Cissie felt her heart leap. ‘Yes, I’d like that – and if he should wish to meet me, the decision will be his then. If, of course, you have no objections?’ she added worriedly. The last thing she wanted to do was bring these good people yet more heartache. She fumbled in her bag then for the address she had written down and passed it to Mr Tate.

‘This is where I live, and thank you both for being so very understanding. My turning up out of the blue must have come as a very great shock to you and I wouldn’t want to cause any conflict between you and Hugh. After all, you have loved him and been the best of parents, whereas I never even got to hold him.’ Her voice faltered for a second.

Another coughing fit shook Emma Tate’s frail frame then and George and Cissie hastily rose.

‘We’ve taken up quite enough of your time now,’ Cissie said. ‘Strange as it may seem, now that I know he is alive and well, I feel as if a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders, even if he hasn’t turned out quite as you hoped he would. He has clearly been blessed with loving parents and I couldn’t have asked for more for him, so thank you from the bottom of my heart!’

With that, she and George said goodbye to Mrs Tate then followed Mr Tate back into the shop. He shook their hands, opened the door for them and they hurried back to the car with Cissie taking great gulps of air.

Once they were on their way home, George dared to ask, ‘All right, are yer, pet?’

Cissie wiped a tear from her cheek but she was smiling. ‘Very all right,’ she said. And as they motored on their way, Cissie spent the time trying to build a picture of her errant son in her mind.

‘You mark my words, this could end in war,’ Tom observed worriedly as he sat reading the newspaper in the kitchen at Treetops one morning towards the end of June 1914. Banging and hammering was echoing from the hallway where workmen were installing a telephone and everyone was very excited about it. It seemed incredible to think that soon they would be able to lift a receiver and have a conversation with someone who was miles away. George had to raise his voice to make himself heard. ‘The heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated on the twenty-eighth of June by a young Nationalist while they were on a visit to Sarajevo.’

‘I can’t see how that would cause a war or involve us,’ Cissie commented as she refilled his cup with fresh coffee, deciding that she must look at an atlas to find out where these places were.

‘I just hope you’re right,’ Tom muttered but the headline preyed on his mind and he had a bad feeling about it in the pit of his stomach.