She sat back in her seat, the leather of the chair creaking, and settled in to her story.
‘I would have done anything for my sister. I was always the practical, sensible one – even though your mum was six years older. We were close, growing up, despite the age gap. Your grandma worked full-time - still quite unusual, for that generation, so me and your mum were often left to fend for ourselves, albeit with the help of a full-time housekeeper. Nobody thought twice about things like that back then.
‘Your mother, my god, she was dangerously dreamy. She would walk upstairs and forgot what she’d gone for. She was forever losing things, and I spent a good deal of my time looking for whatever she had misplaced. Once, she came home with only one shoe!’
She chuckled, and I could picture Mum in her bare-socked foot.
‘I loved being outdoors. Even in bad weather I’d be outside, hiding in one of the dens I’d built in the grounds of our house. My most constant companion was the gardener, an old man called Tye. He taught me how to chop and store firewood, set mole traps, and forage for mushrooms in the woods. He knew different types of lichen by sight, and could tell you what the weather would do based on the colour of the moss. I would follow him around, hanging on his every word.
‘Mum and Dad were determined that both of us would follow them into medicine, but Tye had inspired me to follow a different path. I graduated in Geology and horrified my parents by accepting a job in Scotland, working on rotation aboard an oil rig off the coast of Aberdeen. You should have seen your grandpa’s face when I told them.
‘Still, at least it was a career. Your mum never quite found her footing. She studied History of Art, which, I think, your grandma pushed her to do in the hope that it would help her find a husband. She came back to Northumberland with a degree but no prospect of a job or wedding. She moped and moped and moped.’
I tried to do the maths in my head. It would have been a few years after Mum graduated until she met Dad. That was a lot of moping.
Auntie Sue took a sip of sherry. ‘So you can imagine how unapologetically thrilled everyone was when your mum got along well with one of the new junior doctors from the hospital. Dad – your grandpa, that is – invited Edward around for dinner one evening. They encouraged the courtship and were delighted when Edward eventually proposed.’
‘That sideshow – the wedding, then you and Amy arriving – meant I could settle comfortably into my own life. Finally, I could live the way I wanted to, away from the scrutiny and expectations. It was only Aberdeen but it felt a world away from the village. I wasn’t Susan anymore, I was Sue. I got my hair cut into a pixie crop and started wearing dangly earrings.
‘I made just enough visits home to deter them all from coming up to Aberdeen. Don’t get me wrong – I loved coming to see you girls, but I was always glad to get back again. I was young, carefree, and living life my way.’
‘Until I got a phone call one day from a kind nurse, who told me that my brother-in-law was in Alnwick Hospital and my family was asking for me.’
I nodded, remembering that awful time.
Auntie Sue wiped a tear from her eye. ‘I had to prop your mum up at the funeral, quite understandable, of course. I’d planned to stay for a week afterwards, helping her find her feet, helping you and Amy. When it became clear that she wasn’t bouncing back, I took another week off work. Back in Aberdeen, I’d called her every day. She seemed to be improving, although some days were better than others.’
Those days – the darkest days of my life – came back to me now. Mum swinging between episodes of depression during which she lay in her bed in the dark, and hyperactive phases where she would describe her dreams in forensic, vivid detail. She would sit outside in the dark, looking for patterns in the stars, convinced that Dad was communicating to her through the universe. Amy and I had worried that if anyone saw her like that, she would be taken away. So we hid it from the world, including Auntie Sue.
‘She stopped coming to the phone, so I would just speak to you and Amy. You girls used to tell me everything was fine, and I believed you. And you sounded OK, for the most part. There were days when I had an uneasy feeling. And of course, I longed to come and see you, but I was stuck on an oil rig 120 miles off the coast. There wasn’t a lot I could do, besides worry.’ She bit her lip.
‘And then, one morning, Diana Wheeler called. I got a message from the office to call her back, and when I saw the name on the notice, my blood ran cold. I could barely dial the number, my hands were shaking so badly. She assured me there was no emergency, but she was worried that people hadn’t seen your mum out for a while, and she thought it best if I could come home.’
‘Well, I was out of there like a flash – they even scrambled an emergency helicopter to take me back to shore. I went back to my flat, threw some clothes a bag and drove straight to Seahouses. And of course, you girls admitted everything – or at least, everything that you knew.
‘I was furious with our Anne – utterly livid.
