The Earliest Memory.

I am part of an imperfect and easily broken circle in the darkened lounge of my parents first home. No, this is not a seance. My Nanny, twin sister, Gemma and cousin Julie are holding hands as we sing "Ring a ring of roses". Despite the song being about the plague killing thousands of people we are in good spirits. My sister and I are very young, with large fringes that start at the back of our head and are wearing nighties that show off our bruised match stick legs. The bruises are from typical clumsy and hyperactive activity, not from being beaten with a big stick or other such atrocities heard on the childline adverts.

Nanny does not have any hair on her head and we are too young to understand why. This means that instead of being allowed to fall into despair about the cancer in her womb, my Nanny is forced into playing games like Buzzy Buzzy Bumble Bees and singing nursery songs with her grandchildren. When we sing the final line of the song; "We all fall down!" Gemma, Julie and I fall to the floor and we all burst into giggles.

My cousin Julie, still laughing, takes both our hands and helps us up. She is a pretty, blonde haired child with a pock scar between her eyes. Recently she snipped the piece of flesh between her top gum and lip which has left her with a scabby and sore red flap in its place. Julie is the prime example of a child who suffered poor parenting. With no one to willingly pay her attention she would thrust herself into the limelight throughout her childhood and teenage years for such things as stealing, balancing on the sixth floor of a block of flats, hacking away at her hair, fighting, gallavanting around with older men and eventually falling pregnant at thirteen, choosing to keep the baby and running away.

We start rotating again and my Nanny looks tired but happy. Later in life she'd become a gossiping hypochondriac, old before her time, who would tell us every Christmas "Your poor old Nana won't be here this time next year." despite having a clean bill of health. Obsessed with soap opera's she would try to cause those dramas in her own life. This would alienate her from some of her children and snatch away any trust her family had with confiding in her. None of this matters in my earliest memory though. We are all happy, frozen in time, united in a circle of roses.