Shelly laughed. ‘I hope not, Dad. No, it’s for the museum in Kea. They’re looking for things to do with the Britannic. And this belonged to a soldier who was on the ship. They’ll love it!’

‘In that case, yer should look in me big chair in the loft. Lots of old stuff from Gertie in there. She said it was ’er mother’s sewing room before the war. The pigeon loft was outside in them days.’

‘You are kidding me!’ Shelly rushed upstairs, lighter, quicker, than she ever had before. Only weeks ago she had travelled to Greece, dull, depressed and desperate for a break. This time, she felt herself on the verge of a real adventure.

The loft chair was once an ottoman but, using a couple of pallets, Gordon had fixed armrests and a back to it. She often found him having an afternoon nap there.

Shelly flicked the light on and had to praise her father, the place was spotless as always. The loft ran the length of the cottage and was divided into two by a grille with a mesh door in the centre. This kept the birds contained in one half of the attic, and left the other half to Gordon and his pigeon paraphernalia.

She heard her dad’s footsteps on the stairs.

‘I can’t remember if I screwed the lid down,’ he called. ‘There’s a tool box in the tallboy.’

A few minutes later she was unscrewing the lid of the ottoman and found it had been carefully lined with oilcloth and was crammed to the top with fabric. The top half was curtains, table linen, and bedding, including an enormous candlewick bedspread which she laid out on the floor and organised everything else in neat piles on top of it.

‘’Ere, yer look like you should be on the market, Shelly,’ Gordon said with a chuckle.

‘Buy your bedding here! The best price, best quality!’ Shelly cried, playing up to his humour, sensing a little miracle had taken place with his recently uplifted mood.

‘Aye, wait a minute. I remember that thing,’ her father said, his face softening.

‘What, the candlewick?’

He nodded. ‘In them days – when me and your mum got married – you’d hand out a gift list to the guests a few weeks before the do and folk just got something off it. Yer mum put bedding and kitchen. Seems everyone got the same idea. We got no bedding except for five candlewick bedspreads, so we rolled one up for pillows, then used another one for a sheet, and had three atop of us. In the mornings we had candlewick fluff in our ears, noses, eyes, mouth and everywhere unmentionable. Then, we went downstairs and had breakfast: toast served up in one of our four stainless-steel toast racks.’ He was staring at nothing, face aglow with happiness, eyes sparkling. Shelly nearly wept for him.