Sarah nodded, and when Ellen put her arm around her she leaned into her. It’s a gift, Bill Foster had said, so the gift had come down the family line from somewhere. She looked down the dark alleyway and she believed what Sarah and Bill had said, that this had once been the home of her ancestors before they moved to Holderness.

I hope they had a good and fulfilling life, she thought, pondering on the many branches of the family that must be scattered in all directions. We have come back to our roots, she thought, sure they would stay in this welcoming town. And, she realized with a flash of understanding, we have come home.

ENDING

In September Edyta and Karl were married in a quiet ceremony and had a merry celebration party afterwards where Ellen was able to meet up with Mrs Johnson, who was looking fit and well, and told her that she was pleased to see her daughter so happy.

In October came Lizzie and Roland’s wedding, a dignified service as they had both been married and widowed before, and Lizzie took flowers from her bouquet to lay on the resting place of two boys in the peaceful graveyard.

The wedding reception, as Ellen had guessed, was held in Mrs Lucan’s hotel, the Maritime, where the bride and groom were staying overnight before catching a train to Liverpool and then a ship to Ireland, where they would visit the fine city of Dublin before moving on to the country district where Roland had been banished from his family. His father must be long gone from this earth, he’d told Lizzie, but he lived in hope that perhaps there might be at least one brother alive and ready to welcome him.

And there was; Lizzie sent a postcard to say they were visiting County Mayo and had found not just one brother but two, both fishermen making their living from the wild and plentiful waters of the Atlantic who had greeted Roland with wide open arms.

Christmas Day was spent in the warm and cosy cottage, and whilst snow fell gently down outside their windows Ellen and Harry and their children, Lizzie and Roland and Bill Foster, spent a happy day consuming a golden goose provided by Roland, vegetables from Bill and a Christmas pudding cooked by Ellen some weeks before.

On Boxing Day, they invited some of their neighbours to visit them: Julia and her brother and her mother too; and the two sisters who proved to be not shy at all as Ellen had thought, but very merry and entertaining in spite of being almost penniless.