She ran her fingers round the box, feeling its polished smoothness. Then at the side, she noticed two tiny ring handles and pulled them up. The whole of the top of the box lifted out to reveal another, deeper, compartment below and Ella’s eyes gleamed. In it lay a bundle of papers and letters. And on the top sat a huge, perfectly formed whelk shell. She picked it up and cradled it on the palm of her hand for a moment. Now why on earth, she pondered, would her mother keep a whelk shell? She placed it beside her on top of the quilt and then, with mounting excitement, Ella began to look carefully through each item.

The first was her own birth certificate, and as she opened the long, stiff paper, she found she was holding her breath.

Now, at last, she might find out . . . But under the heading ‘Name and Surname of Father’ there was nothing written, only two lines drawn across it. Ella groaned aloud and then clapped her hand over her mouth. For a few moments she stared wide-eyed at her bedroom door and held her breath. But there was no sound of the other door opening and her grandmother’s voice demanding, ‘Now what are you up to, Missy?’

She looked down again at the long paper in her hands. It gave details of her birth. She hadn’t realized before that she’d actually been born in the terraced house in Lincoln, she mused. Then her mother’s name, Katharine Hilton. Here was the stark proof that her mother had never married, even though Ella remembered people in Lincoln calling her ‘Mrs’ Hilton. Somehow until she saw it written plainly before her eyes, there had always been a last vestige of hope that maybe her mother had been secretly married and he’d been killed in the war. Maybe . . .

But no, she thought, she really was what her grandmother called her.

She folded the certificate and laid that to one side too.

Next she lifted out a packet of letters. On the first envelope the address was written in bold, yet neat, handwriting. Ella bit her lip, hesitating a moment, feeling suddenly guilty at prying into all her mother’s secrets. Yet she had to know, she had to find out about her father. Surely, her mother wouldn’t have minded? Surely by now, as Uncle Danny had suggested, Kate would have told her everything, if only she had still been here to do the telling?

Sighing softly, Ella untied the ribbon holding the letters together and opened the first one.

My Dear Kate

I have settled in well here, but it is not a patch on my previous posting. I hope you are well – I do miss our little chats.

I expect Lincolnshire is looking a little wintry at the moment – no fields of rippling ripe corn. My current driver is not nearly so efficient at changing a wheel in the dark.