She tried once more. ‘Can’t I go and stay with Aunty Peggy for a week? I can, can’t I, Aunty Peggy?’ she asked across the tea-table.

Peggy, her cheeks turning a little pink, looked anxiously towards Esther. ‘Well, it depends what your gran—’

‘We need you here to help with the harvest,’ Esther said sharply. ‘It’s our busiest time and you’re old enough now to lend a hand where you can.’ She turned to look down at Ella. ‘All farmers’ children help. Always have done, always will.’

‘But I’m not a farmer’s child, am I?’ Ella glowered, her lower jaw sticking out moodily, the birthmark on her face clearly visible. ‘I want to go back to Lincoln. I want to go – home!’

She was aware that Peggy’s face was growing redder with embarrassment.

Her grandmother frowned. ‘This is your home now, Missy, and you’d better make the best of it.’

‘Why can’t I even go for a holiday? lf I can’t go now, what about Christmas or next Easter?’

Ella turned towards Peggy once more for support, but the woman’s eyes were downcast towards her plate and she was pushing the food around it as if she had suddenly lost her appetite.

‘We’ll see,’ was the only reply Esther would give. But the girl knew that this time her answer meant ‘no’.

When she went with her grandfather to take Peggy to the station the following day, her aunt hugged her closely and whispered. ‘Don’t fret, love, please. When you’re older, maybe she’ll let you come then.’

‘One day, when I’m older, I will go,’ Ella vowed, ‘and no one – not even her – will stop me!’

As the years passed, each school holiday the growing girl, now a pupil at the local grammar school, smart in her dark green and gold uniform, asked if she could go to visit Peggy in Lincoln and every time the answer was the same, ‘We need you here,’ until in the end, she stopped asking. Her questions about the family, about her own background even, were always silenced with a frown from her grandmother. Everything seemed to be shrouded in mystery, secrets that Esther would not share. Neither would she allow anyone else to tell Ella anything. Occasionally, she would hear her gentle grandfather trying to persuade Esther. ‘You ought to tell her, love. Where’s the harm? Kate would have explained it all to her by now . . .’

Always, when she asked about Esther’s early life, about the Elands or even made tentative remarks about the identity of her own father, her grandmother flew into a temper and, as she grew older, Ella ceased to question. But she never stopped wondering.