Dorothy Soames was abandoned at London s Foundling Hospital as a baby
Her childhood was bereft of tenderness and physical punishment was common
Dorothy s mother Lena Weston, 31, asked for her back at the very start of the Blitz
This was first denied, but Dorothy escaped before being returned to her mother
Dorothy s child Justine Cowan only found out about her early life after her death
I always knew my mother had a secret.
She guarded it fiercely, keeping it under lock and key. That was how I envisioned it – a hidden chamber tucked away in the recesses of my mother’s twisted mind. But it was too big to be contained. It poisoned her thoughts and covered our family in darkness.
When I was 19, my mother accidentally gave me a clue to her past. I’d driven home after a panicked call from my father to say that she was having one of the emotional episodes we’d all come to dread.
I tiptoed into her dim bedroom, just making out my mother’s silhouette as she sat up in bed. She was holding a notepad. I immediately recognised her old-fashioned calligraphic script, deep indentations in the thinly-lined paper, along with dark smudges and small tears where it looked like a pencil might have broken.
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Updated
L-R Clement Martin, Toni Standen and Lee Abbott
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