He sighed. ‘I thought ya gran might have calmed down a bit.’

The girl shrugged her shoulders. ‘She’s still mad about our trip out yesterday.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make matters worse.’

‘I don’t think you could,’ she said wryly. ‘Anyway, can you spare a minute?’

‘Of course.’ He paused and then added softly, ‘More questions is it, lass?’

She held out her hand. ‘Uncle Danny, do you know why Mum would keep this?’

On her open palm lay the large whelk shell; a simple seashore shell, unusual, perhaps, in its size but an ordinary shell none the less, and Ella was totally unprepared for the extraordinary response it evoked in the man who stood looking down at it, mesmerized.

‘Where . . .?’ he began, his voice hoarse, and she was shocked to see sudden tears in his eyes. ‘Now would you believe that?’ he murmured, more to himself than to Ella. ‘Fancy her keeping that all these years.’

He picked up the shell and held it tenderly, looking back down the years, remembering. ‘We were only a couple o’ kids when I gave her this. I’d just left school and she was being sent away to boarding school.’ He looked up at Ella. ‘Ya gran was trying to keep us apart even then, but we didn’t know why.’

‘Was that when she went to Aunty Peggy’s in Lincoln?’

‘Eh? Oh, she met them about that time but she didn’t go to live with them until later, after we found out that we were brother and sister.’

‘Then she went back again to live there when she had me, didn’t she?’

He nodded. ‘Ya gran tell you that?’

Ella shook her head. ‘No, I found some letters and photographs. Uncle Danny, I think one of the men in uniform might – just might – be my father.’

Danny was staring at her, then he nodded slowly. ‘It’s possible. Probable, I suppose, when you think about it.’

‘Uncle Danny, I want to go to Lincoln to see Aunty Peg and, if I can, Mavis. I want to try to find my father.’

‘Now, hold on a minute, love. You’ll only upset your gran even more.’

Ella’s chin was determined. ‘Surely she can’t object to me wanting to find my father?’

He sighed and fingered the whelk shell, his thoughts still half-way in the past. ‘You might be stirring up more trouble and disappointment for yourself. What will happen if your father has a family – children?’

‘I’m his child, too.’

‘How are you going to prove it, though? Have you got your birth certificate?’

‘I – I found it last night amongst Mum’s papers.’

‘Does it give your father’s name?’

She shook her head, unable to speak. She didn’t want his reasoning to be right, but she knew it was.