Growing Up in Salford, 1919-28

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She said: “I always felt a connection to my dad, he and my mother split up when I was very young, but I always felt that he loved me. So much so that Jean gifted Joan their father’s driving gloves which she wears to feel close to him. I just became aware at the age of 19 that this woman existed, normally I’d be really happy to find out I had a sister, but there was something about this story that I knew I couldn’t go looking into. There’s this status from this lady and she started saying these things like her maiden name being Harris, like mine, where she lived, that her dad was a bus driver.

Over the years I’d think about her, and they weren’t always friendly thoughts because I’d ask myself why she hasn’t tried to find us.” The pair have been making up for all those years missed connecting the dots and introducing kids and grandkids to each other. A woman who grew up thinking she was an only child has discovered she has a half-sister - who had lived just 15 miles away from her. Joan eventually got married and moved out of Salford to set up her life down south with a husband and two children in her mid twenties.She said: “I always felt like there was something inside me, I felt as though there was a thread connecting me and my dad.” So one day, she decided to post on a Facebook group called “We grew up in Salford” asking if anybody knew of her father. On a family holiday, her father had mentioned he had been married before and had a daughter who was ten years older than her.

Jean said: “He just came out with it one day and that was basically it, he wouldn’t really talk about it much, and I got more information off my mum that he wasn’t allowed to see his daughter. I had to read it several times, and the best thing about it for me was that she said she was so sad that she didn’t know my dad.But Jean said that was all his father or mother Annie ever said about the situation, and she was hesitant to ask more, after realising it was a contentious topic. Joan said: “Jean has been so generous. She’s let me into the family and given me things that belonged to my dad. I went for a meal and was talking to another friend who convinced me I should, so that night I did.” I knew he was there for my birth so I knew he would have held me and I think that connection always remained."