The silver watch lay hidden, buried beneath gold trinkets and beads, where it had not been disturbed for decades.   

She opened the box, sifted through the beads, and found the watch. For the first time, her hands held it almost reverently.

In her teenage years she’d worn the watch for a while; it still worked back then and had a trendy, chunky look. That was more than sixty years ago, and she hadn’t given it much thought since then.

But the world of the present, was a long way from Annie’s past. Technology had opened windows onto times and facts long forgotten, if they’d ever been known at all.

If she hadn’t looked for the family name in the online repository of past newspapers, she wouldn’t have discovered the sad story of Annie’s life; the story nobody talked about. She remembered her great-grandmother as ‘Old Nana’, but in family photos there was often a pensive, sorrowful look in Annie’s eyes; now she knew why.

She read about the man who abandoned Annie after the birth of their first child; how he married her four months before the birth of their second child to avoid arrest for desertion; and how he abandoned her again and married in another country, a year later.

As she held the watch she felt the strength and courage of her great-grandmother, and was sure she had inherited not just the watch, but some of Annie’s strength and resilience as well.

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