I get up from the bench. I’ve made no decision in my head, but my legs seem to be carrying me there. I turn the corner by the hotel and walk fifty metres down the road until I come to the address Linda Keller wrote down. It’s a large wooden house in a similar style to others in the village. There’s a gate with a trellis of bright red flowers growing over it in an arch. Beyond is a garden that seems to extend from the front around the right-hand side where I hear some noise.

I walk a bit further and stop when I see a man bending over a patch of soil. He’s planting something in the flowerbeds, and the clatter of the trowel on the stone path he’s kneeling on is the noise I heard.

I retreat a few paces so he doesn’t see me, and watch.

He picks up the trowel, digs a hole, drops the tool on the path, picks up a plant from a polystyrene container and puts it in the hole, scoops in soil, drops the trowel again, pushes the soil into the hole with his hands. Repeat. I can only see the side of his face but he looks about the right age. His hair is short and almost completely white. He’s wearing jeans, a faded T-shirt and sunglasses.

I want to ask him so much: Who are you to me? Are you my father? Is Julia your daughter, the person who lived my life? Do you know what happened back then to give me my life in the UK and Julia hers out here? But I feel paralysed. Transfixed by this man who as yet is oblivious to my presence. All the grief and searching and wondering and heartache of the past few years are concentrated in this point in time right here. I can open the box, or I can tape it up and leave it be.

I’m still debating which path to choose when he stands up, wipes his brow with his gloved hand, turns his head and looks right at me.

JULY 1976 London, UK

SYLVIA

Rosemary and Bob’s story wasn’t an unusual one: they met at a dance in June 1926. By July they were engaged, married in August and their first child, George, named after the King, was born nine months later. ‘You want to know the key to a successful marriage?’ Bob had whispered when Rosemary was in the kitchen making tea. ‘Just say “Yes, dear” and do whatever the hell you want.’ Sylvia had smiled back at his beaming face, ignoring the squeeze of her knee he delivered as he said it. It pleased her greatly, towards the end of the interview when Rosemary was showing her out, to hear the seventy-two-year-old woman’s own marriage tip: ‘If you want him to do something, just make him think it’s his idea.’