Dear Mary | 26 July 2018

Q. My wife’s much younger sister is lazy and impossible. She forgets birthdays, is invariably late, lets people down and seems to think it’s all a laugh. Examples: forgetting to put the Christmas lunch in to cook so we had to wait four hours for what turned into a very poor evening meal. Informing us of a serious heart condition via a two-line text message, to which my wife responded but then heard nothing. Her husband is similar, once berating my wife in public for not going to see her sister in hospital when we had not been informed that she was there. Her youngest daughter was 18 earlier this year and we sent her a cheque for £500, which we personally handed to her mother. We have heard nothing since, nor has the cheque been presented. No one has thanked us, there’s been no letter, no text, no email, nothing on social media.