Introducing the Mysterious Grandmother

She was actually my mum's grandmother, and her name was Christine Cambridge. The mystery is that she never knew who her parents were. Naturally, she told stories, but her grandchildren took them with a pinch of salt.  The problem was that Christine wasn't particularly nice. When her husband died, she made her children promise they wouldn't get married and leave her. When they inevitably did, they had to make it up to her by giving her money every week. None of them realised the others were too -- Christine was living in (relative) luxury while they were struggling to make ends meet.  To the end of her life, my Nanna used to keep tins and packets of food in her bedroom (which, ok, is weird). She started doing it when she came out of hospital after a serious operation and was recuperating upstairs. Her mother-in-law, Christine, would come round 'to help', and instead help herself to anything she fancied from the kitchen. The pattern in these stories is that Christine felt that she was owed. She'd been denied something she was entitled to -- her parents and her identity -- so she recompensed herself with money and snaffled biscuits. To be fair, perhaps a daughter-in-law isn't always an impartial witness. Christine died before I was born, so I can't judge for myself, but the story of her mysterious origins always intrigued me.  I used to imagine she'd been given her name by an orphanage official (think Harry Secombe in Oliver!) working their way down a list -- Anne Aberdeen, Betty Bradford, Christine Cambridge -- but actually she adopted it herself, sometime between the age of 9 and 19. In the 1901 census, she claimed to have been born in Cambridge too. Later she said it was Bury St Edmunds, but by then she was married to my great grandfather and it was too late to change her name. Christine had been adopted by a family in Birmingham called the Ranns. Daniel Rann was a printer's compositor, and though that was a skilled job, they lived in a small house. Christine  (aged 9) moved into the bedroom shared by the two daughters still living at home, Frances (15) and Emma (22). Christine must have been related to the Ranns, right? Why else would they have taken her in? But the DNA analysis told us something different. Christine had no connection to the Ranns, but she was linked to three other families. We're talking fabulous wealth, shameful secrets and royal connections. Seriously!  Don't want to wait?  For previews direct to your inbox, subscribe here.