As a child Patricia St John Barry's believed she'd killed a man by accidentally breaking a brooch he'd given her... I was about five when I was taken by my great-aunt to a hotel at Morecombe Sands. There was a Polish airman on leave there who played the piano and was terribly kind to me. He had a name I couldn't pronounce so - I imagine it was probably Stanislav. I called him Mr Sticky Stanley, which I think was a cartoon character.
When I went home he sent me a postcard of a doll in Polish costume. Attached to it was his Polish eagle brooch. One day, coming home, we discovered that my brooch had broken in half and half of it had been lost. I just remember standing on the pavement in floods of tears convinced that I had killed my Polish airman. I've thought of him often since; I don't know his name, and I don't know whether he did survive the war. But I at the age of five was totally convinced that because I hadn't taken care of his brooch I had killed him. It's a very silly story in a way, but I find myself in floods of tears at this memory.
