughter could be so wicked? So when I wrote to my sister and called her a bitch and a whore, she ran back to my parents and they came down on me like a ton of bricks, telling me I was not welcome home until I apologised.
I was never doing that, and so began a kind of estrangement between me and the rest of my family, including my three other siblings, and of course seven or eight years of total estrangement between me and the evil sister.
That was forty years ago and we are reconciled now. But I can never forget, and my relationships with the rest of my family are slightly strained in different ways, with this terrible event not being able to be mentioned or even alluded to as I simply cannot talk about it with them.
My mother has kept some of the letters I wrote her while I was in the worst of my agonies post-betrayal. I talked of my pain, of my love for this man, I said there was more to the story than they realised - I stopped short of giving any details that would incriminate my sister, such as the previous clandestine snog with boyfriend number one, because I knew it would be shot down. Which brings us to today. While helping to go through my mother's possessions I have come across these letters in her bedroom, displayed quite prominently. I am quite certain that my other siblings, who have all been sorting through mum's papers, will either already have seen or be about to see these painful, private scribblings.
It actually hurts like hell just to read these letters myself. I can't tell you how it smarts to have them out there for others to read, especially knowing how little support I had at the time, and how little support I would ever get concerning this matter.
So the question is simple really - can I just scoop up these letters and take them home or burn them? I honestly feel they are not for the eyes of anyone except my mum and me. It cuts me up to think that they are being read, and they most certainly are because they are, as I say, right out there for all to see.
If it makes any difference, our mother is in a care home and is having most of her cherished posessions moved with her which is why we are all sorting through her things right now.