This happened to my mother.

A few years ago, my sister got married. She asked my mother for a loan of £50,000 to buy a chalet with her husband in Switzerland, where they lived and worked.

My mother agreed. She wanted to be able to easily visit my sister and stay with them.

(For context, my mother has refused to ever lend me a penny, but she was close enough to my sister to agree immediately).

So my sister and her husband move back to Switzerland into their new home. A month later, my mother wrote and asked when she could visit. To her astonishment (and shock), my sister said she didn't want her to visit.

My mother waited a few weeks then asked again. Same answer. So she waited half a year, then asked. This time my sister responded and told my mother she never wanted to hear from her again, and no longer addressed her as “mummy”, instead using her Christian name.

I have seen all the correspondence my mother received and there was no argument, no falling out, no reason for this extraordinary rejection whatsoever. The only contact my mother had was on a purely functional level with her son in law, who, having borrowed 50k from her, now started to pay the money back.

Fast forward a few years. My younger sister had a hunch that our other sister in Switzerland had had a baby. We called the place where she worked and tricked them into confirming the information. She had indeed had a child *and not told a single person in her entire extended family.*

Even worse, if possible, our in-laws hadn't told us either.

In March this year my mother tried one more time. She travelled to Switzerland and left a note on her daughter's doorstep, asking to see her. The same day, my sister left the house and didn't come back. My mother eventually had to return to the UK, having failed to see her daughter and grandson.

When I think of my poor, old, mother, crying alone, rejected so utterly shamelessly by her daughter, my heart breaks. I cannot write any more because this is simply too painful for me.