Read My Secret Sister: Jenny Lucas and Helen Edwards' Family Story for Free Online

Grandma’s dressing table, with its bowl of sparkly trinkets and her beloved dressing-table set. Overcome with curiosity, I would edge open her drawers and have a quiet rummage through her satin underwear or her pleated blouses, sniffing the mothballs. Going through Grandma’s drawers was a treat. A ritual.
    Eagle-eyed, she noticed everything. When she saw me open her drawers she would make a sudden recovery, sitting forward in bed, and waving her walking stick. ‘Hey, out of there, you little monkey! Out of my drawers!’ she would say, but with a grin. It was a great game between us.
    There were many fun times at Grandma’s. Her living room was dominated by a church organ. When we all went for tea on Sunday afternoons, my cousins and I were indignant that the adults ate first at the table while we were consigned to wait for the second sitting. We would peep over the edge of the table to see the sandwiches and cakes disappear, so that by the time it was our turn, most of the cake plates were empty and there were nothing but crumbs to share between us. We all thought that was grossly unfair! Sometimes we tried to sneak in and steal something before anybody got there and got a smack on the hand, but not too hard. It was because the family was so big that the best stuff was always gone. That was the way it was. We were just kids and we had to stand at the back of the line. We didn’t know any different.
    After tea, Grandma would say, ‘Haaway James, let’s have a tune, pet.’
    The adults would stand around the organ, all smartly dressed in their Sunday best, while Uncle James played and the whole family sang rousing hymns and songs of the day. The one I remember best is ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, a family favourite. Because I was one of the smallest, I often enjoyed the privilege of sitting on my uncle’s lap while he played. I used to pull and tug at the organ stops, which earned me a cursory slap, but I couldn’t resist. I remember the fascination of watching his huge hands as they lumbered across the keys, and feeling uplifted by the joyful singing of my uncles and aunts. Auntie Dorrie always led – she had the strongest voice. My grandma would look on with a sentimental smile as a tear or two escaped down her cheek.
    Grandma always wore her best half-pinny tied around her waist on Sundays. Sometimes, while everyone was singing, I would get down from Uncle James’s knee and join the younger cousins as we crept round behind Grandma and pulled at her apron strings until her pinny fell to the floor.
    ‘You little devils,’ she said each time in a mock-angry voice, with a twinkle in her eyes as she tied it back on again in a direct challenge to us to repeat our wicked ways.
    There was a lot of laughter on Sunday afternoons. Something would start us off laughing and we’d have to begin all over again. But always, by the end of the afternoon, there would be a suffocating tension, a sense that the atmosphere could change in a heartbeat. An innocuous joke or thoughtless remark from a family member would cut the party dead as my father stiffened, his eyes flashed and his fists clenched. That was the moment things turned. Almost every Sunday. It was like some sort of secret I would never know or understand. I was aware that my father didn’t like going to these afternoons and that he was uncomfortable with my mother’s relations, all except for Grandma, so I assumed that was what the tension was about. It didn’t matter much to me while I was surrounded by all the family. While we were there, I was OK.
    Once an argument began, always started by my father, it would seem small at first, then get louder and fiercer. Then my mother would weigh in to make it worse. I was too young to work out whose argument it was, or why it had started, but it would always escalate. We’d often have to leave the party early, both my parents dark with anger, and that’s when it started to matter. When we got home George was usually