Janet Street-Porter pushed her little sister down the stairs and bullied her so much she ran away from home. So why DO so many women not get on with their sisters?

Whatever bland platitudes Ed and David Miliband spout about brotherly love, their relationship must be fatally damaged if one brother is now leaving the country to avoid  the other. 
How can two intelligent men — both operating in a world where communication is the key to success — get on so badly that one is uprooting his family to the other side of the Atlantic in a move surely designed to end comparisons between himself and the younger sibling who narrowly beat him to the Labour leadership? 
When I read about David’s recent decision to leave both Parliament and Britain for a job in New York, so many memories came flooding back. 

Sibling rivalry: Only the death of their father could bring Janet Street-Porter (right) and her sister Pat together

My sister and I had an equally fraught relationship, and our rivalry and deep-seated distrust of each other became like a canker that grew and grew until we spent decades barely even speaking.
In the end, it was only my father’s death and my mother’s mental and physical deterioration that brought us back together.

 

My sister Pat, who was two years younger than me, and I became so close that she even helped to research our family for my memoir Baggage, which I wrote in 2003. Shortly afterwards she contracted liver and brain cancer and died in 2006. 
At Pat’s funeral, I couldn’t help thinking of all those wasted years when we hadn’t got on, wishing that we’d found a way to patch up our differences and be friends sooner. 
Sadly, what happened between us is  all too common — and we weren’t entirely  to blame.
Sibling rivalry is bred by competitive, unhappy parents, and ours should have split up when we were kids. But it was the Fifties and money was tight. 
They had only married in 1954, six  years after my sister was born. This was because my mother’s first husband would not divorce her. 
I only found out when I was in my 50s that my mother had married young to someone she seemed to tire of pretty quickly, although I still don’t know any details. 
During World War II, my father was doing Army training in North Wales, where he met my mother. They began an affair, which continued until he was posted to Burma. On his return, they moved in together, and I was born in December 1946. 
My father’s family had found them a terrace house in Fulham, West London, to live in, but they had to rent out the top floors, as they needed the cash. 
No one outside the immediate family knew that they weren’t married — it would have been too shameful. By the time my sister was born two years later, their relationship had already degenerated into sulks, rows and moods. 

Sister act: Janet, the elder of the two, bullied her sister relentlessly and once even pushed her down the stairs

Each parent would take one of us to their side when things got tough. My mum appropriated my sister and my dad chose me. He had wanted a boy, but was content to take me to Fulham football club for home games and to speedway racing in Wimbledon on Wednesdays. 
Mum even ran away at one stage, taking my sister with her. I don’t know why. Presumably she had a row with Dad, who was very controlling. She took her favourite child, my sister, but they were back after ten days. 
My sister and I looked completely different: she was shorter, with dark brown hair, whereas mine was a mousy beige.
Pat had a sunny, happy disposition, whereas I was already a prize-winning sulky cow who secretly thought my parents had picked up the wrong baby in the nursery. 
I was a snob by the age of 12, spending most of my time reading, working in the local library, playing the piano and visiting museums. 
My sister was far more gregarious and had a wide circle of friends. I hardly got invited to anything — not that I particularly cared.
The worse aspect of having a sister was that we shared a bedroom — or, as I put it, she slept in my bedroom. I drew a line on the floor and told her if she crossed it, I would kill her while she slept, which caused bed-wetting and bad dreams. 
We went to the same primary school, but walked apart on the pavement. One day, on the way home, we had a terrible fight in Parsons Green Lane, and I pushed her so hard she cut her head on a marble pillar outside a pub. Mum and Dad slapped me and sent me to bed without tea. 
A few weeks later I pushed her down the stairs. She just got up. I did it a second time and she just rolled over and laughed. I loathed her even more. 
Mum would do daft things like get our hair cut in exactly the same style — a nasty bob — even though we were like chalk and cheese.

Close: The Duchess of Cambridge and her sister Pippa Middleton have always been good friends

Friends: Princesses Eugene and Beatrice regularly spend time together, and sometimes invite their mother too

In all the old photos, Pat looks trusting and open, whereas I am standing separately, seething with resentment at being turned into a clone.
When I was 14, Dad unleashed a bombshell, telling us we were moving to Perivale in suburban West London the following week. There was no discussion, just an announcement. 
Both parents were thrilled to be moving into a semi-detatched house with a front and back garden, a small garage and, best of all, no lodgers — even though it would mean a long drive to work for Dad.
As far as I was concerned, the only good thing about being uprooted to this cultural wasteland — which meant spending two hours on the Underground to get to school and back each day — was that we finally got our own bedrooms. 
Naturally, mine was the largest, and I immediately got one wall decorated with hideous wallpaper covered in bullfighters. Pat’s was so small there was barely room for a single bed, a tiny cupboard and a chair. 
By now we were not speaking at all. I had no idea who her friends were, what she did every evening or the programmes she liked to watch on telly. 
After the move to Perivale, I remained at my grammar school in Fulham while Pat was transplanted into the local comprehensive, even though she’d passed her 11-plus. It must have been horribly traumatic, leaving her old school friends and being dumped in a new environment aged 12, but I showed her no sympathy.
After a year, I came home from school and found the house empty. My sister had disappeared taking my savings book, from which she’d cashed everything (probably only about £30). 
Eventually, my distraught parents called the police and a search was mounted. When the police asked me who her friends were and where she  might have gone, I was incredulous. How should I know?
Mum spent days snivelling while Dad was stoic — his usual response to anything he couldn’t control.
After four days the police planned to announce she was missing and the  story was to be carried on the national news. I was furious. My sister was going to be famous before me! 
But before it became public knowledge, she was found in North Wales, staying in a boarding house. Her only explanation was that she 'needed a break'. 

Rivalry: Brothers Ed and David Milliband fell out spectacularly after David lost the Labour leadership to Ed

Of course she did. Her life was horrible and I was the sister from hell. On her return, the matter was never discussed again and life continued  as before. 
She failed all her O-levels as a protest at me being Dad’s 'favourite' (she told me years later it was her way of  marking out how different she was to me) and got a job in a shop. 
I passed my exams and studied architecture at the Architectural Association in Bloomsbury, Central London, eventually escaping from home aged 19 to live in a flat in Earl’s Court with my boyfriend, Tim, whom I later married.
Pat did come to my wedding two years later and I went to hers, but we didn’t say much. Neither of us had bridesmaids. 
As a wedding present, she got me an ironing board using cigarette coupons she’d saved. I hated smokers. Pat and Mum smoked for England, always puffing away when I made one of my rare visits home.
Later, Pat got a couple of very good jobs running a photographic studio in Chelsea and as a booker  at a model agency in  Bond Street. 
At the time — it was the end of the Sixties — I was working for this newspaper as a columnist and fashion writer, yet still Pat and I didn’t bother to meet up.
After the birth of her only son, Kerry, she went to work on the checkout in Sainsbury’s, a decision I found mystifying. She seemed to have opted for a non-career and family life in suburbia, living just a short drive away from Mum and Dad in Hillingdon. Whenever we did meet, we bickered. 
After a few years, Dad retired and my parents moved to Wales, near to where Mum was born. But Mum would often go and stay with Pat for weeks at a time, driving her nuts, whereas I couldn’t face inviting Mum to my house. 
Pat later told me that she resented the fact Mum and Dad were proud of me going to architectural college, then getting a picture byline in a newspaper, appearing on the radio and finally presenting shows on TV. 
As I became more famous she wanted nothing to do with me, and who could blame her? I would ask her to lunch, but she’d only come if I paid for a taxi in both directions. I couldn’t get to her house to deliver Christmas presents because of my busy work schedule, so I sent them in a minicab. 
I got long, abusive phone calls from her which reduced me to tears. Both of us knew how to wind up the other by then. We knew just what to say to enrage the other. I would talk about work or things I had bought that she couldn’t afford. 
When Dad died in the Canary Islands, where my parents had bought a small holiday flat, we flew out to arrange his funeral as Mum was so upset that she was incapable — in spite of spending more and more time apart from him during the last years of his life. 
It was throughout this traumatic time that Pat and I, by this time in our 40s, began to reconstruct our friendship — or, rather, build it from scratch.
Pat confided that she’d been researching our family history. She had found that our parents had not been married when we were born, which explained the lack of wedding photos on our dresser. 
We still bickered, but not like before. When Mum became frail and very difficult, it bound us together and we would laugh at the appalling things she’d say. 
After Mum’s death, Pat helped research my book and enjoyed the work. We would never be bosom buddies — we were too different — but at least, finally, we could have lunch and not snarl at each other. 
Then she contracted brain and lung cancer. I paid £16,000 for her to have laser treatment privately, which extended her life by a few months. 
At her funeral, I was moved to tears by dozens of her friends who turned up and all of her workmates at the branch of Sainsbury’s where she worked until she got sick and where she was obviously deeply loved. 
I saw a side of Pat I’d never glimpsed before — and I felt humbled. It took a funeral for me to realise  just how unique and fabulous my sister was. I hope the Milibands don’t wait that long.