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 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.

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 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. I went for a meal and was talking to another friend who convinced me I should, so that night I did.” The 67-year-old was dumbfounded, and says she had believed she was an only child after her older brother David, died when she was 17. Joan said: “I have a friend who also lived in Salford and told me about the group, I found it and I thought I should post something in there but I didn’t.Joan says there was a missed opportunity when she was growing up to meet her dad which she has regretted ever since.

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 knew he was there for my birth so I knew he would have held me and I think that connection always remained." 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. So much so that Jean gifted Joan their father’s driving gloves which she wears to feel close to him.Joan said: “Jean has been so generous. She’s let me into the family and given me things that belonged to my dad. She said: “I always felt like there was something inside me, I felt as though there was a thread connecting me and my dad.” The pair had grown up a couple of streets away from each other in Salford, but neither knew the other existed. 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.