Sinclair was the child of my mother’s brother, Aylwyn. Aylwyn had married—far too young, everybody said—a girl called Silvia. The family disapproval of his choice unhappily proved well-founded, for, as soon as she had borne her young husband a baby son, she upped and left the pair of them, and went off to live with a man who sold real estate in the Balearic Islands.
