Don’t do it!
Wriggling my toes as I lay on the sunlounger, I sighed happily.
Mum, Elisabeth, then 48, was dozing beside me. Then, suddenly, she sat bolt upright.
‘Don’t do it, Dick, please,’ she begged.
Uncle Dick lived in Britain, while we were in Sydney. Agitated, Mum tried to call him.
In the 1960s, me, Mum, Dad, and my three siblings, lived with my grandad and uncle in Kent. Later, we moved to Australia, but Mum kept in contact with her brother.
The doorbell rang. Police!
Uncle Dick had gassed himself in the oven, they said. Mum was powerless to help.
On inheriting his house, in October 1972, we returned to England.
Not before Mum had the gas oven replaced by an electric one, though.
Only, that first night,…