All that really matters - Campbell Armstrong

Campbell Armstrong met his first wife Eileen in Glasgow when they were both young. She was Jewish, the only daughter of an Orthodox family, and lived in the Gorbals. When they married, Eileen showed Campbell the scar on her belly - the result of a Caesarean birth at 17. The baby had been given up for adoption and Eileen got on with her life.;The couple subsequently had three sons, and moved to America where Armstrong followed a career as an academic. He was also a drunk, a drug user and a belligerent partner, but though their marriage foundered, the pair remained good friends. Years later, when Armstrong had remarried and moved to Ireland, his son received a call from Eileen: she had cancer and was dying. The family flew out to America to see her. At the same time, far off in a Yorkshire house, a 40-year-old woman was trying to trace her mother. She was Barbara - her mother Eileen.;After many hitches, the two found each other and the awful truth was revealed, that Barbara, too, had cancer. What carried the two women through was their remarkable, positive personalities and - overall - an abiding love and integrity. This is a memoir of the story of the two and their lives apart and together, from Campbell Armstrong.