Lord Montague assured Giovanni that he had arranged everything so Mother, Father and Lara had all the necessary papers to sail in comfort aboard the Queen Mary from Southampton in February. Whilst I cannot begrudge Mother and Father going to the aid of Aunt Rachael and all those who have suffered and now have nothing, they have still stolen my dear daughter from me. For she has been gone already for a whole month, likely never having had the measles, and so on hearing this news I cried openly, howled even, without giving a damn if my distress unnerved Lord Montague.

Grace could bear it no longer and so closed her laptop and stifled a gasp. Pressing her hand over her mouth, overwhelmed at the surge of emotion she felt on reading of Connie’s pain, she let tears trickle down her face and spill onto the table in front of her. How could they? How could Connie’s parents be so cruel as to take her child away? The betrayal enraged Grace. The matter-of-fact way this pompous-sounding Lord Montague had ripped Connie’s heart in two by telling her what he had done. For he did do it. He sent Lara away, whether it was unwittingly or not, he still did it. And so yet again, Connie was let down … no, much more than that, she was deceived by her spiteful, unfeeling parents who clearly had absolutely no regard for their daughter’s feelings or wishes. Let alone those of her child, their grandchild.

How did this separation affect Lara? Did they even care? And did she even know that Connie was coming for her, to love and cherish her at the start of what could have been a wonderful life in Italy, surrounded by love and people who knew how to have fun and to laugh … not be stuck with a pair of puritanical control freaks thousands of miles away. For it wouldn’t have been like it was now, with flights to America whenever the fancy took you. No, Connie would have been bereft, knowing that it might be years before she could see her only child again. And indeed it was so, because Grace was now convinced that Connie and Giovanni had gone to America to visit Lara, to give her the necklace for her bat mitzvah on her twelfth birthday. So if Lara was born in 1940 and was six years old in 1946, then it would have been another six years before Connie would see her. That’s if she was even allowed to see Lara, but what if she wasn’t? What if Connie’s hateful parents had prevented her, and that’s why she returned with the Star of David necklace and hid it away in her jewellery box …?