TWO sisters who have never met spent time together for a fortnight in Teignmouth earlier this month.

Sue Sullivan, of Ashleigh Drive, and Carol Mitchell, from Ontario, Canada, were born in the strange atmosphere of wartime Britain – a time when the lives of many families were turned upside down.

Sue, born in 1940, and Carol, born in 1944, are daughters of the late Joan Fenn by different fathers, but it has taken nearly 60 years for their paths to cross.

Late last month, Carol flew to Exeter from Toronto to spend time with the sister she has never known. It also gave them the chance to reflect on the bittersweet, and sometimes painful, nature of their complex family history.

Both women are the results of wartime flings. Sue met her late father only a few times before his death, and Carol never knew hers.

Carol stayed with their mother, who eventually married a John Fenn. A childless couple adopted Sue.

'I was born Dawn Knowles-Johnson, my mother's maiden name, and lived in the Midlands with her for a while,' said Sue. 'But I was pretty ill as a child, and my mother felt, quite rightly, that I'd get a better deal elsewhere.'

Sid and Bina Goodman adopted Sue, and she grew up with them in Birmingham.

'They were wonderful, sending me to a private school, in fact, probably spoiling me,' said Sue. 'They retired to Teignmouth in 1960, and I've been here ever since.'

After the Goodmans died, Sue – a former town crier of Teignmouth and a longstanding member of the Teignmouth Players – decided to track down her natural parents.

'It was difficult doing the research, but I found my real father's name – Ron Perrott – on a piece of paper when we were clearing out my parents' home,' she said. 'He had been in the RAF and we traced him via St Catherine's House.'

Mr Perrott lived in Stroud, where Sue met him in a pub some 20 years ago.

'I recognised him because he was wearing a white carnation,' said Sue. 'I also discovered I had a half-sister on his side, called Joan.

'Apparently, my father had wanted to marry my mother, but she didn't want to marry him.'

Sue established that Joan Knowles-Johnson had joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) in 1943.

'I finally located her in the mid-1980s,' she said. 'She was living in Canada, where she had gone with her husband and family in 1956. By then she had two boys besides Carol – John, born in 1948, and David, born in 1956.'

But the risks of delving into a family's past were shown by what followed.

'I was thrilled to have found my mother, and paid for her to come to Teignmouth for three weeks in 1991,' said Sue. 'However, it turned out that we had nothing in common. We wanted to do entirely different things during her time here.'

They corresponded after that, but never met again. Sue and Carol's mother died in August this year.

'I've heard that one reason we went to Canada was because my mother was being chased by another man,' said Carol.

Another dark family secret to be revealed was that Carol's stepfather, who died in 1996, sexually abused her as a child.

'My mother did not want to know, and just turned a blind eye,' said Carol. 'She never looked after me as a child, and I had difficulty looking after her in her residential home until her death, but I did it out of a sense of duty.

'However, I've been blessed with a lovely husband, Bob, and two lovely boys, Mike and Wayne, and am expecting my first grandchild in December.'

Carol was the second of Sue's half-siblings to visit her in Teignmouth, following her half-brother John's visit a year ago.

Carol and Sue bonded immediately.

'We're already planning for Carol to come over again for a month next year,' said Sue. 'We had a lovely time, visiting Dartmoor, Exeter and other parts of the West Country.'

Sixty years on, it is good to know that to know that the two sisters are overcoming the years and the distance between them to forge a new relationship.