When Sharon Cannon's father, an international business man, died, she and her two sisters only heard about it through television news coverage. Sharon was vaguely aware of her father's complex life, but it was his death that revealed the tangled marital web he'd spun over the years... "My mother, Marion, was the first wife. My father then went on to marry three times more. Each wife had the same initial. The second wife was German, the third, Swiss and the fourth wife, Polish."
When Sharon was seven years old, her father, whose work as a civil engineer took him across Europe, left her mother. Sharon didn't see him again for seventeen years. It was Sharon's grandmother, her father's mother, who kept in touch with Sharon's mother and her children. In fact, in a curious set-up, Sharon's grandmother was in touch with all four wives, "She was the overseer of arrangments," says Sharon, "We couldn't visit her without an appointment in case we bumped into anybody. When we visited her, she always had the right photographs up of each family - right down to the children's drawings on the fridge! We adored her, although once she got my mother's name mixed up with another wife's name."
At first, each of the wives had no knowledge of the previous wives. Over time they became slowly became aware of past wives. "My father's last wife, the Polish wife," explains Sharon, "told us that she'd been married to my dad for some time when she found out about the previous wife, and a little later, about the one before that. Then clearing out some papers she found a photo of myself and my young son. 'What is this?' she demanded, 'Another wife?' He replied, 'No. That's my daughter and my grandson.'"
Sharon's father died in an unfortunate accident, hanging lights from the balcony at his mother's home. He slipped and fell, and died of a brain haemmorhage. He was only fifty-nine. The funeral, inevitably, was a very confusing, "Nobody knew who anyone was!" says Sharon, "There was much speculation - 'Could she be a wife? She looks the type.' His fourth wife, came over and asked, 'How many of your father's wives have you met?' The whole thing was like an Ayckbourn play!" Although bizarre, it was also painful. In the eulogies, a man was revealed who Sharon knew nothing about - the opera fan, the man was involved in conservation, the one who loved architecture."
When Sharon's grandmother died, she left her granddaughter a trunk of photographs. Amongst them were a set of pictures of each family (the second wife had had three children with Sharon's father) and each wife. It helped Sharon piece together the broader picture. "I still felt I didn't know this man. It was very cathartic to go through them."
