After Alexander Sirnis's death his widow, Gertrude, received a final sum of £25 from Dr Hagberg Wright on behalf of the London Library. In order to make ends meet, Gertrude Sirnis, with a son of sixteen and two daughters of six and four, took in lodgers, did some typing for local firms, gave piano lessons and taught Spanish in the evenings. She also worked for her French brother-in-law, Jules Valois, who owned a market garden at Hedgend, in return for vegetables. Although not a communist Jules Valois throughout the 1920s subscribed to L’Humanité, the newspaper of the French Communist Party.

In 1923 the three children, along with their mother, moved to Thornhill Cottage, Bitterne, in the borough of Southampton, sharing a house and garden with their aunt, Theresa Valois, her husband, Jules, and their two children. The house was large enough to accommodate both families comfortably. In many respects their lifestyle appeared idyllic and recreated that of Tuckton House. The coach-house had a stable where Gertrude kept goats, an orchard with chickens and a vegetable garden. They made their money by selling fresh herbs and vegetables to liners docked at Southampton, delivering their produce by horse and cart. The junior and secondary schools were not far away and Melita and Gerty attended Westend Infants School, where they were allowed to arrive later than the other pupils to avoid the scripture lesson. Their mother insisted on this because Sasha had wanted his children to grow up without a bias towards religion. In 1923 Melita won a scholarship to Itchen School, a mixed secondary school, where in 1928 she became school captain and the originator of a school joke which continues to this day: ‘Why is the River Itchen? Because it has a current in its bed.’

Gertrude Sirnis joined the Labour Party in Southampton and remained in touch with William Paul and other friends of her late husband who had joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1920. She remained in close contact with the new manager of Tuckton House, Stanley Carlyle Potter, author of a book on the Russian Revolution, who lived with a young Russian woman called Holah. In 1921 Gertrude worked with the Society of Friends (Quakers) on famine relief during the devastating Russian famine of that year, and made contact with Willi Munzenburg's International Workers’ Aid.