Ok.
Dad was one of five children. Just after I was born his father died and was buried in Wiltshire (where he came from) even though everyone else in the family lived elsewhere. Ever since his death, most of the extended family have met once a year in this small rural town for a picnic and a visit to the grave. It has been an annual event for all of my life.
This year I turn up at the family picnic and an older lady comes up to me and says "hello Jxxxx, I'm Vxxxx your cousin". I just looked at her like a loon, all my other cousins were there, my dad, brother etc. I had no idea who she was.
Turns out Dad's older brother had three children with someone I've never heard about who were basically so neglected they were taken into care and either fostered or adopted.
She is 15 years older than me so this all happened long before I was born. My memories of Uncle Rxxx were of him being childless (and living with a nice lady I knew as aunty Gxxxx). He is dead now.
Another cousin in my family, into geneology, traced this lady and invited her to our family picnic. She told me about her childhood, her memories of my Grandad (who, it turns out, often left my Grandma for periods while he "went off on one of his little excursions"). While Uncle R was fathering these children, my Grandma who had a wayward husband and four other children to cope with, tried to find time/money to care for these unwanted little souls but in the end could not cope and so they ended up being taken away.
I knew none of this until my cousin introduced herself to me at family picnic two weeks ago.
My Dad knew she would be there (she went last year, apparently, when I wasn't able to attend) but never thought to explain the whole story to me?
Am very cross with him.