Cathy Keir's family has more secrets than most ...
"My dad, who's 61, bought a second-hand Mercedes. He didn't spend loads of money on the car, but he kept it secret from his father for years because he thought he'd disapprove of his extravagance." Most families do have secrets, but Cathy is convinced that her family's secrets are sillier than most. "We have to hide the Mercedes in the garage when my grandad comes round" she says.
Her next secret is that her step-grandmother didn't know that her own daughter, aged 60 (Cathy's stepmother) was a smoker. Cathy explains, "My step-mother would go out into the kitchen to smoke whilst my step-grandmother would sit in the sitting room, blissfully unaware."
And what about Cathy's Uncle Ian? "He didn't know how to tell my grandfather that he was getting married for the first time time at the age of 65 - so he kept it a secret." It's not as if Uncle Ian is marrying an 18 year old. His bride is 78, and is also marrying for the first time.
Cathy believes that her family keep secrets in order to avoid disapproval, not something that she worries about herself, "It's too much like hard work to keep secrets, you've got to remember what you've told and to whom ..."
