Bible John's Secret Daughter by David Leslie Page A

nevertheless, there was no reason to suspect anything was wrong when Hannah was born three and a half years after Isobel. And there wasn’t. Not physically at least. But the child was not the boy the mother had so wanted to replace Richard. She already had a girl and felt cheated. Hannah’s mother would always find it difficult to overcome these emotions.
    ‘Hannah was resented from the word go by her mother,’ said a friend. ‘Isobel was now aged three and a half and the apple of Jessie’s eye. There was no room in her heart for a second girl and so Hannah was doomed to take second place throughout her life. The result was that she had a terrible relationship with her mother, turning instead for love to Malcolm, a quiet, thoughtful man who said little but was popular with a lot of the other children because he was not the strict Victorian type their fathers were.
    ‘Jessie loved to go out partying, dressing up and having a good time, and as a result Hannah was often left in the care of her dad. He had a kindness about him and a tolerance for other children who used to play with Hannah.’
    At the time of her birth, the family lived in Blackburn, midway between Glasgow and Edinburgh, but they would move to Clyde Place, Bothwellhaugh, where the young girl would spend most of her formative years. Bothwellhaugh, a mile from Bellshill, was known locally as the Pailis, a play on the title of the local mine, Hamilton Palace Colliery. Built up in the late nineteenth century, the village was made up of long rows of terraced homes, with outside shared toilets where bath night involved taking it in turn to climb into a massive metal bucket in front of the coal fire, cleanest first, muckiest last. Up to 2,000 people lived in the Pailis in its heyday, but the closure of the pit in 1959, when Hannah was approaching ten years of age, took away the reason for its existence. Sadly, the move to a new home in Bellshill made no difference to the manner in which Jessie looked upon her youngest daughter.
    For reasons that will become apparent, other parents living in the Pailis were not so keen on having their offspring visit the Martin home, but the children themselves were envious of Isobel and her sister. Each week they had something to look forward to that the vast majority of the others did not. It was called the Family Day.
    Saturdays, barring some serious occurrence such as a wedding or illness, were reserved for the family. Nowadays, with a car at the disposal of most families, travel is taken for granted; it is even looked upon as a chore. However, for the majority in the early 1950s it was something of an adventure, especially if the family had access to a motor. The Martins were lucky in this respect.
    Family Day meant an outing from the Pailis to the nearby town of Hamilton. As this was an outside treat, from time to time Hannah would beg for a friend to be allowed to join her. The sisters and their parents would take a bus and tour the town’s shops, gazing in windows, looking enviously at rows of jars filled with every taste and colour of sweet, at gay dresses and shiny shoes, and then, as a special treat for the children, head for stores where the wide-eyed youngsters could eye up toys and dolls.
    The supermarket era had not arrived; instead, Jessie and her band of followers would visit the butcher, baker and general dealer, perhaps get the girls new clothing and, come late afternoon, they’d pile into a restaurant for a sit-down meal. Around six o’clock, lugging packed shopping bags, all would pile into a bus for the journey home. But, alighting, Malcolm would disappear and head off in the direction of one of the local bars, returning sometime between nine and ten in the evening with fish suppers for all. This weekly treat might not sound like much, but it was utopia to the children and well within the family budget. The average weekly wage at this time was £5 2s 3d, while Malcolm’s pint would have set him back 1s