C. Anne

I am back home in London having lit out of Cardiff early this morning to collect the Bomber at the end of his flight from Tampa, Florida to Gatwick.

There's a handwritten list (a few years old now) blue-tacked to a tiled wall in the Bronwydd Avenue kitchen that I want to record and remember. It comprises all the family birthdays and our forthcoming ages, plus mum and dad's wedding anniversary.

The third entry is C. Anne. That's Caroline Anne, my lost sister, our parents' third baby who died in childbirth. I imagine that C. Anne is used to distinguish her from Caroline my baby sister, The list says C. Anne would have been fifty.

I don't think my mother mentioned her loss to me more than a couple of times. I wasn't really aware of it at all until I grew up. I don't think my father ever mentioned it ever. But the wound didn't heal.