Brenda was born in 1938, the youngest of 10 children, although 3 others had died in infancy. Far from being privileged and a bit spoilt, Brenda found being the youngest a difficult position, "I was totally unexpected. My mother told me later on that she thought she was suffering from middle-aged spread. An aunt said she ought to see a doctor. This was in August, and I was born on September 11." Brenda's older brothers and sisters were already in their twenties, and were greatly shocked by the new baby's arrival.
Brenda's father died just before she was 4, but it wasn't until she was in her early teens that she found out the truth. "I used to sit on the stairs waiting for him to come home. I thought he'd done a runner ..." No-one told her what had happened, and it was only a few years ago that one of her sisters acknowledged that it was cruel not to have explained what happened to the young child.
Brenda appreciates that it was difficult for the rest of the family when she was born "Everyone in the family was very individual and in a way isolated from one another. I don't feel their treatment of me was with malice aforethought. I wouldn't want you to think my mother was ever unkind - the others treated me in an off-hand way." However, Brenda grew up feeling unwanted and unloved.
The mystery surrounding her missing father only cleared when Brenda was awarded a scholarship to a technical college when she was 13, "I suddenly became aware I was having free dinners. In my previous school I had always gone home to lunch. I had to keep pushing my mother to tell me why I was entitled to free dinners. And I remember her saying "Well, you daft thing, you haven't got a dad."
