The Sister Wiped From My Memory Forever

Imagine losing your most precious of memories. For Louise Cade, 32, it’s been a lifelong torment...

- Sarah Holmes & Elizabeth Archer

Flicking through old photo albums with my family last Christmas, I came across a picture of my sister Sally and me giggling into the camera and holding our hands aloft. ‘That’s a lovely one,’ my aunt said, smiling wistfully. ‘I wonder where it was taken?’ But, as usual, my memory came up blank.

It had been over 20 years since that photo was snapped, but that wasn’t why I couldn’t remember. The truth is ever since the unthinkable happened in 1994, I have struggled to recall anything at all about Sally. All I know is what my mum has told me, about how we were an inseparable duo – playing with our dolls together, or chasing through the fields on the farm where we grew up near Peterborough.

Being two years older, I apparently took it upon myself to look after Sally, tying her shoelaces in the morning and buttoning up her coat before we went to school. ‘You were a natural,’ laughs Mum now, a subtle sadness lingering in her eyes.

But then, on 21 January 1994, tragedy struck. I was just eight years old and Sally was six. Mum says it was a day like any other. We went to school, while she stayed at home with our three-year-old sister, Jenny. And when the school bus dropped us off later that day opposite our farmhouse, Mum says I must’ve taken Sally’s hand, like always, and stepped out on the road.