Ruth was born into a privileged world of the well-off and believed that her life would never change. However, she was unaware that her mother Ethel was desperately ill and when Ruth was five years old her mother tragically died. Thomas, her father unable to take care of Ruth and her two sisters, took on a variety of housekeepers, but one fateful day, he brought Emma Buckle and her five children into their lives.
From that day Ruth's world was irrevocably changed for the worse. Emma and her cruelty made Ruth's and her sister's lives a living nightmare. Emma's own children were her priority and Ruth, and her sisters were subject to deprivation. Thomas, busy with his own life, was oblivious to his children's plight.
Emma was a violent alcoholic, and Ruth soon had to find refuge high in the Linden tree. Making sure that the ladder was leaning against the tree and her Hans Anderson's books were waiting for her in the branches, she would stay until Emma had drunk herself into insensibility.
Emma's actions led to the maid, who had served in the household for years, forced her to leave the family that she had served so faithfully. Ruth and her sisters were devastated as Mary had been the last link they had to her mother. Ruth was forced to take over all of the housework; she was a virtual slave to Emma and her abusive children.
Just before Ruth became eighteen, she met Len whom she was to marry in 1933. This was when Richard came into her life. He was one of Len's friends, and she had felt something pass between them, but she told herself that she loved Len and dismissed it from her mind. When she was nineteen, she and Len married. A year later her first daughter was born. In 1936 Len was to go to Palestine, and Ruth found herself alone with a young child to take care of. All through the Second World War, she and Len were to be separated for long periods and life was difficult.
In 1937 Len was demobbed, and the family went to live in Ruislip, where he was to work in a munitions factory teaching women to do the work of the absent men.
1939 found Len fighting the enemy in France. Whilst Len was away, it was necessary for Ruth to work to support her family.
One day, during Ruth's lunchtime break, she took a walk along the river and by chance met Richard. They walked together, and something special passed between them, but she dismissed any thoughts of feelings she had for him.
1940 and Len came back, he had been rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk and had suffered many privations. They lived through the dangers of the enemy's air raids and rationing; life was hard. 1944 they moved back to their house in Lincoln to find that it had been trashed and so they had to build their lives once more. They now had three daughters to bring up.
As the years passed, it was obvious to Ruth that her marriage wasn't what she had hoped for, and she descended into unhappiness, but she believed that marriage was for life and so she soldiered on. One day. Richard came to tell them that he was to move to India to do an important job. Sadly, the next few days brought the news that he had committed suicide. Ruth was devastated; why would she do that? Was she to blame? From then on, her life was filled with disappointment and heartache.
A few years before she had begun to have a recurring dream of a long corridor with many doors on either side, each time she dreamed, another door opened revealing moments of her life. She always feared what she may find when the last door was opened.
Ruth lived her life without hope, but she had her three daughters, and she loved them deeply. Having lived her life through her children, she was devastated when her eldest child immigrated to Australia. As the years passed by the other two children married and moved away and she became even more despondent. What was her life to be now that she had lost the people she loved?
