June 1941 was my last month at school. I was glad to leave, though I had thoroughly enjoyed my eleven and a half years there. My chemistry teacher had me lined up for a technician job at the Linen Research Institute, a much better idea than joining my father’s accountancy practice; but first there would be a family holiday.
We met up in a rented house in Portstewart, my father, my 15-year-old brother and I from Belfast, my mother and young brother and sister from an aunt’s farm near Limavady where they had found refuge from the blitz.

April 1941: our corner shops; picture by Belfast Telegraph photographer

Looking back, I realise what a selfish child I was, unaware of the terrible emotional trauma my mother suffered those three months far from home, wondering every night if we were safe and never having had a chance for a proper talk about the night our house was damaged and some of our neighbours killed.

The July sun shone, several of my friends were in Portstewart too, and our favourite game of ‘follow my leader’ involved plunging into the sea, swimming ashore, and climbing back to one of the diving boards on the rocks, all at speed. One day, I was leader and I went up to the highest board. It seemed very dead, so next time I gave an extra strong bounce, not realising a follower had been just behind me the previous time but was not so close now. And instead of letting myself somersault as my legs arched over my head, I strained every nerve and sinew to bring them back. I was a bit winded when I hit the water, but swam back and mentioned it to no-one. Over the next week or so, I felt more and more tired until one day I had to climb the last stretch of a flight of steps between two streets on my hands and knees.

Portstewart, from an old postcard

When I reached the house I could not even begin to go up the stairs. My harassed mother did not believe me, but my father -- a gentle, considerate man, nine years older than my passionate impulsive mother -- helped me to bed. I slept feverishly for two or three days. When I felt better, I found I could not sit up, and the next six weeks were spent in hospital in Belfast.

So there I was in late September, lying on my own bed in our sunny dining-room, reading John Buchan and dreaming of my boyfriend. Not a boyfriend in the modern sense, you understand. Tall, dark, and the only one of my schoolmates to share my pleasure in the theory of the atom, he had walked me home one night in June when we both happened to be on firewatch duty, and said goodnight with a quick kiss at the garden gate. I wrote to him from my hospital bed. He replied that he could not bear to see me ill but would visit me when I got home.

He did.

Whether it was meeting my downs syndrome sister, or being persuaded to play our piano by my mother (I was mortified -- I knew what he thought of untuned pianos) or just me still immobile, I never knew. I only ever saw him once again, and that was three years later.

More important was what he told me about his future plans. He had been awarded a bursary to study electronics (we called it ‘radio’ then) for two years, after which he would help the war effort. In the event he joined the army after one year, but I recalled what he had told me the following spring, when my father was suggesting accountancy again, and sent off an application.