For Anita

Monday May 20th 1991 I walked nervously in to the lobby of Western Towers, opposite the railway station in Reading. Slowly there gathered a motley collection of twelve people, ten men and two women.

One of the women was a tiny, red-haired Irish girl of about thirty. The other was in her early twenties, pretty with a ready laugh and an inbuilt sense of fun. Anita.

For twelve years until I left Thames Trains to go to pastures new Anita and I shared so many moments, mostly railway moments but also more than a few personal ones, especially when we were both part of a small group of drivers renting a house - the notorious Cardiff Road - together.

It was at Cardiff Road I got to know her so well, always with a laugh, always caring, the calm and demure lady who, although normally never more than a social drinker, could out-drink anyone in the house when the drinking games started and yet sit there, in control and appearing only mildly tipsy whilst the self-proclaimed heavy drinkers were passing out around her!

I can tell you Anita was a fierce competitor when driving karts, as Arthur Gunn found to his cost trying to intimidate her going into a corner. He limped for a long time afterwards as Anita bounced her kart up and over his to lead him out of the bend!

Part way through the driver training we were at Newquay on a camping mini holiday together with what were then our respective partners. One early evening Anita was stood alone in the campsite looking wistfully into the Cornish sunset. The conversation we had has never left me.

"Are you ok, Anita?"

"Yea, I'm fine." - pause - "Nothing a bottle of gin and a hot bath wouldn't sort out."

"Oh! Do you think you're - oh, Anita you are - you really are."

"No - I'm not sure yet - not done a test - just a bit late but . . ."

"Anita, you are!"

You could see it. Her skin, which was always clear and smooth was absolutely blooming and her eyes were sparkling. For me there wasn't the slighttest doubt.

A few days later back at Cardiff Road Anita did the test to confirm one way or the other. At the end of the test the little device would show a "+" or a "-". Typically, for Anita it showed a "T" - neither one thing nor the other. But it was enough for Anita to realise she was expecting a baby and it was so easy to see her mind racing through all the implications this would bring. After a minute or so she went up to her bedroom to be alone with her thoughts and her tears.

She had been up in her room about ten minutes or so when I ventured up and knocked on her door. I went and sat on her bed and quietly explained to her that as far as I was concerned Cardiff Road was her home and her having a baby didn't alter that. Whatever problems she faced having to leave the house was not going to be one of them. I only tell you this because of what happened next.

I went back downstairs and was sitting in the living room when Anita joined me a few minutes later. She went to the stereo put on a record, sat with me listening to it and then, when it had finished, turned the stereo off and went back up to her room alone. Just the one track.

I never did ask her whether the record she chose was because it was a particular favourite, because it fitted her mood of the moment or whether, as I felt at the time, there was a message in it for me. If it was the latter then it really was - and still is - the kindest thing that has ever been said to me, even if it was from the words of a song.

I never will know now what Anita's motives were for playing just that one track that day. All I know is what I felt in my heart at that moment and still feel to this day.

From that day Anita resolved that she was going to finish her driver training and having a baby was not going to change the direction her life was going. She was going to be both a mum and a train driver. And she never wavered.

In all the years I worked with Anita she never expected any favours or any different treatment because she was a woman in what was essentially still a man's environment. Even though she was one of the pioneering women who entered the world of train driving she managed at work to be that most unique of people - one of the lads whilst still being so, so feminine. She took all the messroom banter, all the verbal rough and tumble a group of men can give and yet remained one of the depot's favourites because of her determination, her dignity and composure, laced, as always, with her ever present sense of fun.

In each of our lives Anita and I endured our shares of heartbreak and emotional upheavals and were always, always there for each other. More than once we shared our tears and pain - plus our cussing at the people who hurt us. But by far and away most of my time spent with Anita was hearing her laugh. If there was a funny side to any situation Anita would see it first.

Her laugh is easily my most prominent memory of her. That and her love of her family.

It was some time after Anita had been diagnosed with her illness that I next got to see her. I spent an evening with her at her home, an evening without a hint of self-pity or complaint. Clearly she was afraid of what the future held for her and for Chris and her children but she accepted the cards that life had dealt her personally with such equanimity.

The laughing girl I had met eighteen years or so earlier, the fun, pretty, intelligent and yet in some ways naïve girl had grown into a woman I could only watch with awe as she sat there, an object lesson in dignity, maturity and grace.

When it was time for me to go, stood at her doorstep with Chris just behind her, and in a very emotionally charged atmosphere, we hugged each other very tightly together and Anita told me she loved me. This wasn't a time for glibly repeating the mantra. I meant every bit of it when I said, "And I love you too, Anita."

And then, for the only time in all the years we had known each other she leant forward and kissed me on the lips. In that moment Anita and I acknowledged what we had always known - that the big brother - little sister relationship that evolved between us had been special, unique, just ours.

I cry as I write this, a selfish and self-absorbed emotion as I realise a very special friendship has gone. But I promise you, Anita, after I have finished this I will only ever think of you with happiness and a smile on my face as I once again, in my mind, hear that lovely laugh of yours.

So long, little sister - you were so special. x