Recently, in a cobwebby cupboard I found the plastic bag containing a pile of papers given to me by my grandmother, and which I have never closely examined before. Some of them date back to 1752 – various birth and marriage certificates, and one giving the Freedom of the City of London to a certain Joshua Frost. Also the admission cards for my great-grandfather to Westminster Abbey for the coronations of Edward VII in 1902, and George V in 1911. Great Grandpa was a chorister in the Abbey.

Also with the papers was a bible presented to Great Grandpa – Sidney Herbert Parry – in 1883. Within the bible my grandmother had put an envelope, which I had looked at once before – it contained two locks of my mother’s hair from when she was a baby. I took them out again and found something I had never seen before – a small photograph of my mother.

Now, I do have a few other photos of her, some very formal, and others showing her as the mother of other children – a little boy who died before I was born, and my half-sister, born years after Mummy went away. What I didn’t have was a photo of her as I remembered her when she was my mother.

If she had not been killed in 1967, by a careless driver, she would have been 90 this year, and I would have had more recent photos. But as it is, this is how I remember her, and how I can now see her whenever I want to. I find this so miraculous and unexpected that I can hardly believe it.

Mummy