I have to admit, when I first looked at my DNA results I thought it was a lost cause. I apparently have more than 33,000 matches in the database. How would I ever make sense of the sea of DNA matches with people I have never heard of?

So I shut the tool down, opened it again, shut it down again, had another look and then gave myself a good talking to. It can’t be that hard, surely. Just breathe. Find a little strength and trust that Edna will guide me through this mess, after all, her name is E- D. N. A. !!!

Step one. Let’s see what bits actually make sense. Who are my top ten best matches? Are any of the names familiar? At the top of the list is my mother’s cousin. Good. I could rule her out along with anyone she and I share matches with because I’m looking for matches from dad’s side. That eliminated a massive total of… three, great. Only 32,997 to go.

Step two, share some of these mysterious names with my cousins on dad’s side of the family. Second on my list and a very strong match is my first cousin’s daughter. I am completely embarrassed that I didn’t know her name. (Note to self, be in touch with my cousins more often!) The key thing here is that this is a cousin on dad’s side, and we are both descended from Edna. That helped me to rule some matches IN.

Step three, talk to people who know what they are doing with DNA. My good friends, Alison and David, have both been mucking about with ancestry DNA for ages and they gave me some excellent ideas. Bit by bit, digging and sifting through the logic of it all, the mess started to make a little bit of sense.

When it came, the breakthrough seemed so obvious.

“Have you tried searching for matches that have your important surnames in their trees?” Well, duh! Why didn’t I think of that?!?

On the basis of my years-long belief that Edna was somehow a Dorney (I blame that photograph), the first name I searched was Dorney. A big, fat NOTHING was the result. None of my matches have Dorney in their tree.

Next, the name on Edna’s birth certificate, a name that I’ve often thought was made up – Willock. That yielded a single result from a low DNA match – my 4th to 6th cousin, according to the tool. I clicked on that member’s tree, not expecting to find anything helpful.

You’ll remember I have been trying to understand this Edna Willock Dorney puzzle for 20 years so I know a Wellington Willock when I see one and there in that tree, where I shared some DNA with a 4th to 6th cousin, was a Wellington Willock family that I was very familiar with. I’d looked at those names a hundred times.

I reached out to that match and got a massive surprise when she contacted me almost straight away.

“I’m trying to find May Willock of Wellington and she doesn’t seem to exist.”

And then my 4th to 6th cousin said something that made me feel very, very amateur at this genealogy thing that I consider myself to be quite proficient at… “maybe May is her middle name or a nickname”.

I’m always suggesting that to other people when they are blocked – why had I never thought of that myself?

Over the next 48 hours, between my two DNA ‘experts’ and my new 4th to 6th cousin, we pondered and searched and mapped and theorised. I really can’t believe how many hours we each put in, trying to solve this thing once and for all (thanks guys!).

There were a lot of Willocks in and around Wellington in the era that Edna was born. I had looked at their records often over the years, wondering, but I had nothing to base any theories on. This time I had DNA on my side.

I drew up a family tree for every one of those Willock families, working out how they connected to each other. Then I studied every Willock lady who would have been about the right age at about the right time to be May Willock.

Eventually, I narrowed it down to two Willock ladies.

Two sisters. Miriam and Mabel Willock.

Could one of these sisters be May Willock?