Mo stared at her brother, a pink flush gradually creeping across her face. ‘We didn’t know!’ she said indignantly. ‘We thought he’d forgot all about us.’

Sam groaned. ‘I’ve been a rotten dad to you, both of you,’ he said remorsefully. ‘But I’ll make it up to you somehow. Now let me finish my story.’ He smiled across at his in-laws. ‘I know you’ve heard all this before, but I dare say you won’t mind listening to it again,’ he said. ‘Or if you need to be doing other things you could leave me to tell it for the second time.’ The Griffiths, however, exchanged an affectionate glance and shook their heads.

‘It’s a complicated tale,’ Taid said. ‘Confusing, like. No harm in hearing a repetition, hey, Mother?’

His wife nodded. ‘Fire ahead, Sam,’ she said.

Sam Trewin took a deep breath, thought for a moment, and then began. ‘Once I had regained my memory and knew that my darling Grace was dead and my children were coping alone, I got a berth on the next ship heading for Liverpool.’ He smiled at Jimmy and Mo. ‘When we docked I signed off, for I meant to get work ashore and look after you myself. I went straight to Solomon Court, and you can imagine my horror when I went to number four and the door was opened by a slovenly woman with greasy hair whom I scarcely recognised; she seemed much fatter and more unkempt than I remembered. Perhaps I should have taken warning, but all I cared about was that this woman had looked after you – fed and clothed you – for over a year, when I had abandoned you. So, foolish though it seems now, I was truly grateful, and believed everything she told me. I asked where you were, and it was then that she told me you’d been kidnapped. I did not stop to ask myself why anyone should want to steal a couple of penniless kids, but headed straight for the police station, and if I hadn’t walked slap bang into Nutty I’d have reported you missing there and then.

‘But Nutty enlightened me. He said that Mrs Huxtable was a wicked old woman and her son was worse. He told me Cyril had near on broken Mo’s arm once, and had been ranting and raving at Christmas about getting his hands on you both, but then his ship had sailed without him and now no one knew where he was. I didn’t know what to think, still less what to do, except to carry out my original intention and report you missing, only I said it was definitely Cyril Huxtable who had taken you. But then I had a stroke of luck. I met an old pal who had a second-hand clothes stall and he told me that Cyril thought Mo had stolen something of his and that he was after your blood. Good old Harry knows a liar from an honest man and he didn’t believe a word of it. He took you kids to the Salvation Hall and handed you over to a Major Williams, and within a couple of days you had disappeared.’ He glared at Glenys. ‘Don’t you understand? If you’d not paid for the kids’ tickets and taken them off into Wales I would have sorted the whole thing out, but before I could do anything you, Miss Schoolteacher, had whisked them away.’