Number of days since lockdown: 74. But that seems almost irrelevant now, given the stupid decisions being made by our government to let everything return to normal before we have a functioning test, track and trace system in place. So I’m going to stop counting and instead give you some more relevant stats.

Number of days since I started writing this blog: 80. Bloody Nora.

Number of words I have written so far: 49,494

Number of days since Dad died: 8

I was awake most of the night thinking about what Mum had said about being born Jewish and dying Jewish. To be honest, it made a nice change from lying awake worrying about being unfaithful to Brian with that bastard Richard. Or whether Brian really loved me and what he would do if he found out. Or just lying awake feeling lonely and sad, knowing my mother was probably lying awake next door feeling just the same but having no idea what to say that might comfort her.

All families have secrets, don’t they? Or maybe they don’t. As Tolstoy said, all happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

And being brutally honest about it, ours has never really been a happy family. There were happy times, of course. But there was always been an undercurrent of sadness, of Things that Must Never be Mentioned. And when we did ask questions, we would be told by Dad that we had better ask our mother. Which we rarely did because doing so risked having one’s head bitten off with one of her famous non sequiturs such as:

Really, Sadie, why do you want to know that?

Or: That’s for me to know and for you never to find out.

Until recently, I have always told myself that things started to go wrong for the Waylands Heath Family Robinson when my older sister Ruth died. Graceful, kind-hearted, hard-working Ruth. Who wanted to be a doctor or a concert pianist or a prima ballerina and could probably have done all three, had she not simply stopped eating when she was 15.

But in all honesty, Ruth was just a salve to our mother’s rage about the unfairness of what life had thrown her way. She was the perfect daughter, unlike me and Lydia who were naughty and annoying, and in my case, fat, greedy and untidy to boot. I think Lydia was generally less of a disappointment than me, but that wasn’t saying much. Ruth kept her bedroom in immaculate condition, and loved helping our mother with the household chores which so enraged her. Until I went to visit other children’s houses, I didn’t know that laying the table could be done without banging every item down so hard that it made all the other things rattle, or that hoovering didn’t necessarily involve smashing the vacuum cleaner into the skirting boards whilst smoking furiously.

Ruth was Mum’s alter-ego, an excellent little housewife without an angry bone in her neat little body. She would hum softly while she dusted the sitting room, always putting everything back exactly where it belonged, unlike me. She was baking excellent Victoria sponges by the time she was ten, as well as making all our packed lunches, and never skimped her piano practice or forgot to do her homework. Every school report was excellent. And the other parents adored her.

We weren’t told what had happened to our maternal grandparents. All I knew was that Mum never saw them again after she left home. After leaving school, she trained to be a secretary. She met Dad shortly after starting her first job. Their wedding photos are in back and white, and as I have mentioned before, Mum is wearing a suit rather than a white dress. There are no guests, not even Dad’s parents. When I have asked Mum why not, she has said variously, Mind your own business, and that they didn’t want to come.

I don’t know what Lydia knows. I dread mentioning Mum’s latest revelation in case it is just me being stupid old Sadie again. But I decide there is no option, so ring her just before lunch when I know she will be free. And I can tell that she is completely pole-axed by it.

We decide that I need to look through my mother’s private papers back at Waylands Heath, in case there is something in there that will affect the decisions we are making about Dad’s funeral. We agree that I must go tomorrow, ie Saturday, afternoon. It will be the first time I will have left Mum on her own and I will be gone for several hours, given it is over 20 miles each way. We make a few Dominic Cummings jokes and then agree this is actually totally within the rules, and Lydia says she will call Mum to check on her while I am out. I say I will text her when I set off.

Mum seems to have forgotten what she said last night and is sitting in the garden complaining about the lack of shelter from the wind when I come off the phone. I feel incredibly guilty that I am going to be snooping through her things tomorrow, and try to make it up to her by offering to do her nails, which she refuses huffily, even though she was bemoaning how awful they looked only an hour earlier.

And that’s it from me for today. I’m supposed to be meeting Brian on Sunday for an early evening walk. He is bringing wine and strawberries, apparently. I’ve also got a Zoom call with Ericka on Saturday morning. Busy busy!

To read my blog from the beginning, just go to the link on the menu bar above or click here.