Now she was on her own, Hazel decided to use the dining room table to spread out all the papers from her mother, so she’d be able to see where there were gaps. The family tree had been compiled before the advent of the internet; she’d be able to access all sorts of new information now. It made sense to start with Alice Gale. It was Alice after all who’d started the family off here in Australia. Over the weeks which followed, Hazel read through all the papers concerning her ancestor. There were a surprising quantity of them: William’s letters from the Crimea, tied with papery old ribbon; his later letters, so different in their tone, harsh and inflexible. No wonder his wife had looked elsewhere for affection. There were a handful of letters from Edward Nolan, who was to become her husband; correspondence from the friends and relations in England she had left behind. Hazel found that she looked forward to the evenings, now that she was absorbed in the lives of these people. She understood why her mother had become so absorbed by family history: it was like being a detective, unearthing clues, joining the dots, following a trail. After she’d prepared her evening meal, eaten and cleared the things away, she would make herself a cup of tea and settle down in the dining room. She’d pulled the chairs out so that papers relating to each individual could be put into separate piles on their empty seats.

She began to augment her mother’s records with research of her own. She tracked down a copy of the marriage certificate from William’s second wedding, to a woman whose name was given as Mrs Sarah Lockwood, née Gregory. A widow, she’d been. She found, too, the birth certificate of their daughter, Harriet. Neither of these were strictly a part of her research into her ancestry, but still: Harriet’s descendants were her and Karen’s cousins, albeit distantly. But the dates on these documents caught her interest. This second marriage had taken place in the same year that Alice had set sail for Australia. Gale had clearly been in a hurry. Turning to Harriet’s birth certificate revealed why. The infant had been born only two months after her parents were married.

Had Mrs Lockwood’s pregnancy already been known to him, when he divorced Alice? Was Harriet in fact his own daughter, or had this Mrs Lockwood been expecting at the time she was widowed? Here was a little riddle. Each possible answer showed Gale in a very different light: he could be a scoundrel who had begun an affair while still married to Alice, or a cuckold who had gallantly given his name to a poor widow’s child. If she could track down the date of Mr Lockwood’s death, she’d have more to go on.