My House in Umbria2003

Emily Delahunty:
What a strange and mysterious thing it is love. To be without it is like being deprived of oxygen. I had no love when I was a child. The people who brought me up were not my parents. I was still very young when they told me the truth. My real parents were travelling entertainers. They had no use for a child. "Not the sort of people you'd care for", said the mother who wasn't my mother. See, the people I lived with couldn't have children, they bought me. [laughs] Isn't that astonishing? bought me. like a cut priced sofa. You know, the father who wasn't my father, used to take me to the Gaiety Cinema on Sunday afternoons, there'd be a comedy short, Laurel and Hardy, or Charlie Chase, and then they'd go into the main features. Oh, I loved westerns. I loved the canyons, and the ranches, and the feathered Indians that fell one by one. The saddles that became pillows beneath the stars. For awhile, I think they were fond of me. But as I grew older, things began to change. I was ten when she told me the truth, the mother who wasn't my mother. "£20, that's what he'd give", she said. "Rough type of people", she said, "to profit from a baby". [laughs] "50 they ask. 20 he'd give". As soon as I was old enough, I ran away. I ran, and I ran, and I ran. All over the world. London, America, Egypt, Morocco.