When I was eight years old, my mum suddenly became very ill and was subsequently diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. I was an only child, and as my dad had to constantly be up and down to the hospital, he had to find someone to look after me.
The only option in the end was to send me to stay for a while with my Aunt Pauline, my dad’s youngest sister. She herself was a widow and had a solitary daughter from that marriage, Lorraine, who was a year older than me. The fact that Pauline and Lorraine lived in the suburbs of Stoke-on-Trent (more than an hour’s drive from my Birmingham home) made things difficult but as it least it was the summer school holidays when our difficulties started, which did simplify matters to some extent.