A brother and sisters

Ada with Nurse Carter, the live-in nanny and Gloria, Zelda's sister who died of diabetes at the age of eleven

Neither mum nor dad spoke to me about my brother Dennis. it was many years before I found out I had ever had a brother and even then I only learned the story of his brief life through snippets of conversation overheard when the aunts were talking.

Born a year after me, Dennis was dad's pride and joy. To have a son was every Jewish man's deepest desire. Mum was also very pleased, but, she could spare no time from the shop to bring him up. He was given to a wet nurse, which was still a common practice in those days. I do not know the whole truth of it, but it was siad that her milk did not agree with the small babe. Others said he had been poorly from birth. Either way, his death hit dad hard. The one thing mum did tell me was that nobody knew where dad went the day Dennis died. He just drove around and around, weeping the hurt away. It was a long time before he could speak to mum again.

Nearly seven years went by after Dennis's death before my sister Gloria was born, and then a year after that norma arrived. By that time mum had enough money to employ a good live-in nurse, Nurse Carter. She would not allow me into her doain without an invitation, but when i came home from school she did let me into the conservatory for hal and hour to play with my sisters. Gloria was plump and smiley, Norma was thin and wiry, and as Gloria was nurse Carter's favourite, Norma became mine. I was ever on the side of the underdog. I became her champion, taking toys and dolls away from Gloria to give to her.

At first, summer holidays were spent together at Tankerton, near Whitstable, on the Kentish coast. It was there that Nurse Carter taught me to swim - well, she did not actually teach me, she just threw me into the sea from a raft moored off the beach. I dog-paddled automatically, spluttering and coughing from my immersion and managed to get back on the raft. The only other thing I remember about Nurse Carter was that she was forever knitting. Nothing seemed to worry or disturb her. She knitted peacefully, with hardly a glance in our direction as we played on the sand or clambeed up the fern-covered cliff.

Those halcyon days were soon over. Nurse Carter left us, and though mum tried one or two other solutions, eventually she sent Norma and Gloria to a boardig school in Broadstairs. They stayed there all through the holidays as well, and I was sent to join them for the summer. I was housed in the senior school while my sisters remained in the juniors' building, but I spent part of each day with them. Most of our days were spent on the beach but al three of us were marched off to church each Sunday morning.

On Sunday evenings after a snack of bread and dripping, which was supposed to be a treat, I was chosen to read out loud to the Head, Mr. Green, in his study. That was how I came to read "Forever Amber"! As a very special treat, Mr. Green would take us to Dreamland in Margate and once a week we were taken to Rossi's Milk Bar dow on the front for an ice cream. Rossi's was a real thirties bar, all black and green shiny tiles and tubular steel furniture with a small fountain inside as the centrepiece. The ice cream was delicious too.

At the start of the war, Mr. Green decided to evacuate the school and then I saw very little of my sisters. Soon after, Gloria was diagnosed as having diabetes. I shall never forget that first tie I visited her in the sick room at the school. The smell of pear drops was overpowering. I learned later that the smell was a symptom of the diabetes. She and norma were then brought home to Finchley to live, and we had to teach Gloria how to use the hypodermic syringe to inject the insulin. i could not bear watching her and she hated doing it.

Then mum sent her to a special school in Essex, designed to care for diabetic children, and we would go by Green Line bus to visit her. Not for too long however, because the school did not take quite enough care of Gloria. She went out one day and collapsed. She was dead before mum and i could get there. It was a terrible blow for Norma.