by Elizabeth Fearon

Created on: January 18, 2010

 Whispering to Hope

Chapter One

 I was born the night my great grandmother Eloise died.  She left this world in the same way I arrived, without warning and in the middle of a particularly exciting episode of her favourite TV detective series, Magnum P.I.  Evelyn, my grandmother, was also a huge fan of Tom Selleck and was most put out that her nearest and dearest couldn’t have chosen a more convenient time and place to partake of life’s great mysteries.  I suppose you have to forgive her apparent insensitivity, the lounge had only just been decorated.   

          Apparently my mother coped exceedingly well with the speed of my birth and even had the presence of mind to kick the new Axminster rug to one side (for which my grandmother was eternally grateful) before I made my untimely appearance but she was quite unprepared for the shock of Eloise slipping away as silently as I was audible.  My grandmother, rallying first to the needs of the living, dashed back into the lounge armed with towels and blankets to find my mother rocking back and forth staring at Eloise in the cold realisation of what had just happened.  Evelyn dropped her bundle and knelt by her mother, gently closing her eyes for the last time.

          ‘Do you think she’ll find happiness now?’ she whispered to my mother, who stared down at my purple face, cradled me tightly and answered, ‘There’s always hope,’ as the tears trickled down her cheeks and so, in that moment, I was christened.

          Mrs. Patterson from next door heard the commotion through the open lounge window while walking her pestilent poodle (my grandmother’s description) but because the closed curtains impeded her view, she felt it incumbent upon her to be a good neighbour and roust her congenitally apologetic husband to locate the spare key and use it to find out what was going on.  I don’t think anybody could have prepared the poor man for the sight that met him – four generations of Fairchild females in varying states of life and undress – but it was still Mr. Patterson who apologised and fled the room in search of a telephone and the emergency services.

          Although I was never to know Eloise in person, I have always

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