A SMALL box hidden in the house of a remote Italian town may not seem like the gateway to a double life.

But for Eleonora Ales it revealed that her grandfather had secretly fathered a baby with an English girl when he was an Italian prisoner of war at a farm near Darlington during the Second World War.

The love letters and faded photographs inside showed that as a 22-year-old soldier in 1942, Giovanni Caroli fell in love with the farm owner’s daughter, an English girl known simply as Daisy.

The couple enjoyed a love affair which Giovanni described as “the most beautiful year of my life”, and had a baby girl named Tonetta.

But in 1945 Giovanni was deported back to his town, Bernalda, in southern Italy, where he faced the "disaster situation" of looking after his blind parents and 12 siblings.

He chose to remain in Italy to help his family and never saw Daisy or his beloved Tonetta again.

70 years later, his granddaughter Eleonora is determined to trace Giovanni’s long-lost daughter.

The 31-year-old, along with her aunts and uncle, found that fateful box after Giovanni died in 1995 aged 75.

Eleonora,who moved to Leeds from Rome in January this year, said: "We were faced with a different country and a different language. We didn’t know even know where Darlington was.”

The family spoke to old friends of Giovanni to try to find the farm, and in desperation they even applied to a TV programme in Italy that traces family members.

Giovanni, who was born in 1920, married a year after returning to Italy and had three daughters and a son.

Though he never spoke of his past life, he confessed to his wife that he wished he could see 'Dasia' and Tonetta again.

When asked why he never returned, Eleonora said: “Giovanni's brothers were like his sons. He felt like they were his responsibility. He had to take the situation into his own hands and rebuild the village, rebuild his family.”

It did not help that, although beautiful today, 70 years ago the town of Bernalda in Matera was steeped in poverty.

“His house was maybe 4 metres by 4 metres and 7 people lived in it at one time. I don’t think you can imagine how poor Giovanni was.

"He had never been on a plane in his life and he could barely read or write.”

The search for Tonetta had appeared fruitless but now that Eleonora has moved to the UK and can speak English, the family feel hopeful again.

She, along with her partner Brian Davis, 36, has been researching farms that held Italian POVs in the Darlington area between 1942-45.

“I really regret not looking for this woman sooner. I don’t even know if she is still alive but after all this time it would be amazing to find her.”