Following the death of Mary Parkinson, daughter of the late former Cabinet minister and Thatcher confidant Cecil, one cannot but help compare her to Sheila, as she walks along the black iron railings which front those million pound stucco houses in the most fashionable areas of London, and indeed one might be forgiven for mistaking the young woman for Sheila herself, captured in similar mode at around the same time by her husband's lens.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/891668/Mary-Parkinson-Cecil-Parkinson-dead-aged-57-predicted-suicideThe lives ran strikingly parallel: public school educated girls who wanted for nothing materially as they were growing up, who both wished to make an impact, yet who found the stresses and strains of modern life all too much as they turned the pressure inward, descending into anorexia, drugs, depression and suicidal thoughts, finally acted out by Mary earlier this month as a neighbour peered frantically into the letterbox only to spy her lifeless tailor dummy body hanging from the hallway.
One can't help but wonder how Sheila would have coped had she lived, and indeed whether she could have subsisted at all without her bedrock Nevill, Mary's father being her Achilles heel as she finally succumbed to her daemonic thoughts following his death last year. Maybe Sheila would have pulled through with the help of her boys and Colin's sympathetic ear, but it is indicative of both women that they never found Mr. Right romantically(or at least thought they hadn't) and ended up for large periods solitary figures with seemingly very little confidence or inner resources to fend off the brickbats they confronted as their friends deserted them in their hour of need.
