Secrets My Mother Kept by Hardy Kath

Author:Hardy, Kath [Hardy, Kath]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2013-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

27

My Secret Sister

We had the phone connected when I was about seventeen and it had been a revelation. No more going to the phone box! Aunty was wary of it at first but was getting more confident about using it to call Aunty Maggie and her other siblings. Mum loved it! She was always keen on gadgets of any kind and buying them on the ‘never never’ had contributed to the huge debts that she still carried around with her in that big black bag. Like a millstone around her neck it dragged her down and she never let it out of her sight.

Aunty was now retired from Plessey but had gone out and got herself a part-time job in Ilford in the café at Clark’s bakery. Margaret and I would sometimes get the bus there on a Saturday to look at the shops.

‘Come into me for your lunch,’ Aunty would offer, and if we did she would always say, ‘what do yer want? Welsh Rarebit?’ and would scurry around and present it to us proudly.

‘I don’t want yer money,’ she would say, waving us away, which was just as well as we never had any.

One day Josie and Pat were home from work, as they had both taken a few days holiday, and my brother Michael’s middle daughter Sheila was staying at our house. She was only about eight, and loved her Nanny desperately, as did Michael’s other two daughters, Vicky and Tricia. They would frequently argue about whose turn it was to come and stay, and the result was often that they all came. I dreaded those times. It wasn’t because I didn’t love them, just that our house was so crowded already that an additional three bodies made it almost unbearable, especially as they were lively young children. They had all inherited their mum and dad’s good looks; they had Michael’s colouring so their hair was blonde, but they had Isobel’s huge eyes surrounded by dark thick lashes, although where hers were dark Spanish brown, theirs were a bright blue. It was Sheila who had won the fight this time and Pat and Josie were going to take her and Pongo to Valentines Park on the bus to feed the squirrels.

Just as they were getting ready to go, the phone started ringing. I was getting ready to go out with Patrick later that evening and Mum was in the middle of making tea, so Aunty, who had arrived home after her lunchtime shift, wandered out into the hall where the phone was perched on a little table and answered it. I ran down the stairs assuming it would be for me, and stopped short as I heard Aunty shouting into the receiver.

‘Hello,’ she said, putting on her posh voice. ‘Who?’ She was going quite deaf now and struggled to hear people on the telephone. ‘Who is it? Oh my God!’ A shocked smile sprang to her lips. ‘Wait . . . Pat, it’s your sister Sheila! Florrie, it’s Sheila!’

Time stood still.

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