Ada's gift in The View from the Terrace

I have just been watching an interview on This Morning with a woman who took in her best friend's 2 boys after the friend was killed in an accident and her husband died of cancer. It was a very touching story and it reminded me of someone I never met who offered me a similar gift.

Ada was my aunt's best friend. I don't know how they met but they had known each other for years. I never met her but Auntie Jackie used to tell us about Ada and about her son who was the actor Inigo Jackson, we went to see him in Becket and used to watch out for his appearnces on TV.

My father died of cancer when I was 15 only 9 months after we had moved to Sussex, and then 3 years later Auntie died suddenly from a stroke. I didn't go to her funeral because we were staying with mum's cousin at the time and someone had to stay home to look after her 3 year old daughter who was in plaster for a double hip displacement that she had been born with. So I never met Ada even at Auntie's funeral. Mum and Ada kept in touch but didn't meet again as they lived a distance apart.

Two years after Auntie Jackie died Mum decided to put a notice in the paper where we had used to live to mark the 5 year anniversary of Dad's death. Ada somehow misread it and thought my mum had died. She didn't know me but she wrote to me and offered for me to go to live with her. It was an amazing thing she did to offer a home to a girl she had never met because she was the neice of her best friend. Although I didn't need to accept her gift because it was a mistake and Mum was alive and well, it did make me feel more secure, as after Dad died I had worried about being left alone in the world. She is long gone now but I will never forget what Ada did.