Vivienne Gambin was barely two years old when her father Toninu Aquilina was murdered 65 years ago in a crime that drastically changed her life and that of her mother.

She was robbed of a father figure and sent to a boarding school as her widowed mother, Catherine, was left alone to deal with her sick eight-month-old sister Maria, who died a year later.

Despite everything, Vivienne insists that hers is a story of love.

“All I can do is love. It’s all I know how to do,” says a humble Vivienne, now 66. But the journey was not easy.

The 1955 murder of Vivienne’s father, 36-year-old Toninu Aquilina, had shocked the nation and became known as the Għallis Tower murder.

On February 24, 1955, Aquilina, an employee of the Malta Millers Association, went missing. That morning he had gone on his routine trip to the National Bank of Malta in Republic Street, Valletta, to deposit cash and cheques. But he never reached the bank.

On March 9, 1955, his corpse was discovered by members of the Civil Defence on a training exercise near the Għallis Tower at Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq. His body was found in a well. He had been shot in the neck and had an internal lesion on his right thigh likely made by a syringe.

A year later, a bank cashier was found guilty of the murder and condemned to life imprisonment. But due to various amnesties, he left prison after eight years.

Vivienne Gambin: “All I can do is love.”

“This is the only thing that angers me sometimes – that my father’s life was only worth eight years. Then again, nothing can take back what happened… What’s for sure is that one act affected the lives of so many people,” says Vivienne who insists that the cashier – who has since passed away – is not named “not to hurt his family”.

Vivienne pieced the story together as she grew up and overheard people pointing at her and saying she was the daughter of Toninu. All she knows about her father was that he was a kind, respected man.

“I don’t remember my father. But I still miss never having had a father figure,” says Vivienne. Her voice shakes: “I still get emotional because it still hurts. This is why I don’t usually talk about my story,” she says as she looks at her youngest daughter Alexandra – who has taken the opportunity to attend the interview to hear her mother talk about the past – a story she rarely revisits.

Nothing can take back what happened… What’s for sure is that one act affected the lives of so many people

After the murder, Vivienne’s mother, Catherine, focused her energy on taking care of Vivienne’s younger sister, Maria, who had Down Syndrome. Vivienne spent most of the time bouncing from one relative to another. It was decided to send her to St Monica boarding school in Mosta to ensure a stable upbringing.

Back then she could only go home once a month and her mother visited every Sunday. At the school she picked up a passion for music and piano, through Sister Beniamina Portelli and Mro Victor Zammit who “were my salvation during those difficult times”.

Meanwhile, her mother remarried and had twin daughters. But two years into the marriage, Vivienne’s stepfather got sick with an illness that dragged on for nine years – when he passed away. Her mother fell into a depression, and Vivienne, who moved back home when she was 15, helped raise her two stepsisters, one of who had a heart condition, and  gave private piano lessons to earn money for the family as the only bread winner.

The story as reported on Times of Malta in 1955.

Meanwhile, Vivienne met Walter Gambin. The couple moved their wedding plans forward so they could travel together to the UK to accompany Vivienne’s stepsister who had to undergo heart surgery. She was 20 when she married Walter, and the couple went on to have three children – Robert, Steve and Alexandra – and four grandchildren.

Eventually, as her twin sisters grew and moved out, her mother lived alone. Then, in 1997, after suffering a heart attack, her mother moved in with Vivienne and her family, giving the two women the long-awaited opportunity to bond.

“We spent our lives looking after each other. But she never spoke about what happened to my father. She was scared to hurt me, and I didn’t want to hurt her. But she did talk a lot about my father and how they met,” said Vivienne with a smile.

Vivienne’s father was a clerk from Valletta and her mother was the daughter of a farmer from Gudja. Even though she did not know how to write, her mother was polite and intelligent, having been raised by her uncle who was a canon serving at St Paul Shipwrecked church in Valletta.

When Vivienne’s mother Catherine was 18, her uncle passed away and she moved back with her parents, where she was expected to work the fields. Since she was the only surviving child of 13 siblings – from her father’s two marriages – he did not want her to marry.

But fate had different plans. Friends from Sliema invited Catherine to join them at a friend’s wedding, at the Corinthia in Attard, to matchmake her with a certain Toninu Aquilina – who she married when she was 32 years old.

“My mother passed away six years ago, aged 94. She was a beautiful person who knew how to love. She had such a tough life. I know that everything she did, including accepting to send me to a boarding school, she did out of love,” says Vivienne, to which her daughter adds: “And you do the same as her.”