Judging ages

[Phoenix]

My parents moved to what would be my childhood home in 1953. I shared a birthday with my next door neighbour, and with the boy next door but one, born in 1945.

The family were a cut above us. Father was a school teacher. They named their dog after a holiday on a Scottish island, and they were artistic, with paintings on the wall.

There were three children. The boy was the eldest, always repairing motorcycles. The sisters were much friendlier, despite being older than sib and me.

The younger sister, born 1951, had to get married. My last memory of her is her heading for the church, her white wedding dress emphasising a large bump.

As I remember it, the elder girl went to university in the late 1960s, working in a jam factory (fine on day one, horrid by the end of the week) in the holidays. So I would have put her dob around 1948.

Out of curiosity, I searched for them. The youngest child has a relatively uncommon name, and I've found her. I went on to check births... and there are only two. No sign of anyone resembling the middle child born between 1946 and 1950.

What, however there is, is a birth of a girl with the right name, right district, born in 1945 (less than nine months difference from the boy) with a different mmn.

It looks as if she was actually a cousin - though possibly not a blood relation. The teacher's brother married before WW2. One girl born 1939, and her sister in 1945. I assume he divorced. Ancestry trees only show a second marriage in 1948.

If I'm right, my parents would have known this middle child from when she was about seven years old. They would have seen a change of uniform when she was eleven. Even if they suspected anything unusual, they certainly wouldn't have shared it with me, but would I really have got the middle child's age wrong by three years?