Muriel

Muriel wrote a book about her life growing up in rural Ireland. She was the prettiest, with dark hair and lovely brown eyes, taking after our mother. She was quite a beauty and this won her lots of admiration wherever she went. However, she was rather like a volcano and you never knew when she would erupt! She was forever creating scenes and she seemed to have her knife in me more than in anyone else. Not one member of the family escaped her vicious attacks. Helen always made allowance for her as she has had several bouts of severe illness throughout her life but towards the end of Helen's life she asked me to stop Muriel from dictating to her about whom she could write to and also she asked me to stop Muriel from attacking Maria, Helen's daughter-in-law. Then when Mike was dying she suddenly got it into her head that he was having an operation I hadn't told her about. That was the last straw for me. She and my father were the two members of my family that had been horrible to Mike.

When she was young, she had rheumatic fever and the doctor had told my mother that she was never to be upset and that, I believe, was the root of her problem. When she ended up in London in the 1950s, she went to work for Royal Doulton and her XRay showed she had TB and it turned into secondary TB peritonitis, a disease so rare that Guys Hospital recalled her over many years when they had medical conferences. She had spent many months in an open-air hospital in Margate in Kent where Helen visited her frequently. In June 1959 she married an Irishman called Leo but the marriage failed in the early 70s.

It's sad that at this stage of our lives Muriel should alienate herself from the family. When she isn't being nasty about some imaginary grievance, she can be very generous and good fun.