STARING at her sister Jo across the table in their local Indian restaurant, Sarah could see the blind rage brewing in her eyes.
A split second later, 39-year-old Jo lunged at her across the table, sending food flying.
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“I think I’d made a negative comment about her husband,” says Sarah, 37, a housing officer.
“Suddenly, Jo just snapped and launched herself at me over the table.
"She ended up throwing me across the restaurant in front of the other diners.
“She then stormed out and I just went back to eating my poppadom.”
It was the latest in a long line of bust-ups between the sisters, who make warring reality TV siblings Kim and Kourtney Kardashian look positively pally in comparison.
Last month Kourtney branded younger sister Kim “a witch” after Kim claimed her sibling’s close friends had joined her “Not Kourtney” WhatsApp chat to bitch about her.
But for Jo and Sarah, their feuding runs much deeper.
When Jo married third husband Trevor, 41, director of a car repair company, in 2017, Sarah refused to go to the wedding.
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“I’d had conflict with Trevor because he’d rightly stick up for Jo when we’d been in fights,” says Sarah.
“Jo then decided to get married in Cyprus and kept telling me how I didn’t have the money to come.
“So I thought, ‘Fine, I won’t come’. I did it out of spite and I now regret it.
“I cried my eyes out when Mum sent me a picture of Jo in her dress.
"My stubbornness got in the way of me being there for that special moment.”
Jo says: “It was the biggest argument we ever had. After that, we didn’t speak for three years.”
From the word go, Jo and Sarah failed to bond.
Jo recalls: “Mum brought Sarah back from the hospital when I was two years old and apparently I whacked her in the face and asked if we could send her back.”
When their father moved out when Jo was 11, their scraps escalated.
“I think we were mainly fighting for Mum’s attention,” says Jo.
Sick of their constant bickering, exasperated mum Karen, 65, turfed them out of the family home when Jo was 18 and Sarah was 16.
She gave Jo £600 towards rent money and the sisters ended up sharing a flat.
It was a recipe for disaster.
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Sarah says: “Jo was acting like she was the mother because she was older, and I really struggled with that.
“Once, she even made me stay in my room when her friends came over.”
Jo, who now lives in Kent, says: “I did boss her about, but we had such different lifestyles.
"I usually had a steady boyfriend and Sarah didn’t.
“I was constantly despairing of the guys she would go out with.
"I would tell her not to sleep with them on the first date and — as far as I was concerned – she would go right ahead and do it.
“Then she’d wonder why she couldn’t find Mr Right.”
Sarah is clearly riled by her sister’s words. “It’s horrible when your sister thinks you’re a slag when you aren’t,” she says.
“I wasn’t desperate. I was quite happy being single.”
Jo hits back: “I think Sarah has always been envious of the fact I’ve found love quite easily.
"She would wonder why I could get a ring three times before she even got one.”
Over time their physical fights became so vicious that Sarah, who married Tom, 34, a tree surgeon, earlier this year, would be left shocked by her own actions.
She says: “We have literally beaten each other up on the street. I’ve whacked Jo and she’s pulled my hair out.
“But I’ve got a big heart and I do regret the physical stuff. You can take back words, but you can’t take back a punch.
“I remember once grabbing a fistful of her hair and then looking at her face and thinking, ‘I can’t believe I just did that to her’.
"We’ve had friends scream at us to stop.”
But they do have their limits, it seems.
“We’d never throw drinks over each other,” Jo teases. “We wouldn’t want to waste the wine.”
Unlike Sarah, Jo says she has never felt guilty over their fights, admitting: “I can be quite hard-faced.”
But Sarah, who lives in Dorset, is worried about the impact their scraps have had on their long-suffering mum.
She says: “I spend more time with Mum than Jo does, so I could see it was upsetting her.
“I’ve cried a lot over the situation.”
Company director Jo, who has a daughter, Olivia, 13, from her first marriage, says: “We’ve spent decades arguing.
"Anything can cause a row.”
Desperate to make amends, Sarah has tried to get to the bottom of their sibling rivalry in recent years.
She says: “I went to therapy a couple of years ago to try and establish why I was feeling so angry all the time.
"They said it could have been related to the relationships I’d had around me growing up, mainly with Jo.”
The girls patched things up in April 2022, when Sarah asked Jo to be maid of honour at her wedding.
“I swallowed my pride,” says Sarah. “I’d missed out on her wedding, so I wanted her to be at mine.”
Jo says: “It felt like the right thing, but I had reservations.
“I didn’t want any conflict, but I did write a nice speech for her that she has framed on her wall now.”
The girls are now hoping to keep the peace for the foreseeable future, even more so for the sake of Jo’s daughter Olivia, who Sarah adores.
Jo says: “It’s still a work in progress. Even when we’re having a nice time, it could all go pear-shaped in a second.
“We know exactly how to push each other’s buttons.”
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Sarah adds: “I’ve definitely been in awe of friends of mine who have been close to their sisters and I wish we had that.”
Jo agrees: “One day I’d love to go on holiday with Sarah and our kids. I hope we are going in that direction.”
