… Neither Ivy nor George had children.
After George's death, I heard his voice in conversation with Anne and Rose. All three of them were alive.
Can you guess the hidden history that explains the voice?
It was not a voice from beyond the grave. Not quite.
It was George's son, whose existence had been hidden from George's sisters (Anne and Rose) and everyone else in the known family, as far as we could tell. Barnardo's – things were very different in the 1950s.
Fast-forward to when Anne (my mum) and Rose met my cousin for the first time. I stood in my mum's kitchen, making a pot of tea for him and his newfound family, listening to them in the front room, thinking: "it's George".
George's son spoke like him, despite them never meeting each other (in living memory), and the resemblance was more than just a regional accent. Mysterious and lovely.
Hidden histories …
