This book is about family and friendships and the will to endure, in the face of adversity. These themes resonate with me as much today as they did for my forebears and I’m sure I’m not alone in that.
All families have secrets. Many people live lies and some believe passionately in the version of reality they have created, because facing the truth would be too catastrophic for their nearest and dearest. They must carry the burden of the choices they have made and in the dead of night, before sleep creeps over them, it must weigh heavily, just as it did for my grandfather, Harry.
From our twenty-first-century standpoint, it’s easy to judge the decisions of previous generations, but while writing this story, I was struck by how different the world was then. That doesn’t excuse people lying or cheating but drawing together all the threads sometimes gives you another perspective; it can help you see the other side of the story. We are all failed human beings doing our best but back then, against the dramatically changing landscape of two world wars, life must have seemed very fragile. It was possible to move from one side of London to the other and start afresh in the hope that the past would never catch up. You couldn’t get away with it today – at least, not easily.
The terrible event of 1910 unveiled in this book had an earth-shattering effect on the victim’s family, which cannot and must not ever be forgotten. The widow of the murder victim had to fight to get compensation after her husband’s death. The family eventually emigrated. I have not detailed their struggle in this book because I did not feel it was my place to do so. I cannot imagine the pain and suffering they went through and I would not presume to speak for them.
From the age of fifteen, when my mother, Anita, told me about what had happened to her grandfather John Alexander Dickman, I grew up in the shadow of the shame and secrecy about this murder. How she came to find out about the murder and her father Harry’s secrets is another story entirely and there isn’t space to go into that here. It was a long and convoluted path, spanning forty years, with hurt for all involved, but ultimately, the will to resolve and to find strength in family bonds prevailed.
In writing this book, I felt it was time, more than a hundred years after the event which so drastically altered the course of my family’s history, to finally lay the ghosts of the past to rest.
The quest for the truth is something that led me to become a journalist and it has shaped my character too. I have an unswerving drive to speak out when I sense injustice, to stand my ground and to be heard. I can trace that all the way back to the courtroom of the Newcastle Assizes in 1910 and the hangman’s noose which silenced my great-grandfather, John Alexander Dickman, one of the last men to be hanged in Newcastle Gaol. I see it in the letters that my great-grandmother, teacher Annie Sowerby Bainbridge Dickman, wrote to the newspapers and the Home Secretary to fight for her husband’s life. I come from a long line of very strong women and that is a powerful thought for me when facing up to any difficulties.
My Great-Aunt Kitty was formidable, ahead of her time, and I owe her for a lot of my strength and determination, not to mention my love of writing, although I used to find her scary when I was little. She grew up in a world in which women didn’t have the vote and were not equal to men in the workplace. She was fiercely protective of all women’s rights: to vote, to have a say, to be heard, and she instilled that in my mother, who passed it on to me.
Kitty didn’t live to see me become a journalist, to write the front page articles of national newspapers, or be a published author. I like to think she would have been proud of me, but quietly so, without too much fuss because that was not her way. I knew her as an old woman, living in a sheltered flat in Newcastle, making cups of tea, which she served at her highly polished dining table. I was a child of the seventies, tomboyish, a bit wild, and my lack of manners made her look askance. She’d smile to herself when she watched me arguing with my brother. Perhaps she saw in me a kindred spirit, an echo of the auburn-haired girl who played rough and tumble with her brother Harry at the turn of the century, before their lives were turned upside down by a murder.
She died when I was eleven. It’s a shame I didn’t get to know her better, but I feel, in some small way, through writing this book, I know her now.
I would like to thank my Uncle John, the oldest surviving member of the Dickman family, for his insights, advice and memories which have helped me to shape this story. I would also like to thank Rowan and Michele, my ‘secret’ cousins, for their memories and help. I wish I could have known their parents, William ‘Roy’ and Zena, but that was not to be and we are now one family.
I would like to thank my editor, Ingrid Connell of Pan Macmillan, for her incredible support, kindness and advice. Working in such a great environment is a joy because the process of writing can feel very solitary at times. Ingrid was with me every step of the way and I would also like to thank assistant editor Charlotte Wright for her eagle eye and valuable input, and copy-editor Lorraine Green for her help.
I am very lucky to have the total support of my husband Reuben and my boys, Idris and Bryn, as well as my dear friends Sally and Marcus; Jo, Mark and Clare; and Hannah and Tania.
There is no substitute for true friends and the love of your family.
Whatever has happened in the past, tomorrow brings with it the possibility that we can make different choices, because our actions in this life define who we really are.
What’s your story?