Resolutely, she steadied herself and spread everything out on her bed. It was the letter that intrigued her: maybe that was the one her mother had received that had made her go off that day? But the crinkled sheets were just a blotchy wash of blue ink; not one word was legible.

She sighed and put everything back into the bag, holding each item in her hands for a few moments: Kate’s lipstick and powder compact, even the keys to Peggy’s house in Lincoln; they were all still there just as she had packed them away, undisturbed for six years. She closed the stiff fastener and laid the bag aside.

Next she carefully removed the folded garments, one after another, until she came to a square box. She lifted it out and carried it back to her bed and tried to lift the lid, but the box was locked.

Back at the blanket box she leaned over, scrabbling to the very bottom amongst the clothes, a box of books, a cardboard box in which she found an assortment of baby clothes, but there was nothing in the way of a key which might fit the small box. She leant against the chest and stared at the box on the bed. There was something niggling at the back of her mind. She could remember searching for the key before, and when the police had brought Kate’s handbag back, she had been sure that it would be there. She recalled her disappointment when it wasn’t. But there was something else, something she ought to know, but Ella just couldn’t pull it to the forefront of her mind, and the more she tried, the more elusive the memory seemed to become.

Sighing, she packed all the clothes back into the chest, and, lastly, put the small polished wooden box back, but on the top of all the other items. She closed the huge lid of the chest and began to undress.

Sleep did not come easily. Her mind was too full of all that she had heard from her uncle Danny that day, her head full of pictures of the places they had visited, the memories he had evoked, not only for himself but for her too. Memories of her lovely gentle mother; of life in the little house in Lincoln with Aunty Peggy. There had been just the three of them, cosy and secure in their little world with never, as far as she could recall, a cross word between them. She couldn’t remember ever being in trouble then with either her mother or Peggy.

Was it only since she had come to Brumbys’ Farm that she had become a wild, rebellious, naughty child, forever in disgrace with her strict grandmother?