On Chapel Sands: The Mystery of My Mother's Disappearance as a Child

Pictures hold thoughts, ideas and memories like the pockets of a coat.

Nobody ever spoke of love, a word Betty never heard in childhood. Even now she has only modest hopes of other people’s affections. She is the woman who always asks all the questions of egotists who never offer any in return, who writes back every letter by return of post, who cannot let gratitude be delayed by a moment, who never wants anyone to be left out, sincere in all her love and concern.

To commemorate Veda’s life, Elizabeth planted thousands of daffodil bulbs in the grounds of Chapel school for the pupils to pick on Mother’s Day each year, so that no future mother would ever be forgotten.

The lives of even quite recent generations might almost disappear from our understanding if we did not think of their aspirations.

of low-lying ground, with stagnant rivers and melancholy trees for islands in them, and a surface punctured all

Photography gives us memories we hardly knew we had: the house where we were born, our infant selves, the embarrassing clothes we once wore. But the camera is also capable of giving us memories we cannot actually have because we were not there in the first place.

Hilda kept the photograph by her forever. “A picture of a little girl who once belonged to me,” as she described it to Susan. It reminds me of my mother’s phrase: “You are my most precious possession.” I did not understand it, still react against its connotations of ownership, until I remember its corollary: “I never belonged to anyone until I belonged to you.

Perhaps it was not George but Betty Veda loved enough to forgive him.