I thought long and hard whether to send this. Whether to risk trying to find out what happened to you, my first love and, of course, to my son, who I knew only for the first three weeks of his life. Suffice to say, not an hour of any day in the last fifty-five years have gone by without thought of him. I have lived the bulk of my life with a piece of my heart severed and, hopefully, living a happy life in England. After the war, life under the Soviets was indescribably hard. Every day, a battle for survival. I wanted to try to find you, but as time went on, it became impossible and I also came to believe it would be for the best for you and Stanley, if I stayed out of your lives. But I am getting older every day and I do not want to go to my grave not knowing what happened to my son, and of course to you, dear Walter. And so, here I am.

There is no quick or easy way to sum up the last fifty years. For the most part, I suppose, one just gets on with the day-to-day business of living and working. I try not to think of the war years, full as they were, of terror and hardships and the communication restrictions. I try not to think of the horrific years that followed, and the trauma rendered by our Russian occupiers – a conversation for another time – but once that passed and life became tolerable again, I did, you will be pleased to know, go back to finish my education. Unlike the Hitler years, the communists allowed us women some modicum of equality of opportunity, even though it was more a question of necessity, than a true vision or openness of spirit.

But it did mean that, after some years, I was able to realise that dream of becoming a doctor. Not quite the type I once envisaged, no, but one rather desperately required. I became a doctor of psychotherapy, now retired. I worked all my life with children, trying to put back together the pieces of broken minds. In so doing, I went someway to nurse my own. And one other thing I achieved, of lesser importance but no less meaningful: I overcame my fear of water! I used to swim every day during the summer. Each time I did, I thought of you and how you would have been proud. It made me smile to think of it.