Number of days since I started this blog: 94

Things have been a bit strange since I blogged yesterday.

It started with the moths. I’ve been noticing them for a few weeks, now I come to think of it. Tiny little ghostly grey creatures that appear in ones and twos during the day and then a lot more at night. Mog catches them but she won’t eat them. And Harvey is frightened of them.

I’ve seen them all over the house but they seemed to be coming from the little back bedroom. You know, the one that Kezia used to sleep in before she wasn’t allowed to stay here anymore, and where Lydia slept until she realised that the bed in there is even smaller and more uncomfortable than the sofa. It has become a bit of a dumping ground in recent weeks, to be honest.

So yesterday afternoon, when I should have been doing something about my Thelwell pony fringe and generally woeful state of personal grooming prior to my date with Brian, I decided I had better investigate. I had a horrible feeling that I knew what I was going to find, which is probably why I have been putting it off.

And after half an hour of piling everything from the shelves, cupboard and little chest of drawers onto the bed and dragging each item of furniture away from the walls, I was dripping with sweat but had found the source. A massive nest of carpet moth larvae were wriggling away underneath where the chest of drawers had been. They had eaten most of the carpet that lay hidden from view and were through to the crumbling rubber underlay. As I looked on in horror, one after another moth hatched and flew off, presumably to find more carpet to lay their disgusting little eggs in and ruin. It was revolting.

Feverishly I looked up carpet moth treatment on the internet. It turns out that you have to get rid of the carpet AND have the house fumigated. And the treatment is dangerous to pets.

And I don’t know why, but of all the things that have happened recently, this was the one that I just could not think how I was going to handle. Instead I put my head in my hands and howled.

And then as if by magic, a WhatsApp message arrived from Charlotte to ask how I was doing. And I said Not good. And she said What’s happening, Mum? And I told her I was overrun with moths and I’d had enough. And she said, Hang on, help is on its way. And I said, Please don’t come, I’m a mess.

And she said nothing which meant she was already in her Fiat 500 coming to the rescue.

So I just sat there all filthy and sweaty and cried some more and eventually she arrived and made me have a bath and go to bed with a cup of tea and some toast. I didn’t wake up again until 10am the next morning.

By which time my wonderful girl had somehow managed to let Brian know I wasn’t in a good way, and he had delivered one of his jam jars of flowers, sweet peas this time, and his best note ever which just said this:

I love you Sadie and I am here for you when you need me. B xxx

And like an overnight miracle, Charlotte had also moved all the furniture in the back bedroom, cut the moth-infested carpet up into manageable pieces, as well as the old crumbly underlay, loaded it all into bin bags and put it safely round the side of the house ready for a visit to the tip. And then she had scrubbed the floor, cleared up all the junk that had accumulated since I had starting using the back room as a dumping ground, put the furniture back and cleaned everything until it sparkled. And she had made the bed and sat Kezia’s teddies along it all nicely. It looked lovely in there with bare floor boards actually. Maybe I could just get a pretty rug?

She had also cleaned the kitchen, bathroom and sitting room, checked the whole house for moths, bought some spray to deal with the only tiny patch she could find underneath the bed in the spare room, put a load of washing on, taken Harvey for his walk and bought coffee, milk, croissants and strawberries so we could have a delicious late breakfast.

When I was sipping my second cup of coffee, Charlotte asked me something that really surprised me but then made me think.

She said: Do you think it might be an idea for you to consider having some therapy, Mum?

And I said, oh my God, no, darling. Do you think I need it?

And she said, What do you think?

And I said, Well, come to think of it, there are a few things I should probably deal with.

And she said, Mmmm?

And I said, Like Grandma being a bit odd as a mother, because of what happened to her, and my sister dying, and your Dad leaving me but keeping on coming back.

And she said, And maybe having Grandpa to stay while Grandma nearly died, and then having Grandma to stay while Grandpa was ill, and then him dying so suddenly? Not to mention finding out Grandma was a child refugee and that you have Jewish heritage?

And I said, Oh yes. There is that.

And she said, Of course, officially you and I are Jewish too.

And I said Are we?

And she said, Yes, because it is meant to be matrilineal. But I think we have a choice. And I also think we should learn more about it before making any decisions.

And then she said, so what about the therapy idea?

And I thought about it and said that I would look into it. And she said Good.

And so that is what I’m going to do.

I’m also going to let things develop slowly with Brian. There is no rush. Who knows whether we will make a go of it together. He has his issues, what with Stella and everything. And I have mine. But he is a wonderful listener as well as a great kisser, which is a good start.

(I haven’t mentioned my theory about kissing, have I? It goes back to school days, when I realised, via empirical evidence, that the boring nice boys are mainly pretty useless at kissing, but the exciting bad ones tend to be rather good at it. Probably because they get more practice? Anyway, I had Brian down as a nice boy until the first time he kissed me in the summerhouse.)

And of course he grows wonderful flowers, fruit and vegetables. He brought round some gorgeous beetroot as well as the sweet peas. Char and I are going to roast them for supper.

I’ve also made another big decision, which is that I am going to stop writing this blog. I think it has reached its natural conclusion anyway.

Also, I have heard from Ericka again. Thank goodness this is a fictional diary and I didn’t use her real name. Or even her correct gender. Because he/she/they have come up trumps. And there is apparently a publisher interested in producing it as an actual book.

Which means I need to take the blog down from the internet at some point soon and start doing what “Ericka” calls my first edit.

And so this will be my last post. If you know anyone who has been dipping into my blog from time to time, please let them know that it will only be here for another week or so, and then it will be gone. And they will then have to wait for the book, which may take a long time and it may look nothing like this. You know publishers.

It has been good for me to have to write something every day for 94 days during lockdown. I know I haven’t always managed Stephen King’s requisite 1,000 words, but I only write from Monday to Friday so it has actually only been 67 days. And I’ve written just over 60,000 words. So on average I came pretty close.

I’ve got another project to think about now. Having been rude about people who write family memoirs, I plan to go to Amsterdam once lockdown ends and do some serious research about the Weiss family. Charlotte says she would like to come with me. What I write won’t be for publication. It will be a gift to my mother Helen Robinson, nee Hannah Weiss. And it will be written in memory of Jozef, Ruth, Sadie and Lydia Weiss.

And for my Dad and the other Ruth.

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

Number of days since I started this blog: 93

Another sleepless night. Poor Mog, she tried to send me to sleep with her soothing purrs but her furry presence on the bed just made me hot.

And it doesn’t help to read what friends have been doing on Facebook. Not to mention the creative writing course WhatsApp group. When they aren’t signing petitions about Black Lives Matter, all-year free school meals or Save our Theatres, they are running marathons round their gardens, taking funny photos of their grown-out fringes or moaning about people who fail to observe the correct (according to them) interpretation of social distancing or face mask wearing etiquette when in Waitrose.

Meanwhile I have been dealing with:

1. A mother who has always been a bit scary and aloof, who hit my Dad over the head with a spatula and locked him in the garden so that the police had to be called, threatened to divorce him, then absconded, fell and broke her hip, nearly died of Corona virus, came to stay with me. And finally, aged 88, got round to telling us she had been a Jewish child refugee.

2. A father who faced all the above with great love and fortitude, plus survived cancer, only to be felled by several strokes and die 3 weeks ago.

3. A dead sister who is almost always on my mind. And a living one who means well and is mainly lovely but makes me feel inadequate.

4. A Boris Johnson loving ex-husband who won’t leave me alone.

5. A daughter who has recently come out, much to the annoyance of said ex-husband And a son who has a lovely partner and an adorable daughter but who is in a precarious profession. Which is good, because when I can’t think of anything else to worry about, I worry about that.

5. A lovely new man in my life who is far too good for me and who I don’t deserve. And who I am meant to be seeing tonight for an important discussion about our future together but I am a tired, crumpled, fat old crone.

Longer blog tomorrow, I promise. I’m off to smother myself in Clarins Beauty Flash Balm and hope for the best.

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

Number of days since I started this blog: 92

Number of times I’ve decided to choose Brian as my social bubble partner: 26

Number of times I’ve realised I have a responsibility to be in a bubble with Toby, Marnie and most of all Kezia: 27

Number of times I’ve thought about Mum and how her courage to keep on going despite everything makes her braver than I could ever have imagined: infinite

Number of hours I have slept: 2?

I don’t mind admitting it. I am a mess. I can’t stop crying. I wish Lydia hadn’t taken Mum to stay with her because now I have nothing to take my mind off how sad I feel.

I miss Mum and Lydia. It is very quiet here without them.

But I miss Dad more than I have words to describe. It feels that so much has happened since he died that we haven’t paid proper attention to losing him. And that makes me feel bad as well as sad.

And I want to talk to him. I want to ask him to tell me about meeting Mum back in 1955. I want to hear it from his side. I want to find out how he managed to see past her hoity-toity stand-offish exterior and discover the brave, unusual and lonely girl underneath. It cannot have been easy. I want to thank him for persevering and for loving her for 65 years, through thick and thin, despite everything that had happened previously having taught her that she didn’t deserve to be happy.

Because otherwise none of us would exist.

And I want to ask his advice. I want to tell him about my Brian dilemma and ask him whether I should follow my heart and start really being with this lovely man, rather than occasionally breaking lockdown rules in the summerhouse and then feeling bad about it afterwards. I want to tell him that at last I have met someone who is forgiving, funny, unusual and wise and who loves me for myself. A bit like Dad really.

Or whether I should instead accept Toby and Marnie’s rather tentative offer to form a social bubble with them, which is probably what I ought to do. That way, at least I will be able to hug my adorable Kezia not to mention helping them out with the babysitting. It’s what I should do. But is it what I really want to do?

Most of all, I want to hold my dear sweet Dad and tell how much I love him and tell him how he has been the rock at the centre of all our lives, especially when Ruth died and Mum lost her bearings once or twice. And when Richard left me and Lydia and I fell out over some shitty stupid thing and when I was worried about the children and when my car broke down on the motorway and I’d forgotten to pay the RAC. And all the other times I’ve needed him and he has been there.

Please don’t worry, I’m just having a wallow. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow. I promise.

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

Number of days since I started this blog: 91

Number of weird things that have happened during this time: where do I start?

After my rather long blog yesterday when I told you how Lydia and I persuaded Mum to tell us about her childhood and the other Ruth, Sadie and Lydia, I promised to update you on what happened with Brian on Sunday, didn’t I?

And I will, I really will. I just need to write down a few other bits first, so I maintain my online diary discipline. 91 days equals three months, and as you can see, this daily blog has become rather a habit. I wonder when I will stop, and whether I will even know how to recognise the right time to stop when it eventually arrives?

Beyond my small world, this weekend we saw thousands of far right thugs intent on causing mayhem in London and other cities. They were pretending they were there to defend statues of Churchill and Nelson. As David Lammy says, the statues are a distraction. People support Black Lives Matter because they want to see an end to institutional racism.

Anyway, the people who said they wanted to defend the statues just succeeded in getting drunk, being photographed attacking the police and doing Nazi salutes. One got arrested for urinating on a memorial to a policeman who gave his life saving others in a terrorist attack, and another had to be carried to safety by a group of black personal trainers who had gone to the event to try and prevent young black people from getting into trouble. It is probably completely inappropriate to say that Patrick Hutchinson, the PT who was photographed carrying the other man was to safety, was seriously fit. So I won’t mention it.

And today, footballer Marcus Rashford, 22, has managed to persuade the government to extend free school meals over the summer in response to the extraordinary hardships that the poorest families will face caused by the pandemic. I don’t know what I think about this, except that it shouldn’t be necessary. But I do think Marcus has put his fame to good use and that he shows the very best of young people.

Lydia arrived back at my house last night and this morning we packed up her car with all Mum’s things, including her two zimmer frames, one for upstairs and one for down, and I waved them off.

And I felt a bit flat. But then I remembered that I have a rather interesting week in prospect.

So back to my Sunday. In the end, Brian said he would like to come to the garden and say hullo to mum and Lydia before our walk to the allotments. I felt really nervous, and nearly said no. But then I thought why not? And so he did.

And when he arrived he said hullo to Lydia and they did the social distancing version of shaking hands which seems to be an awkward smile and funny little wave.

And then he turned to my mother and said Hullo, Helen. It’s lovely to see you again.

And she said Hullo, Brian. How are you doing these days? It must be at least ten years, mustn’t it?

And I said, hang on a minute, do you you two know one another?

And they both looked a bit sheepish and I felt really cross but then they came clean and it turns out that being Jewish and having escaped from the Nazis was not the only secret our mother had been keeping from us. Because it turned out that she had been a Samaritan too. And back in the day, when you rang Samaritans, you called a local number and were quite likely to be answered by someone who lived near you and who you might even know. And so to keep the service confidential, volunteers were sworn to secrecy. They never told anyone other than their closest relative, in Mum’s case Dad, about being a Samaritan.

Mum said it was something she decided she wanted to do after Ruth died. And she had done it for over 20 years. She even helped to train Brian!

You could have knocked me down with a feather. After they had had their little reunion and talked about the old days, Brian and I went for our walk. I found myself feeling really shy with him. But we did talk about social bubbles. And we have decided, given that we are both effectively single, that it is something we could think about. We are going to think about it during this week and meet again on Thursday night.

And now I am really torn. Because there is also the potential of a bubble with Toby, Marnie and Kezia. And surely they are where my priorities should lie?

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

Number of days since I started this blog: 90

Number of times I have felt like deleting the whole lot: at least 90

Number of times I have been glad I haven’t: at least a few

I have said this before, but lockdown and what comes after lockdown brings out the best and the absolute worst in people.

Take Saturday night.

Lydia, Mum and I had a bit of a lie-in on Saturday morning after the funeral. And then we sat in the garden having a late breakfast and Lydia broached the subject of the little photograph. Mum got a bit huffy about me poking through her stuff, and I apologised and said that what she had said about being born Jewish and wanting to die Jewish had bothered me and I just felt that I needed to know. And so she relented.

And for the first time in 62 and 58 years respectively, she told us about her childhood.

Hannah Ruth Weiss (Mum) was born in the Jodenbuurt (Jewish Quarter) of Amsterdam in 1932. She was the oldest child of Jakob and Ruth Weiss, both Ashkenazi Jews whose families had moved from various parts of Eastern Europe to Amsterdam during previous persecutions of Jewish people. Hannah/Mum went to a small school near The Rembrandt House. She had two younger sisters and a baby brother called Isaac – he was either not yet born at the time the photo was taken, or too young to be included. Photos were a big deal in those days; this one was apparently taken by a neighbour who worked as a photographer. Mum thinks there were several prints, and that her mother put this one inside a tiny copy of the Torah when she packed her things into a brown cardboard suitcase ready for the big journey to England.

Mum’s father was a clerk, according to what was recorded on the census, and her mother was a housewife. They did not have much money, and buying a place on the kindertransport was not only dangerous but expensive. By 1939, thousands of Jewish children had already been sent to safety in England to stay with strangers, and Mum said she remembers her parents discussing what they could sell in order to be able to afford to buy a place for one or more of the children. But time started to run out and in the end they sent Hannah on her own. According to the only letter that Mum received from her parents after she arrived in England, the one I had seen in the drawer, there was a plan for her parents to follow with the younger children when they could raise the funds.

But in 1940 the Nazis invaded Amsterdam, and the Jewish Quarter was shut off.

Then Mum said, and if you are going to start talking about Anne Frank, I don’t want to listen. And we said why not, and she said that she was sick of hearing about her, because most people didn’t get the opportunity to hide like her family did. And I said but she was captured in the end, and Mum said yes, but not like my family. They were just sent by train straight to the death camp.

And then Mum told us about a visit she had made to Amsterdam in 1978 to look up her family records. This was when she found that her parents and sisters had died in 1941 only 2 days after arriving at Belzec, an extermination camp in Poland where half a million Jews were murdered by the SS. The reason why camps like this are not as well known as the more famous Belsen and Auschwitz, where Anne Frank and her mother died, is because their sole purpose was extermination, rather than concentration. In other words, there were no survivors, and therefore no-one to pass on the horror of what happened there.

And there was no record at all of baby Isaac.

While Mum was talking, Lydia and I took turns to hold her hands. The little hot circles that appear on her cheeks when she is excited or unwell burned brightly, and her eyes were shining but not in a good way. She didn’t cry once. But we did.

And that wasn’t everything. When Mum got to England, she was allocated to a family from East London who had been hoping for an older girl to help with the housework. They were devout Christians, or as devout a Christian as you can be if you take someone else’s child, refuse to allow her to follow the religion she has known since she was a baby and which is the only thing she has to connect her with her parents, change her name so she doesn’t sound Jewish, half starve her and turn her into your unpaid scivvy. And when she is 13 and some disgusting family friend starts interfering with her and she finds the courage to tell you, choose to believe him rather than her and send her away as a punishment to a very nasty Christian boarding school. It is no wonder Mum wants nothing to do with them and won’t even tell us their names.

It was now past lunchtime. Mum said she wanted to show us some more photos and copies of the Weiss family records. And as Lydia was due to go back to London, we grabbed a sandwich and decided to drive over to Waylands Heath in convoy. When we got there, Lydia helped Mum upstairs while I took on the job of clearing out the fridge and making the kitchen a little bit less of a health hazard. (I should have done this weeks ago, but I’ve been a bit busy.) They were upstairs for ages, by which time the dustbin was full of environmentally unfriendly plastic bags full of out-of-date food and I had started clearing some of the other cupboards, where I came across an ancient carbon monoxide detector which I tried to dismantle using the wrong sort of screwdriver. It seemed to be fused shut, and was obviously defunct, so I slung it in the bin with the other rubbish.

We then sat around the dining room table and peered at a couple of tiny photos of Mum’s parents when they were young. Her father was dark with glasses, and we thought he looked rather intellectual. And Mum was almost identical to her mother who was tall, fair and rather beautiful. The other Ruth.

Eventually we bade a tearful farewell to Lydia, and Mum and I set off home.

Later that evening, we were watching Gardener’s World on catch up when the phone rang. It was one of Mum’s neighbours, who was phoning to report that there was something in Mum’s dustbin that had been going off for three nights and it had kept the whole neighbourhood awake and if someone didn’t come and sort it out she would have to call the police.

I knew immediately what it was, of course. I said who am I speaking to please, and she said I am not prepared to give you my name. So I said, but you have phoned me up and you seem to know my name. And she said, are you going to come and deal with this bin and I said, did you know that my father has just died and my mother who is 88 has been in hospital, and anyway, the bin can’t have been going off for three days because I was only there this afternoon and I know what it is, it is just an old carbon monoxide monitor. Maybe you could get it out of the bin and deactivate it? And she said, I work in healthcare and I know how dangerous dustbins can be, especially with the virus. I’m not touching it.

So I said, Thank you. And put the phone down.

It was nearly 10pm so I helped Mum upstairs and said please don’t move and I drove over to Waylands Heath and only broke the speed limit once or twice, and I emptied the bin on to the driveway and found the carbon monoxide monitor which seemed to have been brought back to life by a very smelly bag of potatoes that had gone slimy from being left unopened for 10 weeks and was emitting a very small beep every ten seconds. And I stamped on the monitor until I heard it go crunch while hoping the horrid lady was looking out through her nasty net curtains. And then I drove back home again and went up to see Mum and sat on her bed and we talked about her mean-spirited neighbour who had nothing else to think about other than a slight beep emanating from a dustbin. And then we started laughing and we laughed and laughed and the next thing I knew, we were both crying. And we cried for quite a while.

The next day I messaged Lydia and told her about my late night dustbin drama and she said, look Sadie, I think you need a rest, I am going to take next week off and I will come and collect Mum and bring her back to stay with me. You have done more than enough, OK? And I was going to say no, I am fine, but then I thought about having a lie-in and maybe being able to have a long leisurely bath, not to mention whatever Brian means by creating a social bubble.

So I said yes please.

And as for Brian, I was going to write about what happened when we met on Sunday but then I noticed how much I have already written. So you will just have to wait until tomorrow.

Who says I don’t know how to do suspense, Ericka the Literary Agent??

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

Number of days since I started this blog: 86

Number of days since Dad died: 14

Tomorrow is Dad’s funeral. There will be eight of us – me, Lydia, Toby, Marnie, Charlotte, Emma and Freddie (Lydia’s two). And Mum. It has been a bit touch and go but she has finally decided that she will attend after all. And she will be wearing a black jacket and her purple crocs.

In other news, Lydia is trying to social distance from me and Mum in my back bedroom. She’s back running her school so that obviously that makes her a potential carrier, despite their stringent rules. Although Mum has had the virus and I’m apparently low risk. She takes her social responsibilities very seriously, does my sister.

And we have decided that talking to Mum about you-know-what before the funeral would be very bad timing. So we are going to cross that bridge on Saturday. I’m dreading it.

Also, Brian has invited me to meet him at the allotment for a cup of tea on Sunday, despite my stupid confession of last week. That man is a saint. Ok, not totally #smileyface.

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

Number of days since I started this blog: 85

Number of times I’ve tried to think of something funny to say: Many. But sadly without success.

We live in the strangest of times. There are people going to work risking their lives to help others on a daily basis. Obviously I’m thinking about doctors, nurses, health care assistants and all the other health care professionals who are still working during the pandemic. They are the ones at the highest risk and we owe them so, so much. They saved my mum and they tried to save my dad. I was once one of these people but I never had to face anything like this. I can never thank them enough.

But I’m also thinking about the people working in food shops and supermarkets, chemists, on buses and trains, emptying our bins and serving in the increasing number of cafes and pubs that are now doing takeaways. They used to get taken for granted, but recently we have all realised how much they matter. And they are putting themselves in harm’s way on a daily basis so that the rest of us can continue to live our lives relatively untroubled.

And then there are volunteers working in food banks, women’s refuges and on help lines like Samaritans. They are prepared to take a higher level of personal risk than the rest of us because they know the lives of others depend on them doing so. (And I’m not just saying that because of Brian BTW.)

At the other end of the spectrum, there are people who are able to work from home or who are not working at all. I know they are very worried about their futures. And most of them are doing their bit to help others where they can. My children fall into this category.

But it isn’t all peace and harmony by any means. I feel an increasing threat looming, and it is not about the economy. I don’t know about you, but I find it troubling that there are so many people walking around wearing surgical masks and gloves, acting as if everyone they come across outside their house has got smallpox, leaping off pavements and snapping at small children for accidentally walking too close. And writing really horrible things on social media about other people who aren’t quite as meticulous about observing lockdown rules as they are, in their opinion.

I am growing every more worried that this virus, while it is bringing out the best in some people, is bringing out the very worst in others. That it is encouraging us to judge other people and find them wanting. The rules, as we saw with Dominic Cummings, are less than explicit and can be interpreted in many ways. But there are some people who seem to think that their way is the right way and the only way. And that doesn’t feel good to me. Not at all.

I’m only writing this to take my mind off that little black and white photo and the pencilled names on the back that are burning a hole in my consciousness. Tonight Lydia arrives. And tomorrow I guess we will talk to Mum. I’m dreading it. But it has to be done.

More allotment flowers from Brian today. They are the brightest part of a gloomy day. Mum is re-reading Howard’s End. And I’m looking for the little pile of cat sick that I know Mog has left for me somewhere.

Anon.

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

Number of days since I started this blog: 87

Number of hours since Dad’s funeral: 4

Number of glasses of wine I have drunk since coming home: more than 4. I think.

When someone who is quite old dies, their funeral should contain an element of celebration, shouldn’t it? A chance to be sad about the person’s passing but also to mark a life well-lived. To get together with other people who knew and loved them and to tell a few stories, share something to eat and drink and raise your glasses in honour of the one who is the reason for you being there but sadly cannot be with you on account of it being their funeral.

And then we had the corona virus. Some of you reading this will have been to funerals during this time. And you will know how strange they can feel. How the rules about sitting two metres apart and not being allowed to touch one another, and the attendance limit, 8 in our case, makes them feel more like a court hearing than a celebration of life. How every attempt you make to introduce a bit of joy seems to be stymied by the rules. No printed order of service, it has to be up on a screen which makes you feel that the lovely photo of your parents you wanted to include might look inappropriate. So you leave it out and then spend the whole fifteen minutes wishing that you had followed you instinct and left it in after all. Yes, you can have music. But it has to be sent in advance, so you lie awake the whole night before the service worrying that they will use the wrong version of Beyond the Sea and play the one by Frank Sinatra rather than the one your mother eventually chose, under duress, sung by Bobby Darrin, having said that she hated the Sinatra version. No flowers, apart from one small wreath, which you spend ages on the phone choosing and costs £120. And then it arrives looking so mean and bedraggled, it is as if you had picked it up from Tescos five minutes before the service. And you know everyone thinks how useless you are, that you had one job etc.

And because of the shortage of time, there is only time for one reading, which Emma reads, being the eldest grandchild, and one address, which obviously your sister Lydia has to do, given she is the one with the most public speaking experience. And she does it beautifully, but you sit there thinking awful thoughts that it should have been you. Because after Ruth died, you became Dad’s oldest daughter.

And then afterwards you stand around in the car park in the rain, talking awkwardly to your two nieces who you haven’t seen for ages and can’t think of anything to say to, 2 metres from your beautiful daughter who you haven’t been allowed to hug in three months even though during that time your mother has nearly died and your father has actually died and she has come out as a lesbian. And your lovely son is standing on the other side of you, and you are really pleased he is now back with his partner Marnie, but because you have your Mum living with you this means that you can’t form a social bubble with them and therefore you will still have to maintain a 2 metre distance from him and your beloved Kezia. And not being able to hug them when for a moment during Boris Johnson’s speech about social bubbles you thought that at last you could feels almost more upsetting than losing your dad.

And all the while your mother is sitting forlornly in a borrowed wheelchair not saying anything to anyone and you realise that your job now is to take her home so that she can be bereaved in private.

So we went home, and Lydia followed on later, by which time Mum and I had polished off a bottle of cheap Merlot and I was rummaging in the cupboard for some crisps. And then Lydia plonked a Waitrose bag for life on the table and pulled out two bottles of expensive English sparkling wine, a sourdough loaf and some wonderful cheeses. And we sat there for ages, gorging, swigging and burping. Dad would have absolutely loved it.

And when I eventually went upstairs for a pee, stumbling slightly it has to be said, I found my phone. And there was a message from Brian. And it said:

Thinking of you, dearest Sadie. I hope today went as well as it possibly could. Looking forward to tea at the allotment on Sunday afternoon and a discussion about social bubbles. B xxx

Is he thinking what I am thinking??

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

Number of days since I started this blog: 84

Number of times I’ve cried since the weekend: 8

Number of cigarettes: 9. Very bad.

I just can’t stop thinking of those little girls in that photo I found in Mum’s bedside drawer at the weekend. And how she named us after them but never told us anything about them. I want to talk to her so much but I just don’t know what to say. Anyway, I’ve agreed to wait till Lydia gets here tomorrow.

My mother has always been an enigma, protected by her own peculiar angry spikiness. It wasn’t just that we knew nothing of her childhood. She has always been secretive about so many things, and yet curiously open about others, especially when she was about to go off the rails. She often told us how annoyed she was with Dad about something he had or hadn’t done, and her recent announcement that she was going to leave him was just one of many that the poor man had to endure during their marriage. I think Dad must have represented stability to her. And now I think I know why she needed someone stable.

I find myself feeling desperately sad. I am unable to concentrate, which makes writing a bit difficult. Therefore this will be just a short entry today. You will hopefully get a longer one tomorrow. I’m going to make some fairy cakes for Mum, and do her nails.

And to the two people who have commented on the structure of the diary and given me advice on how to improve it, I would like to say thank you. But I can’t be totally grateful because as you know, Brian helped me set the blogsite up. And I have rather blown things there. So it is going to have to stay the way it is just for now. Sorry about that.

Mind you, I did get a very sweet message from him last night to say that he would be thinking of me this week and that he hoped that Friday goes OK. Maybe he has forgiven me because he thinks that I did what I did while overcome by grief?

And he would be right.

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Number of days since I started this blog: 83.

Number of days since I lost my literary agent: 2

I think I mentioned I had a planned Zoom call with Ericka on Saturday. Suffice to say it didn’t go well

She doesn’t like what she calls the new plot twist with Mum. She says it is contrived and that it is not a good idea to introduce something so significant at such a late stage in the novel.

I’d already had quite a few positive comments about this aspect of my blog from regular readers, so I told her so.

And she said, Who is the literary expert here, Sadie, them or me?

And then she said, Where do you see this novel going?

And I said, Do you mean how will it end?

And she said, Well no, obviously you have storyboarded the ending. I mean where do you see it going on the shelves at Waterstones? Is it chicklit or fictional memoir?

And I said, I have no idea, Ericka, I thought that was what you would help me with.

And she said, To be honest, Sadie, I’m not sure I can help you with anything. You started out well, but many of your chapters read like you have just written the first thing that came into your head.

So I said, Well, that may be true.

And she said, I think we had better leave it for now. When you’ve completed your second draft, you can send it to me and I will see if I can think of anyone who might be able to help you knock it into shape. It’s not for me, though.

And with that, our Zoom call finished.

To be honest, my mind was on other things. There was a lot riding on my trip to Waylands Heath to go through our mother’s private papers and find out more about her (and therefore our) Jewish heritage.

And I was feeling really guilty about snooping on her. It reminded me of when I was about ten or eleven and went through a phase of being absolutely obsessed with poking through her things to see what I could find. I used to rifle through her handbag when she was hanging out the washing, looking for love letters I suppose. There were none. Or delving into the mysterious carrier bags she kept in the back of her wardrobe, only to unearth old evening gloves and scarves.

But one day I sneaked upstairs and had a rummage through her bedside drawer. And I struck gold. Because there, wrapped in an old nightie, was a vaginal douche set, complete with orange rubber tubing, funnel and plastic nozzle. There was even a small plastic jug and a tube of something greasy. I had no idea what it was for, but I knew at once it was intimate and forbidden. And then, just as I had got the whole lot spread out across her bed, my mother came in and found me. I don’t know who was more horrified, her or me. I can’t remember what she said, but I know she made me feel that I had committed a mortal sin against her privacy. It was unforgivable.

This new intrusion felt even worse. Luckily Saturday was a slightly wet, windy day, so she didn’t want to sit in the garden. I settled her down in the sitting room after lunch with a cup of tea, some biscuits which I knew she wouldn’t eat, a crossword and another interminable episode of Inspector Poirot. I told her I needed to get some urgent things for the garden. I said I’d be back in under two hours, and that Lydia would call while I was out to check she was OK. I could tell she was suspicious.

And then I drive over to Waylands Heath. WH is the sort of place where, if you paint the front of your house too often, your neighbours judge you for showing off. But if you don’t do it often enough, they worry that you are bringing down the value of the other properties in the street. Or take masks. In Beecham where I live, hardly anyone is wearing them, even in Sainsburys. In Waylands Heath, even people out walking their dogs have got them on. And they observe the two metre rule with venom.

I parked in the small driveway, aware of the curtains twitching at the sight of my old Golf bringing down the tone, and let myself into the house. The hall smelt of my Dad, and I let out an involuntary sob. I had forgotten to bring any milk, so I made myself a cup of weak black tea and set about my search.

Earlier this year, Deborah Jane Orr’s memoir Motherwell was published posthumously. The contents of the family bureau is a central theme, and she writes beautifully about the importance of each item.

The Writing Desk, our family equivalent, used to be downstairs but is now kept in the third bedroom, once my sister Lydia’s room but now known as The Study. The Writing Desk is packed with small items I remember from my childhood such as Dad’s metal hole punch and a little wooden Scottie dog with a pencil sharpener in his tummy. Plus old chequebook stubs, jars of paperclips and old postcards sent by us to our parents from long forgotten camping trips to France. But mainly it contains their paperwork. Opening the desk feels like that time with the douche set. I keep expecting to hear my mother asking me sharply what the bloody hell I think I’m doing, looking at her private things.

For a while I leaf through folders of old credit card statements, my father’s pension payments, water rates, gas bills and so-on, all neatly clipped together in date order. There is a folder containing family documents – their wedding certificate, passports, driving licences and his birth certificate. But strangely there is no birth certificate for my mother.

I go through it all again, just to make sure I haven’t missed anything. I’m stumped. And then I remember the bedside drawer. And this is where I find what I am looking for. Possibly it was there the last time I went rifling through it all those years ago. But I am a better detective now. I find an old manilla foolscap envelope slipped under the drawer liner. It contains a faded photograph in sepia of a family of five, two adults and three children, with names written on the back in pencil. A very old letter written in a foreign language I do not recognise, and a naturalisation certificate.

And I learn that my mother, Helen Robinson, nee White, was born Hannah Ruth Weiss in Amsterdam on 13 February 1932 to Jakob and Ruth Weiss. She travelled to England in 1939 aged 7 on one of the last of the kindertransport trains, and was placed with a family in Hampstead Garden Suburb. And given what we all know, I assume that she never saw her parents or her younger sisters Sadie and Lydia again.

I rang Lydia and told her. It was a long phone call. I sent her a snap of the photograph and the writing on the back. We both cried and agreed I would not to tell Mum that we knew until Lydia arrived on Wednesday.

In other news, I wanted to tell Brian about the discovery. But it felt too momentous and I didn’t know where to start. So instead I drank too much wine and found myself confessing how much I regretted having sex with Richard.

And now I am newly single.

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