‘So you didn’t really examine the contents?’ Albert asked, and Tess thought his glance was uncomfortably searching. ‘Well, no one is going to go through it until we’ve had Edie’s permission, and she won’t be fit enough to decide for a week or two. So in the meantime, Tess my dear, I’d be happier if I kept the folder under lock and key in the little safe set into the wall of the stockroom. Is that all right by you?’

Tess was puzzled. Why should Albert assume that Gran had secrets which had to be locked up in a safe? Did he know something she did not? The drawer of the Welsh dresser had been good enough for Gran. But when she asked, Albert only replied that the landlord had keys to the flat and would doubtless be taking the prospective tenant around. ‘I know you sleep in the flat, but you aren’t there all day, queen,’ he explained. ‘But my shop is rarely unoccupied, which means no one is likely to go rifling through your gran’s papers.’

Tess saw the sense of this, but when she went to bed that night she lay for some time staring up at the ceiling and wondering, wondering, wondering. Was it possible to alter a birth certificate? But why on earth should anyone do so? It seemed downright ridiculous to her.

However, she slept at last and woke sluggishly when the street noises became too insistent to be ignored. Her first thought was that this was probably Jonty’s last day in the city. He had explained that though he could have stayed a couple of days longer, he thought it would be unfair on his parents. They would be harvesting their wheat and other cereals any time now – the weather had been hot and sunny for the whole of Jonty’s stay – and now that her grandmother was out of danger the moral support he had offered, though eagerly accepted at the time, was no longer necessary. Tess got out of bed and wandered over to her washstand. Presently she would go into the kitchen, make herself some porridge, brew the tea and then go round to ask Jonty how he would like to spend his last day. She rather thought he might like to take a river trip, though he would doubtless compare the Mersey unfavourably with his beloved Broads; she knew he missed the countryside and complained that the air of the city made him sleepy and lethargic, so a trip on the water would blow away the cobwebs.

She was standing in front of her washstand vigorously splashing, for already the day was hot and the cold water was a positive blessing, when she remembered her grandmother’s birth certificate, and as though her mind had been busy thinking it out whilst she slept the solution popped into her mind even as she began to apply soap to her flannel. Gran was not her gran, but her mother! That would explain the age anomaly. But no sooner was the thought born than Tess had to kill it. If Gran had been her mother she would have acknowledged the fact joyfully, if only to Tess herself, knowing how Tess had longed and longed for a family of her own. She had even asked Gran to tell her everything she knew about her mother, whom she could barely remember, and now that she looked back she could see how little Gran had actually known. If my mother had really been Gran’s daughter, or if Gran herself had been my mother, then Gran would have told me a great deal, if only to keep me quiet, Tess said to herself. ‘Perhaps Gran is my aunt, or perhaps we’re just cousins, cousins who have a big age difference. But now that I’ve seen the birth certificate I won’t rest until Gran is well enough to answer a few questions.’