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Liz Jones's diary: In which there¿s a family crisis

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In which there's a family crisis

So I’d left my sister from Australia in the cupboard. I could have stayed with her but I reckoned she needed some space.

I was anxious to get home to the animals and so, having left her the Bat Phone and my mobile number, a set of keys and the remote to the TV and a box set of Fawlty Towers, I left, and drove the five hours home.

On the Monday night, I was sitting watching TV beneath Mini Puppy when my phone rang. It was a mobile number I didn’t recognise, so I ignored it. It rang again, and again I ignored it. It was quite late.

Who on earth keeps calling me? Maybe it’s the man from HMRC VAT. It rang again.

‘Hello,’ I said cautiously.

‘Is that Leeeeez?’

‘It might be.’

‘I am with your sister, Lyn.’

‘Oh my God, how, why?’

‘She had your number in her bag. She is lost. She can’t remember where your flat is.’

It turned out Lyn had left the flat to go to Sainsbury’s, but hadn’t taken the Bat Phone with her, which she couldn’t work anyway.

She didn’t have a note of my address, and when she came out of Sainsbury’s had no idea which road to take.

It turned out too that she had been wandering around for two hours, in the snow, occasionally sheltering in shop doorways. No one would help her.

Finally, this man, who turned out to be an Italian doctor, asked her what was wrong. Luckily, after much rummaging, she found my mobile number.

I gave him my address, and put the phone down.

About ten minutes later, he called again. ‘Leeez, I am at your flat. She is fine but I didn’t want to leave her until I placed her safely inside.’

‘Oh God, thank you so much. You are so kind,’ I said.

It flashed through my mind that he might have been an axe murderer, or at the very least once in the flat might have stolen everything.

Lyn had been very lucky, in a way, but how daft to leave the flat without knowing how to get back. Every time I’m abroad and in a new hotel, I always make a note of the address, and find some landmark that will help me find it, and tie ribbons on trees just in case all else fails.

I sat for a while, wondering if I should have left her alone after all, given her that space. In the end I phoned my long-suffering cleaner, who has a set of keys, and asked if she could go round and check up on her. She didn’t hesitate.

  More... Liz Jones's diary: In which I tackle my debts Liz Jones's diary: In which I ponder his confession Liz Jones's diary: In which he bares his heart

Of all the people (there’s really no one!) in my life I can call up and know will always help me without asking a single question, it is my cleaner, which must say something significant about something, but at the moment I can’t quite think what.

About an hour later, she called me. ‘She is fine. I’ve just made her a cup of tea,’ she said. I told her to tell my sister I’d be there the next day.

 She had been wandering around for hours and no one would help her

Poor Lyn. She came to England having lost her 21-year-old son to leukaemia to seek solace in her family, and one sister insisted on washing the wheels of her suitcase which meant she walked out, to stay a night in a B&B, then I abandoned her in my flat, alone, in the middle of London.

I should have realised how vulnerable she is. But then, I told myself, I have responsibilities, commitments.

I hadn’t known she was going to come and stay with me at such short notice. So, exhausted, but then I’m always exhausted (I have to reproduce here my favourite bit of my favourite book; this is Rose in I Capture the Castle: ‘I feel grim. I haven’t any clothes, I haven’t any prospects. I live in a mouldering ruin and I’ve nothing to look forward to but old age.’

Her brother adds, ‘Well, that’s been the outlook for years. Why has it suddenly got you down?’), I drove back to London the next day. Poor Lyn was still in bed, looking for all the world as though she’d been shipwrecked.

But at least she tried to put a good spin on it. ‘He was a very handsome doctor,’ she said.

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