My Sister & The Family Reunion Of Doom

Twelve years ago, my parents retired and moved to Spain. My sister and her girlfriend, about 5 years after that, moved to Hull, way the hell up north, while I stayed in London. Obviously this meant that we didn't see each other all that often. In November of 2004, my parents came over to stay with my sister and her girlfriend and I went up for the weekend.

My parents are kind of ok but not really about having two gay children at this point. That said, they absolutely love my sister's girlfriend, Hannah, and have done the whole time that she has been with my sister, which is about 8 years now. I took the Friday off work and travelled up on the train. My parents greeted me at the train station as they had arrived the night before. My sister is on some work conference and won't be home until later that evening, so the parents and I have lunch with Hannah and then go back to the house. It turns out I fucked up with my train booking. I am not going back until late Monday afternoon as I thought my parents weren't flying back until Monday night. They are actually going back on Monday early afternoon and my sister and Hannah will be at work so I will be all alone. I try and change my train ticket, it's outrageously expensive to do so. My parents enquire about changing their flight home to the Tuesday and it can be done for next to no cost, so they do that.

My sister arrives home at around 9pm, after we have all had dinner and are about to hit the sofa and lounge in front of the TV. Mary Poppins was going to be showcased on TV that night and as I worked in the box office there, we were all intrigued to see it. However, my sister stays in the kitchen drinking with my dad and we don't see either of them for the rest of the night. The layout of their house is a little odd. Right inside the front door is the office, then you walk through to the dining room and kitchen. Upstairs is the lounge, bathroom and spare bedroom, upstairs again is the master bedroom. My parents are sleeping in the spare room and I am on a very comfy very big sofa in the lounge. Obviously the girls are in the master bedroom at the top. We all go to bed, only to be awoken at 3am by massive amounts of shouting and crashing furniture. Assured by my sister that there's nothing to worry about, we all go back to sleep and wake up the next morning to Hannah weeping and packing a bag to move out.

Over the course of the morning, the whole truth emerges. My sister has been having an affair with one of her co-workers. A co-worker who is 12 years older than her, has a daughter and is going through a messy divorce. The reason we had heard all the crashing and banging the previous night is because Hannah woke up to find herself alone in bed. Curious as to where my sister might be, she went looking for her. She found her in the office, having sex with the aforementioned co-worker. Fun times.

The rest of the weekend was absolutely horrendous. My sister didn't seem to think she had done anything wrong and just carried on like nothing had happened, constantly slinking off to make phone calls to the co-worker and pretty much ignoring the fact that we are there. From the moment we all woke up on the Saturday morning, none of us wanted to be there and yet we were all trapped. It was the absolute worst weekend in our family's history.

I didn't speak to my sister for 9 months, nor did I have any interest in meeting the co-worker, now girlfriend. My argument was always what kind of idiot, when not just her girlfriend but all three members of her immediate family are sleeping upstairs, calls her illicit lover and invites her over for sex. And not only that, but what kind of dumb illicit lover ACTUALLY GOES OVER?

So you can see why I was not exactly thrilled to hear that they were getting married. I was not looking forward to seeing my sister again after almost two years, meeting her new girlfriend for the first time and all that shit. Well, how wrong can you be?