Sharon was born in Lancaster Royal Infirmary on 24th August 1969. At first we lived in a flat in Rosebery Avenue in Morecambe. It was two rooms upstairs with the use of a bathroom. The bedroom was small and dark, painted red and black, with just room for a cot at the side of a double bed. The other room had the signs of the zodiac painted on the ceiling and was small but had a bit more light. There was a sink with only cold water to wash the nappies in. Terry towelling, of course. Disposables had just come in, but I couldn’t afford them. The housekeeping didn’t seem to go very far. We did have meat sometimes, but it was pigs’ liver (very nourishing!), breast of lamb, maybe a quarter pound of chicken bits to make a curry with.

My hands got so cold doing those nappies. We did have a gas cooker and a kettle, but it gets tedious boiling the kettle every time you want hot water. If we wanted a bath or the loo we had to go through the old lady’s rooms. She was lovely, but she always wanted a long chat. She seemed to get all her Christmas presents on the bingo. She showed me drawers full of them!

I remember one day and night when Sharon’s Dad was out and Sharon wasn’t very well. I had fed her and winded her. I’d changed her and rocked her and sung to her and still she kept crying. I thought she might be teething but I didn’t know. I felt very much alone with my Mum so many miles away and no phone to call anyone. Each time I put her down to sleep she couldn’t settle. By the time she finally went to sleep I was exhausted. Sharon’s Dad came in very late. He was bouncy and cheerful. “How are my two girls then?” But I was too tired to talk.

By the time Sharon was 6 months old we had managed to get a council flat in Thirlmere House on the Ridge Estate in Lancaster. It was much larger than our tiny flat in Morecambe, but it had disadvantages. It was not in such nice surroundings and it was on the third floor up, so it was hard to get a pram up and down. Mostly we had to use the carrycot, and the beautiful big pram we’d got was stuck in storage. There was an area for bins in the middle of the rectangle of flats and there was always rubbish blowing about and bin bags lying open. Dogs would get in and scavenge and often there were little groups of dogs running and barking. The smell wasn’t great!

But Ridge Estate was on a hill and if you walked for a bit you could get to the park with the Willy Thom Memorial, further along the hill. There were trees and shrubs and open spaces. There were ponds and ducks. It didn’t take that long to get up there with the pushchair. On the walk you could look across the valley where the different areas of Lancaster lay and see where Morecambe was and know that the sea lay behind it in the distance.

When Sharon was little, her Dad and her Uncle Leslie and some of their friends liked to go diving at the Crook o’ Lune. The water was deep enough there, but it was cold so they wore their neoprene diving suits and their lead weights on belts round their waists. Sharon and I used to come too and watch them. She was only small so she would sit in the suitcase that they had brought their stuff in, dressed up snug and warm. It was beautiful there on the riverbank and Sharon liked to watch her Dad and Uncle Leslie and the others. I wasn’t too impressed when I found Sharon’s Dad making lead weights in one of the saucepans I used for cooking!

We used to go and visit Dorothy, Sharon’s godmother, and her family and sometimes we would go for walks in the countryside. Dorothy remembers how we took turns carrying “our baby” in her special carrier on our shoulders. She was very good at getting our attention by throwing her weight in different directions and making us nearly overbalance!

We spent quite a bit of time with Janice, my friend from Preston, and her two children, Elaine and Richard (“Baby Ricks”). Sharon and Elaine got on well together and liked to play while Janice and I had a brew and a chat. But if we talked too long without seeing what they were up to the children would get into mischief and there was often quite a mess to clear up. They thought it was great fun and ran around laughing while we did our best to sort things out. Baby Ricks sat in the playpen and giggled at us.

Janice’s house was near the road and we had to be very careful that the children didn’t get out of the garden. We checked that each gate was shut and fastened securely, but there were various occasions when we had to race down the garden at full speed to catch up with them before they reached the road. They had worked out how to open the catch again! Whatever we did, they always found a way out between the two of them, no doubt with Baby Ricks looking on and laughing!

In Sharon’s third year her Dad and I weren’t getting on well (I won’t dwell on the details) and I left him, taking Sharon with me, just before her third birthday. For a few days we stayed on the outskirts of Cheltenham with my friend Lindsay. Then we lived with my Mum and Dad near Blandford in Dorset. My Dad was a vicar so they were living in a rectory with a large garden, which was super for Sharon.

Their friends Jenny and Tony ran a nursery school in Winterbourne Kingston. Well, Jenny did. Soon Sharon was going to the nursery school and meeting other children and making friends. She loved going there and playing and talking with the other children. She and Jenny’s son, Ben, were great friends. He called her his “sweetheart, jam tart”. Sharon told the story of how one day they were playing in the garden when a bee flew straight into her mouth. She didn’t know what to do and was starting to panic when Ben said, “Just open your mouth!” and she did and the bee flew straight out again, doing no harm to itself or to Sharon.

When I started a teaching job at Mosterton in Dorset Sharon continued for a while at the nursery school, staying with my Mum and Dad. A little while later she came to live with me at Heifer Mill Cottage and started school a year early at Mosterton CE Primary, where I was teaching. We shared the cottage with Karen, who also taught at the school.

We met Richard in Mosterton and he and I got together. In early 1975 Karen and I got teaching jobs near Wantage and we all moved up to Oxfordshire. Richard got a job at Ledbury’s. Sharon came to school at the same school as me. At first we lived in Edwin Road in Didcot, where Sharon made friends with the boys at the end of our garden. She called them ‘The Maccadees’, though I can’t remember their real name. When we moved into a cottage in East Hanney, which we rented from my head mistress, we stayed in touch with them for a while. I remember taking them all for a walk across the fields in the winter. Our wellie boots got bigger and bigger and heavier and heavier with all the mud until the children could hardly take the next step! Sharon used to talk about it afterwards as the time we got “Big Foot”.

When she was little, as with all young children, there were some words that she couldn’t say properly. As with all proud parents and grandparents, we listened and treasured them in our hearts. She called the place we lived ‘Heifer Mill Cossage’ and I always think of it with that name. She said ‘radero’ instead of ‘radio’, ‘viginar’ instead of ‘vinegar’. Her friend Rosemary was ‘Rose-em-ry’. Funny what you remember, but those are the sorts of things that stay with you and make you smile.

Karen moved back to Weymouth and in a while she told us that she was going to be married to Graham. Karen said she wanted Sharon to be one of her bridesmaids! Sharon loved the idea of being a bridesmaid.

By then she was about six or seven and she’d never been a bridesmaid before. She loved the dress and the other things she had to wear. We went down the day before and Sharon stayed at Karen’s mum’s house so the bridesmaids could practise what they had to do. Sharon got on well with the other bridesmaids and they had fun together. On the day itself she really enjoyed everything, even the bit where the photos seem to go on forever. It was a lovely white wedding in a village church near Weymouth. Karen looked beautiful and radiantly happy. A day to remember.

Sharon started to make friends in Hanney. Her best friend was Anna. They met at the Hanney swimming pool and got on well straight away. They played together a lot, either round our house or at Anna’s. They enjoyed lots of pretend games and hardly needed toys when they were together, as they made up their own games. They would play for hours together, just chatting or acting out stories.

I remember Anna’s new toy, a bear that spoke in an American accent when you squeezed his tummy. He would say various repeating phrases, but our favourite was “Gee you’re nice. Are you sure you’re not a bear?” We all loved that bear.
Sharon and Anna would walk to each other’s houses. It wasn’t that far. Sometimes I would drop Sharon off or pick her up in the car. When they got older and had passed their cycling proficiency test, they would cycle to see each other. Sometimes I went cycling with them and we went as far as the next villages.

Sharon carried on going to Grove school till she was 11. Her main friends at school were Ruth and Lisa, but she got on well with most of the children. She quite liked school, more from the social side than anything else. She liked to read and I liked reading to her and, later on, sharing books with her; we enjoyed reading ‘The Silver Sword’ together and ‘The Hobbit’. We both liked the Rumer Godden books: ‘Miss Happiness and Miss Flower’ and ‘Little Plum’. She liked the Betsy Byars books and I enjoyed them too. But more than reading she liked to spend time with her friends.

At the age of 11 she went to school at Icknield. It was a lot bigger than her primary school and she wasn’t always so happy there. Sometimes she got bullied and she found it hard to stand up for herself. She was still friends with Anna, but it wasn’t quite the same. They had different interests and gradually drifted apart. Sharon enjoyed the more creative subjects and made some lovely pieces of pottery, which we still treasure.

When Sharon was about 14 we used to go to the Music Workshop at Wantage. We both enjoyed it, going to our recorder or guitar classes, and then joining with the others in performances. I remember a lovely version of ‘The Happy Prince’ that we took part in. We were singing the tunes for weeks. I can still remember them. We both enjoyed making music with a group of others.

In February 1985, when Sharon was 15, it was a very sad time for both of us when Richard left us to go to live with Annie. Richard and I had met Malcolm and Annie when they had invited us (and lots of others) to a bonfire party. Richard obviously admired Annie from the start. Their relationship had grown over the previous year as he had begun jogging with her while he was unemployed. Finally it had come to a head and they told Malcolm and Sharon and I that they were leaving. Malcolm was so sad that Annie was leaving him. He said, “I thought it was forever!” I said cynically, “Nothing is forever.”

I was devastated. Richard and Sharon and I had been a family for about 10 years, though he was always “Richard”, never “Dad”. We loved him. He made us laugh. He and I were friends and it seemed we could talk about anything. I couldn’t imagine life without him.

My father had been ill for the past year and I felt I couldn’t tell him about it; he would have been so angry and upset. So we didn’t tell my parents or my sister until after my father died in July. I knew it was hard for Sharon, but it seemed the best decision at the time.

I wasn’t much use to her at that time. Although I put a brave face on it at work, I was falling apart inside. We both missed Richard so much, but it was hard to talk about it. So we did things together that were some sort of comfort. Sharon and I used to have our favourite videos that we would watch together, sometimes till we were almost word perfect! I think our favourites were ‘High Society’ and ‘The Goodbye Girl’, though we enjoyed ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’ and ‘Freaky Friday’ and various others. We liked to watch “Moonlighting” and “Cheers” on the television. Things that would make you laugh and warm your heart. I listened to music like Phil Collins “No jacket required” and we watched music videos, like Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” and Paul Simon’s “Call me Al”. From the time Richard left, everything was different.

Sharon was doing quite a lot of babysitting at that time. She used to baby-sit for Malcolm, looking after Katie and Michelle. She babysat for the people next door to Malcolm and got on well with all the children. She also babysat for other local families. It was something to earn a little money so she had some of her own.

I know Sharon enjoyed her time at sixth form, though she didn’t tell me a lot about it. They were a good crowd, not too many of them, and they seemed to get on well. It was different at college in Abingdon, where she didn’t know people. I think she found that harder. But she coped. She passed her business studies course and got a job at Nilssons, a market research firm in Oxford.

By that time I had met Nik and he had come to live with us at Hanney. Sharon and he got on fairly well, but it wasn’t always easy. Sharon often went out to Oxford and she thought she would look for a room to live in there. Nik and I helped her find somewhere and helped her move in. She lived in various different rooms: on Divinity Road, on Hill Top Road, on Bartlemas Road. She found a room in a house on Headley Way that she liked for a while, but that didn’t work out in the long run. If things didn’t work out, then she would move back to Hanney for a while until she found another place.

But in 1987 my headmistress decided she wanted the cottage back for her son. Nik and I had to leave. So the house where Sharon had lived for 13 years and grown up in wasn’t there to come back to any more. It was sad to leave after so many happy times; there were so many memories. Sharon found it quite a wrench and so did I. We found a smaller place in Faringdon. Sharon could come and stay there if she wanted to, but it was more cramped and it wasn’t the same. I think this was about the time when she and Becca found a place on a boat, just by Donnington Bridge. They were strange shaped boats, a bit like shoeboxes, but they were OK inside. I remember visiting her in it. There wasn’t that much room, but she’d got it just how she wanted it.

When Sharon was 19 she met M. She had had boyfriends before, but I knew this was special from the way she talked about him. I even got to meet him! Sue, M’s Mum, remembers him bringing Sharon and Becca back one day. At first she wondered which girl he was interested in, but she could soon tell it was Sharon because Sharon was the one he talked about.

After a few months they decided to live together and in June 1990 they found a place in Wantage Road in Didcot, which they shared with Jason and Marie, who had a dog called Bella, who was half fox. By this time Sharon had found a job working at Didcot Power Station. M was working for the railway as a ganger. At this house they had a few problems with the landlord and luckily Nik was able to help as he had been studying law. When they left, the landlord refused to refund their deposit, but Nik helped them to write the right sort of letters and in the end they did get it back. In January 1991 Sharon and M moved into a house in Campion Hall Drive. This time it was just the two of them.

When they could afford it, they liked to go off on holiday for a few days, perhaps to Butlins at Minehead, or to Preston in Lancashire to stay with Janice and Leslie, Sharon’s Uncle, her Dad’s brother. They liked to spend time with her Northern family.

In September 1991 Sharon went for an interview at Reading and got a job on the railway. At first she worked at Oxford on the railway station there. Later on, in 1992, she moved to Didcot Station and she liked it there because the people were friendly.

In July 1994 M and Sharon moved in with M’s Granddad. He lived in quite a large council house. He was not in good health and he was glad of their company. They stayed there for a couple of months, helping him with various jobs about the house and garden. They got on well together. He wanted them to have the house after he had died and he was making arrangements so that this could happen. But before it was finalised he died so it didn’t happen after all.

Later that year M’s sister Justine and her husband Paul emigrated to Australia. The whole family went to Heathrow to see them off. It was an exciting time for them, but rather sad for those left behind. Sharon got on well with Justine and she, Justine and M’s mum would enjoy doing things together, like going to the Clothes Show. They had all gone together in December 1993 and seen Jeff Banks and had a great time together.

After they moved out of M’s Granddad’s house, they moved into a lovely little house in Bosley’s Orchard. It was a nice place to live, but a bit small.

In 1995 they decided to buy a house of their own and found a place they liked. They were so pleased to be buying their own place. Sharon wanted to decorate it room by room until she’d got it the way she wanted it. They had their own garden too, but it was hard work as there was chalky soil with lots of stones in it. It took her quite some time until she got it how she wanted it. There were lots of experiments, finding where plants would grow best and trying different projects with things they’d got from garden centres.

Now that they had got their own house they decided to get a cat. They hadn’t got one before because they did not want to unsettle it when they moved. They got a lovely tortoiseshell kitten and called her Jady. She was a sweet animal and she soon settled in to the house and made it her own. By this time Sharon had started work at Reading station, but it was bigger and less friendly than Didcot. Sharon stayed there for a time, but thought that she might look for a different job.

Then on Valentine’s Day in 1996 they decided to get married. They had an engagement party in April and then they planned their special day as a day to remember. Being romantics, they chose to get married on the following Valentine’s Day. Together they decided how they wanted it to be. Then Sharon got on with organising it.

They decided to get married in the Didcot Registry Office. They had decided that, since neither of them went to church, it would be hypocritical to have a church wedding. The Registry Office was just across the road from the Civic Hall so we would be able to walk over after the wedding.

They had decided who they wanted to be there, so next the invitations had to be written and sent out in plenty of time to make sure that people could come. I had a bit of a problem with the fact that Richard and Annie were invited, but that was what they wanted, so I would grin and bear it.

Sharon booked the Didcot Civic Hall well in advance to make sure it was available. There was a smaller room at the back, which would be set up in advance for a buffet lunch for family only. The main room was quite large. There would be plenty of room for people to sit and room in the centre for people to dance later on.

Sue Legg and I offered to make the wedding cake. It was to be a three tier cake, each one heart shaped. We planned to make them and bake them at Sue’s before Christmas and then I would bring them up to Didcot. Sharon had found someone who decorated wedding cakes so we went there together with the cakes in large tins in the back of the car. The lady showed us previous cakes she had done and Sharon chose the decorations they would have on their cake.

I found someone in Oxford who would do a video as well as wedding photos. Lots to look back on after the day.

M. and Sharon knew someone who would do the disco. They planned to have quieter music at the beginning so people could talk and louder music to dance to later on and not just modern pop, but plenty of 60s, 70s, 80s dance music and a bit of heavy rock too!

Sharon chose a beautiful wedding dress in light peach with shoes to match and a cream coloured jacket. Her bouquet and headdress were a mixture of cream and peach flowers. She looked absolutely radiant on the day, so happy, and M looked happy too, and very smart in his black jacket and trousers.

Valentine’s Day, 1997. Sharon and M’s wedding day. It was a lovely day, one in a million. Most of the people they had invited were there. M’s sister, Justine and her husband Paul were over from Australia. Sue and Chris, Dave and Esther and little Gracie had come up from Somerset. Janice, Elaine and Andrew, Richard and young Helen had come from Preston. Jenny and Tony had come from Devon. Lots of family and lots of friends being together to celebrate a very special day.

One person who couldn’t make it was Sharon’s Nan in Selworthy in Somerset. It was too far and she was getting too old to make such long journeys. Later that same year Sharon’s Nan died and Sharon and I travelled down together for the funeral. Sharon had made up a lovely poem for her Nan, describing the things that were special about her and what she would miss. At the funeral, in the midst of all the sadness at the loss of May, Sharon stood up and read the poem beautifully clearly. If May could have seen her she would have been so proud.

In the summer of that year Sharon had started a different sort of job. She was now working as a care assistant at Ladygrove. She enjoyed working with elderly people, brightening their day with her cheerful smile. Mostly she liked the people she worked with and there wasn’t too much travelling as this was in Didcot. She and M decided to get another cat to keep Jady company. They got a sweet little grey kitten and called him Spooky. Jady was not very impressed at first, but she got used to him!

The following year Sharon was looking for a job where she could be a bit more creative. She liked looking after old people, but she wanted something a bit more than lifting them in and out of bed. A job had come up at the Fairmile for an assistant at the Newlands Day Centre. It would involve planning and leading activities for groups of old people, helping them to stay fit and healthy, mentally as well as physically. She went to the interview in the November and got the job! She started it in January 1999.

1999 was the year when Sharon was 30. So there had to be a party, of course. Sharon liked organising parties. She got so many lovely cards for her thirtieth birthday. Later on she made a collage of the cards she and M had got for their thirtieth birthdays and put it up in her room upstairs. Good memories of happy times.

Sharon liked to do things for others, but I didn’t know how brave she was until she phoned to tell me that she was going to do a sponsored parachute jump for Cancer Research! My first reaction was “Oh no!” because I was worrying about her safety, but when I thought about it later I could only be proud that she was that sort of person. She did the jump not long before her thirtieth birthday.

Sharon loved to do something different to raise money for charity. While she was at Nilssons she had dressed up to raise money for Children in Need. Another year she supported them again by getting sponsored for dressing up in M’s work clothes for the day.

In March 2000 it was M’s thirtieth birthday. This time Sharon organised a party at Didcot Leisure Centre where there was a bit more space, so people could get up and dance or sit at a table if they wanted to. Lots of their friends and family were there. It was a lovely, fun evening.

Life went on. Sharon enjoyed working at the Newlands Day Centre. She got on well with the people she worked with and she felt that she was doing something worthwhile. She liked thinking up different activities and she was full of energy and enthusiasm so that people enjoyed doing them. She kept records of things that had worked well, so that ideas could be used again on later occasions. She loved being creative and collected pretty things so she could make cards and presents for people at home as well as at work. She did correspondence courses to learn more of the creative skills.

There were trips and outings. More holidays to Minehead or Preston or other places. A trip to the BBC studios in London to watch an episode of “Two pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps”. A night watching AC/DC and Megadeth live at Milton Keynes. A yearly trip to the Clothes Show. Walks in the park. Walks by the sea. Walks among the trees.

* * *

I remember when Sharon told me that she and M were planning to have children. We were walking around the Nuneham Courtenay Arboretum. We had nearly reached the top of the hill when Sharon said that she and M had been so happy on their own that they hadn’t rushed to have children. But they were thinking about it now.

“Don’t worry, Mum. We will get round to it!” she grinned at me.

I had always been careful not to say, “When are you going to have children? Aren’t you leaving it a bit late?” But she must have guessed what I’d been thinking.

“Not yet, but soon.”

I started to look forward to when it would happen and went for some pram pushing practice with my young friends. But it didn’t happen after all.

Life goes on and you think you’ve got forever. But nobody has forever.

I can remember the day when Sharon phoned me and said, “I think you ought to be sitting down.” I didn’t know what she was going to tell me and I was suddenly terrified. She told me about the lump in her breast and I couldn’t really take it in. I told her she would be fine and that they could do wonderful things at hospitals these days. Lots of women get breast cancer and most of them get through it. I told myself the same thing. Other people’s daughters died. Not mine. But from that time I was afraid. The shadow hung over us all, though we tried to ignore it.