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. 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. 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. So one day, she decided to post on a Facebook group called “We grew up in Salford” asking if anybody knew of her father.

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 started working at 15, and I would take the number one from Langworthy Road to Pendleton Church and then the bus to Manchester.

On a family holiday, her father had mentioned he had been married before and had a daughter who was ten years older than 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. 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.

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 says there was a missed opportunity when she was growing up to meet her dad which she has regretted ever since. She said: “I always felt like there was something inside me, I felt as though there was a thread connecting me and my dad.” 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. 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."

But, the post from Joan Constantine, spoke of her father, Jim Harris, who Joan only knew had driven tanks during WW2 and had gone on to become a bus driver in Salford. The pair have been making up for all those years missed connecting the dots and introducing kids and grandkids to each other. The 77-year-old mum-of-two who now lives in Berkshire, says she always wanted to know more about her dad but was unable to because of her ‘controlling’ mum who sadly passed away in 2014.

Joan said: “Jean has been so generous. She’s let me into the family and given me things that belonged to my dad.