How to recover contacts from a backup of a previous WLM version

I see many threads here regarding recovery of contacts, but none that seem relevant to my particular situation, so please excuse me if this has already been answered.

After a hard disk crash I rebuilt my system to this current state...

Windows 7 Professional, 64bit, SP1, WLM Version 2012 (Build 16.4.3508.0205)

I believe I was previously running WLM 2011, but am not exactly sure what version it was.

I have a user backup of my old system.

I have already recovered my folders and emails from the backup.

*** I now want to recover my contacts from the backup. ***

On the backup I can see a couple of things that might be relevant, for example...

C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Contacts\* - the edb files appear to be small and so i guess are 'empty'.

C:\Users\User\Contacts\user.contact - this appears to have some appropriate size.

I haven't used the Windows Live (cloud) contact facility, now or previously.

I do not have a csv export of the old contacts.

Hope you may be able to help.