My Secret Sister: Jenny Lucas and Helen Edwards' Family Story by Helen Edwards, Jenny Lee Smith

mammy and daddy?’ I used to talk to them as if they were people. They accepted all this with earnest contentment. I thought myself the Pied Piper of Hamelin on those carefree afternoons.
    ‘I wonder if I’m going to be in trouble when I get home tonight,’ I confided to them. ‘I expect it will be my fault. It always is.’ I used to talk to the cows about everything, and they listened with great reverence, it seemed to me, their soulful expressions responding to every word of the small human who poured out her heart to them, sharing her woes, day after day. I always felt, with a nod of their heads, that they understood. In this way we walked in a solemn procession together across the field.
    I grew to recognize individual cows and love them. Eventually, some of them let me climb from the stile onto their backs. I used to ride them. You know, it never occurred to me that this could be dangerous. I don’t think anybody saw me, or I would certainly have been in trouble. I’ve always loved animals. To me they are to be respected and adored. They were. They listened to all my problems and I knew they wouldn’t tell anybody. That was quite powerful for a troubled six-year-old.
    I loved the summertime, especially on Saturday mornings when George came over. Although he didn’t formally move out, George hardly ever stayed at our house any more. He was now well into his engineering apprenticeship at the Wallsend Slipway on the river Tyne. This was a busy shipbuilding yard and he loved his work there.
    ‘You should have seen the thrill on ma face, pet, the first time I helped to start up a huge ship engine,’ he said, his face shining with enthusiasm. ‘The noise it made – it was like the music of a grand orchestra with an enormous percussion section.’
    When a new ship was built, George was one of those who took it to sea on its trials, up the coast of Scotland, or across the North Sea, for days, sometimes weeks at a time. When he wasn’t at sea, he mostly stayed with friends, and he had a succession of girlfriends, so I didn’t see him much, except on these Saturday mornings. During the term time, he took me to my ballet classes and sat watching while I cavorted around the ballroom floor trying to be a ballerina. Thinking about it now, that must have been a chore for a sixteen-year-old boy, but he always made it a very special time for me.
    ‘That was good,’ he’d say after I’d demonstrated a new move. ‘Do it again, pet.’ He was the one person who gave me confidence and made me feel valued.
    After ballet, we walked past the bus stop and on towards home together through woods and meadows, talking, playing, happy in each other’s company. I used to show him my ‘secret places’, where I knew there were animals living. Once I showed him the nest a stoat had made for her babies. When we got there, the babies were out of the nest and I sat down on the parched ground to play with them.
    George was cross. ‘Don’t do that, pet. The mother could attack you. They always go for the neck. They can really hurt you.’
    ‘She won’t hurt me,’ I said. I felt confident about that because I played with these stoat babies most days after school. The mother stoat always sat and watched me. She never tried to attack. It almost felt like we shared a language, that we understood each other.
    We had some hard winters at Murton. I remember one particularly harsh spell when the whole village was snowed in so that no one could get on with their work or go to the shops. I recall getting ready for school one dark morning, aged seven, bundled up in my coat, scarf, mittens and Wellington boots. I was sent out to walk more than a mile through thick, deep snowdrifts. I tried my best to keep plodding on, though it was difficult to walk. In places the drifts were up to my chin, and flakes kept falling down the back of my neck. I trudged on, one slow, sinking step at a time. I could see nothing but white as the snow whirled into my