Until We Meet Again by Margaret Thornton Page A

good between him and my mother. I only realised that later, of course. And then – well – Uncle William’s first wife died, and a few years later he married Mother and we all came to live here. I’d always loved comingto Scarborough, and I couldn’t believe we were actually coming to live here, and that Maddy was going to be my big sister; I’d always admired her such a lot. I suppose that’s why I still enjoy everything so much. I see it though the eyes of a visitor, which is what I was at one time.’
    She was discovering how easy it was to talk to Dominic and what a good listener he was. That surprised her; she had thought him a bit of a ‘show-off’, but maybe that was when he was with Tommy. She sensed a certain amount of rivalry between them regarding their prowess at school, as well as friendship.
    ‘Mmm…I’ve never really understood about your family,’ said Dominic. ‘You’re a complicated lot, aren’t you? All those sisters and brothers, and stepsisters and whatnot.’
    Tilly laughed. ‘Yes, it is rather confusing, isn’t it? Well, Tommy’s my twin brother, as you know.’
    ‘And there could be no doubt about that, could there?’ he teased, gently tweaking at a gingerish wisp of hair protruding from beneath her straw hat. ‘A couple of real ginger nuts, aren’t you? Although Tommy’s is a lot redder than yours.’
    ‘I’ve stopped worrying about my hair now,’ replied Tilly. ‘I used to hate having ginger hair when I was a little girl. Mother used to say Icouldn’t wear pink, and it was my favourite colour. Anyway, Jessie – she’s my real sister – she has really bright ginger hair. The three of us take after our mother. But Samuel – he’s my real brother – he’s dark, like our father.’
    ‘So there are four of you in your family?’
    ‘Yes, that’s right; two boys and two girls. We were called Barraclough, but we changed our name to Moon. All except Samuel, that is; he didn’t want to change. And Jessie’s married now, of course, so she’s changed her name again…
    ‘Then Uncle Will has two children, Patrick and Maddy; they’re my stepbrother and sister. And then there’s Henrietta, but everybody calls her Hetty – another stepsister to me.’ She wasn’t sure whether or not she should mention Hetty. It was one of those ‘skeletons in the cupboard’ which many families had, so perhaps it might be best to be open about it. ‘She’s Patrick and Maddy’s half-sister because they all have the same father.’
    ‘Your Uncle Will; William Moon?’
    ‘Yes…’ she nodded. ‘Actually, we didn’t know anything about Hetty for ages, neither did Uncle Will. Well, he knew, of course, that he had…er… fathered a child,’ she added, a little embarrassedly. ‘But he didn’t tell anyone, not even his first wife. From what I gather it was ages ago when he was just a young man…’ She hesitated. ‘This is justwhat I’ve learnt over the years, putting two and two together, and Maddy has told me a bit about it. I was only a child, you see – about eight, I think – when Hetty appeared on the scene.’
    ‘That must have been quite a shock for everyone,’ Dominic observed with a grin.
    ‘Yes…so it was. Hetty’s mother, her real mother, I mean, was called Bella. I remember her vaguely from when I was a little girl. She used to work in the shop, and then suddenly she disappeared. Anyway, years before that she must have been friendly with Uncle Will…’
    ‘And Hetty was the result?’
    ‘Yes, that’s the story… To Uncle Will’s credit, he did tell my mother all about it before they were married. He decided he didn’t want there to be any secrets between them. Hetty had been adopted, you see, when she was a baby, up in Northumberland. She didn’t meet her real mother until she was grown up. So…when her adoptive parents died, and Bella as well, she came to Scarborough to find her father.’
    ‘Mmm…quite a story,’ observed Dominic. He had known