Alice Jane

I suddenly thought of her yesterday, and wondered how she was getting on. It's the most time I've given her in many years. She was my fathers child by his second wife, a girl born something like 4 months early, with cerebral palsy, near blindness, almost an inability to walk, and many other issues.

Town gossips condemned the mother for having been 'so selfish' as to have a baby in the first place, given that she was a lady of burgeoning health problems herself, including diabetes that resulted in toe amputation. Worse than this, she smoked and my father smoked and drank; not that anyone ever berated him for it because he was well off, generous and prone to violence. The good folk of the town were never so courteous to my mother as when she had divorced him and left, for he was living there permanently then, and they could observe him in his full glory. Great was their disapproval but prudent their expression of it. Meanwhile, along came the child, and Dad doted on her. Their house was full of nicotine scented attempts to make her happy, kittens and puppies with chickens in the garden and a pony somewhere. He was kind in a way he had never been to us, perhaps because his own damage required someone who adored him and had no capacity to challenge or disapoint. I don't know. I do know he wanted me to adopt his daughter if he died.

He was drunk when he broached this with me, but I couldn't tell you how drunk. We were always talking degrees.

I told him that I had no jurisdiction, no right to adopt his child while her mother was alive, and what did he expect me to do? Also, why? But he was unable to express anything beyond this insistence that I should do it. Puzzled I spoke to my aunt. She burst out laughing.

'Adopt her? I'll disown you if you do! No, this is your father's mess and he must sort it out. His cheek, to try to saddle you with that nonsense!'

From the town's joyfully malevolent quarters there were implications that the mother had been reputed to take money as a professional carer and just dump her charges somewhere, that my father was afraid Alice Jane would be institutionalised on his death. But had that been the case, I like to think he would have made strong provision against it.

At his funeral, I met my half sister as an adult for the first and only time. She was devastated at Dad's death, but had nothing for me except churlish behaviour.

'You're back are you?' She growled. It is the only thing she has ever said to me. Ironically Dad's attempts to cultivate sibling feeling worked more deeply with Bro, who is much more tender and family orientated than I am. The shocking thing is that I care far more for my cats than for a half sister I barely know. Dad would often say that blood is thicker than water. Mine must be thinner than tea.

But despite a lack of feeling, there is the matter of doing the right thing. Yesterday apropos of nothing I checked out FB and learned that her mother is dead, passed on something like 4 years ago now.

So is Alice Jane actually all right? Where is she, who is looking after her? I don't feel any compunction to become a carer but I do feel it's important to try to make sure she's OK. Bro is looking at BDM databases, seeking information for her. I am not sure how to track her down, or even if I have any right to do this, she's an adult now, she doesn't like me, and her life is none of my business. So why am I doing it?

I have no idea.