My Secret Sister: Jenny Lucas and Helen Edwards' Family Story (32 page)

‘Sam. Robert . . . Robert is
morto
. . . ’

The owner of the complex had apparently been driving his great Mercedes like a lunatic, as usual, and had lost control and driven over the edge of the road and down a steep bank. This was on Friday. They didn’t find his body until Sunday lunchtime.

On Monday morning, Sam and I went to his funeral together. We were both shell-shocked.

It was Robert who had brought us together, asking Sam to look after me for the weekend while he was away, and we had spent most of our time in those four days in each other’s company. Now that Robert had died, I didn’t know where I stood jobwise, so I flew back to England.

Sam drove me to the airport and saw me off. ‘I’ll see you next week,’ he said.

Would he? I was amazed at his impulsiveness. Wow!

Back home in Northumberland, I met up with Richard and broke off our relationship. He didn’t seem too surprised as we both knew we had been drifting apart for a while – we just hadn’t got round to making a decision. We were both quite sad about it all because we had shared so much over the years and were still fond of each other, but the break was inevitable.

The following weekend, true to his word, Sam flew over and drove up to Northumberland to see me, and we started going out together properly. It was instantaneous. I was hooked.

We drove up to Embleton, my favourite place, because I wanted to show Sam where I’d spent so many happy times throughout my childhood. I took him to see the clubhouse and the bungalow, and we strolled across the links and along the top of the bank above the beach, chatting non-stop. Then we walked down the steps and along the sands. We had so much to talk about.

Suddenly he stopped and turned to face me. ‘What you need is babies!’

After three months, I moved south to live with Sam in Kent. It sounds so simple, and in a way it was, but of course it was a huge decision to make. I had my own house and was teaching golf at the Gosforth Park Golf Centre. My mother was getting older and I helped her with some of her errands, and most of my friends lived in Northumberland. My whole life was in the north-east. Even though I’d spent so many years travelling the world, I always came back home, so it was an enormous step to move to the other end of the country. But I was so sure about our relationship that I knew I had to make the break.

I talked to my mother about it.

‘You must be mad, Jen!’ she exclaimed.

‘But I love him, Mam. I know this is right for me.’

‘Ee, I like Sam well enough.’

‘And he thinks you’re great . . . apart from supporting Newcastle!’

She laughed at that, but she wasn’t happy about my plans, though she had become more tolerant in her old age. Inwardly I think she knew I was determined to go and that she couldn’t stop me. I knew that what she was really worried about was my reputation, and what the neighbours would think, but of course I wouldn’t be around any more, so I suppose she realized they wouldn’t have anything to gossip about.

Sam and I went to see her before I moved.

‘I’ll take very good care of your Jen,’ he assured her. ‘And you’ll always be welcome to come down and stay with us.’

‘That would be nice.’

‘And we’ll come and see you whenever Sunderland are playing at home!’

‘Well, I’ll be watching Newcastle,’ she retorted with a smile. There was a twinkle in her eyes whenever Sam was around. I was so relieved that they got on well, and that she had accepted our situation so quickly.

Sam and I couldn’t get married as he was going through a divorce, but we didn’t want to wait. I was elated when I found out I was pregnant at the age of thirty-eight. After all those barren years, I really would be a mother at last. But life can be cruel, and I lost the baby at seven weeks. I was distraught.

A few months later I became pregnant again, but I dared not be too excited, and sure enough I miscarried this one at eleven weeks. I swung from one extreme of emotion to the other. It was a very stressful time for us both.

Just as I was doubting, at forty, that I would ever have a full-term pregnancy, I came across an article in a magazine I idly picked up in my dentist’s waiting room. As I leafed through it and came to this page, I felt a sharp jolt. I suppose you could call it fate. The article described new investigations under way at St Mary’s Hospital in London, involving women who had suffered numerous miscarriages. They had found that in some partnerships, the male’s antibodies worked against the foetus and made the woman abort.

As soon as I got home I called the hospital and asked if we could be included in their experimental treatment. They said it was normally only for women who’d had at least five miscarriages, but in view of my age, they agreed to include us.

I became pregnant again, and with the treatment at St Mary’s I went the full nine months. Katie was born in December 1989, when I was forty-one. I was ecstatic. It was Christmas Eve, and she was the best Christmas present in the world. As I held this little bundle in my arms, her eyes gazing up at mine, it hit me like a bus that this was the first time since I was born that I’d ever touched or held someone who was my own flesh and blood. She was part of me – a family of my own. I wept buckets of happiness that day, and didn’t stop crying for three months.

When Katie was just one month old we took her over to Tenerife. Sam had a house out there, as he was in charge of selling properties as an agent for Golf del Sur. He went over there quite a lot and I used to go with him to help him by playing golf with prospective clients. The idea was to have a holiday in the sun for a few weeks, and for me to have a good rest after the emergency Caesarean. Sam took over from his salesman for a while and carried on with selling the houses, and we both played some golf.

I couldn’t believe it when we met John Jacobs, my old mentor and coach, ‘Dr Golf’, out on the course one day – one of my favourite people and someone I owed a lot of my golfing success to. He had recently bought one of Sam’s properties from his salesman.

Sam saw me talking to him and came over to join us. He gave John a quizzical look. ‘Don’t I know you?’

‘No, I don’t think we’ve met.’

‘Don’t you play piano in a pub somewhere?’ asked Sam.

John laughed and laughed about that. We all got on well together and met up with his wife Rita for lunch. I have a photo of her holding Katie. We bumped into a friend of Rita’s who told me they had adopted their two children. That got us talking, but it was nothing like my story. They had told their children right from the start that they were adopted. She was shocked to hear of my experience, and sympathetic when I explained about tracing Mercia, only to be rejected for a second time without meeting her.

We stayed a couple of months in Tenerife then returned to England, and continued to go back and forth for a while. Two years after Katie, when I was forty-three, we had Ben. That meant Katie didn’t have to be an only child, like me. At last I had the family I never believed I could have. I felt I was the luckiest woman in the world.

One afternoon, Sam called me from his car. ‘I’m on my way back home. Can you book a babysitter for the evening and come and meet me at the Leather Bottle at seven o’clock?’

‘Why?’

‘I can’t talk now. I’ll tell you later.’ Sam is a man who often does things on impulse, so I didn’t think it strange. I just assumed he’d arranged for us to meet up with some friends at our favourite pub.

When I arrived at seven, he was already there on his own with a drink waiting for me. We sat together for a while, chatting about our day. Suddenly, he produced a ring-box from his pocket and opened it. ‘I think we should get married.’

We’d already lived very happily together for seven years and had two beautiful children. I’d almost forgotten we weren’t married!

I was so elated that I can’t remember what I said. Probably just, ‘Why not?’

It all sounds quite matter-of-fact, and that’s the way we are, but we were both as excited about getting married as two twenty-somethings starting out.

We wanted to keep our wedding low-key, so we decided not to tell anybody about it because we didn’t want to wait or have the complications of getting all our friends and relations down to Kent from all over the country. Sam arranged a registry office ceremony more than a hundred miles away in Bournemouth – a place he knew quite well. I arranged for our babysitter to move in for a day and a night while we were gone. We needed at least two witnesses at our wedding, so we asked Danny, Sam’s son from his first marriage, and his girlfriend. Sam’s mate Malcolm, who was the salesman at a Mercedes garage nearby, kindly allowed us to use his address, so we invited him to come along as another witness. They were all three sworn to secrecy. The only other person I told was my cousin Wendy. We have always been close and I couldn’t bear to keep it from her, but I knew she would tell no one. She was thrilled for us and sent me a lucky silver horseshoe.

The wedding was a light-hearted affair on a beautiful sunny morning in April 1992. We both enjoyed the ceremony itself, though it seemed to go very quickly. However, I do remember how nervous I felt when I was signing the register – quite out of character for me.

‘This is worse than teeing up on the last hole of the British Open!’ I sighed. Everybody laughed and my tension vanished.

Malcolm had brought with him the tiny round paper clippings from his office hole-puncher to use as confetti, and it fell like new snow down the registry office steps.

Sam had organized a splendid feast and champagne for the five of us in a suite of rooms at the Carlton, a posh seafront hotel. We had a great lunch and too much champagne. I must have fallen asleep as the next thing I knew it was six o’clock in the evening. I immediately phoned Connie.

‘Hello, Mam. How are you?’

‘Oh, I’m fine, pet. How are the bairns?’

‘They’re both full of fun, as usual.’ I paused momentarily, then took a breath, ready to launch into my announcement. I knew it would be a shock for her, but I needed to make sure she found out straightaway from me. ‘Mam, are you sitting down?’

‘Yes.’ She sounded perplexed. ‘Why? What’s happened? Nothing bad I hope?’

‘Sam and I have just got married today.’ I heard her gasp, but carried on. ‘It was a secret wedding and we’ve had a lovely day.’

‘Well it’s about time, mind! But why didn’t you tell me, Jen?’ I could hear she was hurt not to have known. ‘Don’t you think you should have told me and let me in on the secret? I wouldn’t have told anybody.’

‘I know, Mam. But we just wanted to keep it quiet and tell everyone afterwards. You’re the first person I’ve called.’

‘Ee well, that’s something, I suppose.’

I wanted to cheer her up and lighten the conversation, so I changed tack. ‘You’re a mother-in-law now!’

‘Well, I knew it would happen one day, but I always hoped it would be a lot sooner than this. You’ve done it all the wrong way round.’

‘Yes, I know, but at least I’ve got married at last.’

‘Thank goodness. But why did you keep me waiting till you were forty-four years old, and not even invite me to your wedding?’

‘You know why. And we didn’t invite anybody.’ That wasn’t quite true, I know, but I had to reassure her. She said nothing, so I changed direction again. ‘What’s it like to have a son-in-law who’s a Sunderland supporter?’

That made her laugh. ‘I’ll convert him yet, mind,’ she said. ‘You’ll see.’

Married at last, we stayed overnight in our beautiful hotel suite and drove home to Katie and Ben the next morning. I couldn’t stop smiling all the way home. We were legally a family now – husband, wife and two wonderful children. We were overjoyed that things had gone so well and our family was complete. But of course we had no idea what the coming year would bring.

CHAPTER 29

Helen

Holding On

We used to love our holiday visits to Florida as a family to visit George and Joan – the only time we could escape from my mother. Whatever the reason, Mercia didn’t ever want to come, which was a great relief. We would relax happily in George and Joan’s company and enjoy meeting their friends. Their two children had grown up and gone their own ways, with good careers and happy relationships, and George and Joan were enjoying their life of retirement in the ‘Sunshine State’, and the warmth and comforts they had earned through many hardships. Whenever I was there, the years fell away and it was as if I was back in those fields amongst the animals with George, or giggling with Joan as she taught me to put on make-up for the first time.

In 1995, Simon and I went for a visit on our own, as our kids were now grown up too. As soon as we got there my instincts kicked in – I knew there was a problem. We had dinner together that evening, but George didn’t eat much. When he went to have a lie down between courses, I realized there was something seriously wrong. After the meal, when he went to lie down again, I made him a cup of tea and took it to him. He was sleeping lightly. When he saw it was me on my own, he sat up in bed to sip his tea.

‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there?’ I asked.

‘Oh, it’s nothing to worry about, just a little touch of cancer.’

‘OK, George.’ I tried not to show my dismay. ‘I’m a nurse. Tell me about it.’

We talked for a long time as he explained some of what the doctors had said and what treatment he was having. He somehow managed to tell me all this without emotion. ‘It’s just a little touch of cancer,’ he said again. But I could see how much weight he’d lost, his fatigue showed and there was a grey tinge to his complexion. I had a huge lump in my chest which felt as if it would burst.

‘It’s no big deal, pet,’ he continued. ‘I’m going to fight it.’

‘Good for you, George. You can do it.’

I know he didn’t want to upset or alarm me, but of course he did both. I was sick to my stomach with fear for him, though I tried not to show it.

Joan and Simon left us together. We talked, we reminisced and we hugged. I sat with him and held his hand until he fell asleep.

Later, I talked to Joan. She told me about his diagnosis, all the details. She hid nothing, and I was grateful for that. But, as I feared, it was the worst news. My half-brother, whom I’d always adored, the one person who had stood up for me as a child, was terminally ill. He had only weeks to live.