‘I may as well tell you everything now,’ her mother said resignedly and lowering her eyes she began, ‘I met your father when I was about the same age as you are now and it was love at first sight.’ Her eyes took on a dreamy look but pulling her thoughts back to the present she went on, ‘I met him in the marketplace one day. His name was Michael Farthing and he was a few years older than me. He was so handsome,’ she sighed as she reached up to stroke a lock of hair from Holly’s flushed cheek. ’You remind me so much of him. He was working for a local farmer because he told me that he wanted to see something of the country so was travelling about finding work where he could …

‘Anyway, within no time I knew that he was the man for me so I told your grandfather about him. He went mad. He had brought me up single-handed since your grandmother died when I was eight and we’d been happy enough, although your grandfather never really got over her death. He and my mother were very close. Father had given me the best education that he could and I think he had hoped for a good marriage for me.

‘In the end I invited Michael to dinner, but from the second they met they didn’t get on at all. Michael thought your grandfather was a snob and your grandfather told me that Michael was a waster and that I’d never do any good with him. Of course, I was young and foolish and didn’t want to listen and then …’ She lowered her eyes again here and looked ashamed. ‘And then I discovered I was going to have a child. I’d explained to your father early in our relationship that I would shortly be coming into an inheritance from my late grandmother and he said he didn’t care, that he’d marry me without a penny. And so we ran away. I lied about my age and we were married quietly in a little church in Wales. Michael found work on a farm and we lived in a tiny cottage; it was a two-up, two-down place but I loved it, and for a while I was happy. But within weeks he started to ask when I would come into my inheritance. He started to drink too, staying out late at night and coming home drunk. One night he became aggressive and hit me, but the next day he begged me to forgive him and swore that it would never happen again.

‘I wrote to your grandfather then to tell him I was married and to ask when I might get my inheritance and that was when the real trouble started. When Father wrote back he informed me that my grandmother had left a codicil in her will stating that I should receive my inheritance only when my grandfather thought I would spend it wisely and he told me that for as long as I stayed with Michael he would ensure that I never received a single penny.’