When Sophie's little sister, Jacintha was born, Sophie found her presence unacceptable, "I think it ruined my life. My character changed remarkably. Certainly my life was fairly obsessed with trying to either hurt my sister, get her into trouble or wish she didn't exist at all."
Sophie remembers mother's deep concern over her eldest daughter's reaction, "When I couldn't get to my sister, I pulled my dolls hair out, left them out in the rain, hit them repeatedly against walls ... my mother did take away a couple of my dolls because she was so disturbed by it. I hospitalised my sister about 3 times. I overdosed her with sleeping pills and she had to have her stomach pumped."
The physical wounding of her sister stopped when Sophie was quite young, but she disliked her sister until her mid-teens. At school Sophie tried to humiliate her sister "If my best friend was to show any favours towards my sister like greet her in the playground, it would be seen by me as a terrible insult."
Sophie feels that some of her reaction was because she felt she was expected to "behave in a more grown up way and to share things with Jaz . I often felt that Jaz wasn't expected to share things as I was expected to. I don't feel that we were treated unfairly. The point is that she existed and that is enough. The fact that we're different now, is a reason for us getting on well, it's because we recognise that we're very different and not a threat to each other."
Sophie has a daughter of her own now, who is eight and a half, and will give birth to her second child in about a month's time. She is concerned that her own eldest child does not feel as she did, "One of the reasons I left having a second baby so late was because I didn't want to do to my daughter what was done to me ... the fact that she's eight and a half might help because we talk about it and there won't a threat to each other. I don't really think it's going to be a problem ...there just have been moments when the jealousy is coming out of me. It's jealousy on her behalf of the younger child."
