When she was 18 she told me she was going in to the Army and I saw her occassionally when on leave but not for long. She came out when she was 21 and by this time Brian and I were together and living with Dad and I had had June. Brian had never met her before and after the first time of meeting her he said "you do realise she is a Lesbian don't you?" I was actually so innocent I did not even know what he meant and after explaining to me I told him not to be ridiculous she had had boyfriends, we had all been out together. He was of course right and when she talked to me about it when I asked she said she was worried Brian would not want her near June. Things then were so different. Brian told her not to be so silly and the friendship continued over all the intervening years. She looked after June when I had Fran and so on when I went in to have the other children and they all loved her. She and Penny ( her then partner) took them all on days out etc. As they all got older it was the standing joke that the first words from them was " we are taller than you" (she was less than 5 ft).Kevin being the worst of course as he reached a great height quite young. Funnily enough as she had predicted years before when she read some article about working out the height of a toddler how tall they would be eventually and it worked out that he would be 6 ft 4 and it was right.
By this time her mother and grandmother had died and when her grandad died she sold the house and she and Penny went of round the world and apart from the occasional postcard from far away places we heard nothing. Then in 1981 she turned up on the doorstep alone. Penny had decided to go to Sark and in the end I believe got married.
On a visit about a year later she said she had met someone but she did not think I would like her. WRONG. She was going to come round with her for dinner but on the day before on a very windy day Brian and I had gone to Woolwich and with heads down went round this corner and bumped literally head on with them and from then on Carol and I got on like a house on fire. Often at Maureen's expense I am afraid when she was too serious. In the early part of 1983 we were all talking about Cancer for some reason and Maureen said she had never had a smear at which both \Carol, Brian and I said she should have one and of course it was positive, but luckily caught in time.
Over the years she had a a variety of jobs, "Clippie" on the buses, in a garage, but in the end she went to work at a home for "naughty" children and on from there to train and become a Social Worker and then to work with the handicapped, which he had always done in her spare time ever since her cousin Lesley was born as what in those days was called "Spastic"
Much to my regret we lost touch a little in 1999, partly due to my saying "it is always me who rings I will wait for them to ring me this time" so I was very upset to get a letter from Carol saying Mo had died of a heart attack on her way to work. At the time we were in Devon and could not even get back for the funeral. Now I don't wait for people to ring or write I do it as I would not like it to happen again.