My Aunt Beryl’s zinc-lined trunk revealed extraordinary family secrets

My Aunt Beryl taught me to love books and paintings. When I’m at a loose end in London, lonely, or even rather boozed up, I still nip into one of the galleries she raised me on to say hello to pictures that have been my lifelong friends.

Beryl never missed birthdays and Christmas, she wrote postcards and adored her nephews and nieces. She never married, but globe-trotted with easel and pencils, lived in a cave in Petra, went skydiving and skating, made a living from portraits and illustrated 52 children’s books — many of which she read to me when I was small. She cared for my grandparents and inherited their home in Sussex. At 92, during lockdown, Beryl had a tummy ache, told my daughter on the phone she ‘felt a bit wonky’ and died in hospital the next day.