Emma sighed and looked at Jane. ‘After the crash we were both in hospital for some time, then our uncle looked after us for a week while he finalised the arrangements for us to go to St Cuthbert’s. The Mother Superior decided to change our names to Emma and Rachel Wilson. Rachel was withdrawn and isolated in a world of deafness, she needed me to support her, but after a year and a half I was sent to live with a family and Rachel remained at the home.’

Jane was stunned. ‘They split you up? Why on earth did they do that?’

‘They liked to foster children out whenever they could, though some siblings were kept together.’

‘After what you and Rachel had been through, I would have thought it crucial you were kept together.’

‘I still remember one of the nuns at the home telling me no one wanted a deaf and dumb girl to look after. Even though I was eight by then, I knew she was expressing her own feelings as well. I missed Rachel terribly and asked my foster parents if they would take me to the care home, but they told me it wasn’t a good idea as it would make me miss her more, and the same for her.’

‘You obviously kept looking for her, though.’

‘Of course . . . I eventually found out she’d been moved from St Cuthbert’s, but no one would tell me where. I was beginning to feel there was nothing else I could do. When I was twenty-one I worked as a seamstress at a dressmaker’s in Hackney and rented a single room in a bedsit. One day, out of the blue, a girl came up to me while I was in Woolworths shopping and started waving her hands at me. I hadn’t a clue what she was doing, until an older woman with her said she was using sign language.

Jane smiled. ‘Oh my God! Was it Rachel?’

‘No, the girl was with her mother and thought I looked exactly like a deaf friend of hers. It dawned on me she might have thought I was Rachel so I spoke to the mother, who told me her daughter had been a day pupil at the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb in Lower Clapton. It turned out Rachel was sent there from St Cuthbert’s, and it was a proper school where she’d been a resident pupil for years. The mother told me Rachel was still there and teaching sign language. I couldn’t believe we were living a mile apart in the same area and never knew it. I went straight to the school to see her.’

‘It must have been a wonderful feeling when you saw each other again after all those years apart.’