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I was ten months old when the war started and children were evacuated from Newcastle and the cities around the area. We lived in a pitman’s house with one bedroom and a living room. My mother took in a ten year old girl called Dora. She was with us for four years and her mother never contacted her in that time. The only contact was if my mother wrote to her at times like when she broke her arm.

As soon as she was fourteen her mother sent for her because she had to go to work but she kept running away and kept coming back to us. Then every time she came back her mother would put the police onto her and she would be escorted back home.

Eventually she met and married a lad called Robert. She had two children who died and she sent for us each time. She had three more daughters and she called the first one after me.

She nursed Robert through a very long illness until he died. Some years later she met Ray and married him and I did the readings at her wedding.

She is now 76 and we ring each other at least once a week, she just lives in Gateshead and we see each other frequently.

If I phone her husband will shout ‘Dora, it’s your sister on the phone.’ We have carried on being almost blood relations. Nothing happens in either family without each other being involved.

But for that war we not have had each other!!

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