Episode 15 Family Finders

Families can be driven apart for all manner of reasons.

Oh, I had no information at all about where my mum went.

And when you do lose touch with your loved ones...

You don't know who you are, where have you come from.

..finding them can take a lifetime...

I might have a brother that's still living here.

..especially when they could be anywhere - at home or abroad.

And that's where the family finders come in.

From international organisations...

Hi, it's the Salvation Army Family Tracing Service.

..to genealogy detective agencies...

For someone to say that it's changed their life, it makes coming to work,

you know, really, really special.

..and dedicated one-man bands.

It's a matter of how much effort you really want to put into it,

how badly you want to solve the problem.

They hunt through history to bring families back together again.

Finding new family is wonderful.

In this series, we follow the work of the family finders.

Suddenly, you get one spark of breakthrough and there they are.

Learning the tricks they use

to track missing relatives through time.

I didn't think I'd ever find sisters but I have.

And meeting the people whose lives they change along the way.

I've been waiting to meet John my whole life.

Since we've met, I feel part of a family again.

You've just completed my life for me.

In the UK, thousands of people embark on searches

for long-lost relatives every year.

No two searches are ever the same.

Sometimes, one new piece of information

can crack a case wide open.

And other times, one single spelling mistake can hamper a hunt forever.

Today, we follow Jeannie and her daughter Sarah

whose whole family mystery unravelled with a well-judged hunch.

After 25 years of searching,

the euphoria that I felt is just indescribable.

And we meet Graham, who almost gave up

the convoluted search for his sister.

Perhaps I'd been raising my hopes far too high

and that it turns out that...

somebody somewhere along the line has got it wrong.

Jeannie Taplin was born in the Midlands in 1942,

and was brought up by her mother, Willy.

My mother had told me that my father had died during the war.

And I think I accepted that.

There were quite a lot of widows with young children.

And it wasn't until I got older that I started to question.

When I was about ten,

I think I must have been asking my mother questions

about why I'd got the same name as her,

you know, not my father's

and she eventually decided that it was the right time to tell me

that my father was still alive

and that a gentleman who I'd known as Uncle Steve,

who'd visited whilst we were living in Birmingham,

wasn't an uncle at all but was my actual father.

Ten-year-old Jeannie discovered her father, Uncle Steve,

was, in fact, called Alexander and originally from Finland.

He had arrived in England in 1917 and adopted the name Steve.

Jeannie didn't imagine she would ever see him again.

Four years past, then one day,

Jeannie's mother announced that her father was waiting outside.

As I walked out of the house towards the car,

I really didn't want to be doing it.

I didn't...

He was a stranger to me.

I didn't know what we would talk about.

However, after their first meeting,

Jeannie and her father stayed in touch

and began to see each other more often.

He asked my mother if I could go and stay with him for a fortnight

during the summer.

He really spoilt me during that time and took me out to nice places.

It was a lovely experience because I did feel then

that I was getting closer to him.

But Jeannie's delight in getting to know her father

soon turned to disappointment.

He stopped visiting and disappeared from her life again.

It was devastating to be honest

because that was the second time he deserted me.

You know, once as a baby and then again

as a teenager.

It made me question, "Is there something wrong with me?

"Am I not a lovable person?"

I then met my husband.

We married and after we'd had our first child,

I felt this need to try and contact my father again,

wrote to him and he actually came to visit me.

This time, they stayed in touch by letter for a number of years -

until once again, Alexander disappeared.

I became annoyed with him because I had written and hadn't had a reply

for quite some time, longer than he would usually have left it.

But I got a reply from his third wife

saying that he'd died six months previously.

Life carried on for Jeannie

but something her mother had once told her kept playing on her mind.

At some point when my mother was talking about my father,

she mentioned that some years previously he'd been married

and had a daughter.

Jeannie had an older half-sister but knew absolutely nothing about her.

As the years passed,

she found herself thinking more about this mystery sibling.

Especially in later life when I started travelling more

and every time I was in an airport,

I used to think, you know, "She could be here."

Luckily for Jeannie, she had an amateur genealogist on hand to help,

her daughter, Sarah.

My interest in genealogy began when I did a school project

at the age of 13 and we were asked to compile a basic family tree.

My great aunt, my mother's aunt, came to stay with us

and she had heaps of information on the maternal side.

The hobby very much turned into an obsession.

Like Sarah, many people are turning family finder themselves

to look for long-lost relatives.

When beginning a search yourself,

start with the resource closest to hand - your own family.

The very first thing I do,

and this is a piece of advice I give everybody who's starting out,

is find the oldest person in the family and talk to them

and do it today because they might not be there tomorrow.

Ask them what it was like growing up,

what are the secrets they've got.

This is the great thing about old people -

they don't care any more so they're quite happy to tell you

all their secrets.

There is truth buried in a story

and you want to capture that, first and foremost,

and use it as a jumping-off point before you dive straight into the records.

If you just dive into the records,

it can be quite a dry experience.

But if you're diving into those records trying to back up the story,

those records have a dimension for you

that they just don't have for somebody else.

Sarah started searching for her grandfather

with the few facts about him that her family knew.

Most importantly, Sarah learned that

some years after arriving in England,

Alexander was naturalised and became a British citizen.

Along with his full name,

that should have left a paper trail Sarah could follow.

I was always told that his name was Alexander Leonard Roden,

which was his naturalised name.

But Sarah's search didn't produce any results.

Her grandfather and his other daughter remained a mystery.

In fact, it took 25 years before Sarah found the key

that unlocked this family puzzle.

I was on the National Archives website, Discovery.

I thought, "I'll give my grandfather's name a go again."

So I put in his name, all three names,

including the middle name - Alexander Leonard Roden -

and nothing came up, so I took out the middle name,

and suddenly his naturalisation certificate

and the application for naturalisation came up.

The euphoria that I felt is just indescribable.

After 25 years of searching,

to finally have that piece of paper in front of me

was just indescribable.

The naturalisation certificate showed Jeannie's father's real name,

Alexander Rautanen.

There was one person Sarah desperately wanted to tell -

her mum, Jeannie.

Sarah phoned me and said, "I've found him."

And she said,

"I know what his name is

"and the reason we couldn't find him before was

"because we'd been looking under the wrong name.

"And for that reason, we kept hitting dead ends."

I couldn't believe it that,

at last, it was all coming together.

But that wasn't all Sarah found.

Now with the right name, the information floodgates opened.

Within two hours of finding out my grandfather's real name,

I was able to find his first marriage, his second marriage.

I found bankruptcy records, I found divorce records,

all manner of records, and I did not get up from the computer

until about ten o'clock that night.

I probably did 12 hours straight.

Her searches also confirmed Jeannie's suspicions.

Alexander had had another baby, 18 years before Jeannie,

a daughter called Muriel.

I phoned my mother again and I said, "You did have an older sister.

"She would have been 90 this year."

I never for a minute thought that she was still alive.

Of course, 90 isn't old these days but it never crossed my mind.

It had taken her 25 years

but Sarah had finally succeeded in tracing her mother's family.

But there were more revelations to come

and the journey would take them to the other side of the world.

In Essex, 66-year-old Graham Holloway

also had a long and challenging search for a sibling.

His story began with a difficult and unsettled childhood.

As far as my birth mother and father are concerned,

I have no real recollection of them at all.

It was deemed by Southend Social Services

that it was not a safe place for us to be with them

and consequently, it was determined that we should be taken into care.

In 1951, at the age of two,

Graham was sent to live in a children's home in Southend.

I can remember arriving and being impressed

because the home had a series of swings and roundabouts.

But initially, very, very bewildering.

So, all of a sudden from being an individual within a sort of family,

I was suddenly thrust into a place where I knew nobody.

But Graham wasn't the only new arrival

at the children's home that day.

His three-year-old sister, Lynda, had also been placed in care.

We didn't have very much contact at all

because boys and girls in those days were very much kept apart anyway.

Especially in an institution such as a children's home.

The amount of contact we had with each other was minimal.

Graham found it difficult to settle at the home.

I absconded from the children's home at least three times,

such that the police were alerted and so on and so forth.

During their time at the care home,

Graham and his sister Lynda were fostered by several families,

sometimes alone, sometimes together.

Lynda and I, initially,

they tried to foster us out together but ultimately it didn't work

because, A, we didn't always get on together,

brothers and sisters don't always, do they?

And plus they had other children as well, and they, on some occasions,

thought that our behaviour was disruptive to their family.

Eventually, Lynda was permanently fostered

and Graham never saw her again.

I cannot remember how old I was or how old she was,

but all of a sudden she was no longer there.

It really was quite tough,

because I didn't really have any other friends.

I knew all the other lads are there,

I knew some of the other girls there,

but it's not quite the same thing as having your sister there.

Each time that I'd been fostered out

I'd never actually stayed for more than half a school term.

I was very resentful of chopping and changing,

being placed here then moved then placed somewhere else.

You thought, "Am I ever going to get out of this situation,

"or am I destined to be in the situation for the rest of my life?"

Eventually, Graham was able to put the years of hardship behind him

and find the stability he craved.

At the age of ten, he was officially adopted by a young couple

who had been fostering him, Robert and Joan Holloway.

It was a very, very happy home with the Holloways.

Very happy. I'm sorry they're gone.

Joan, my mother,

had had five miscarriages, so a child to her was everything.

And that's why she was the way she was with me.

She though, "I'm lucky to have a child."

And I was lucky to have a mother.

And father.

Graham thrived in his new life.

Eventually, he left home, trained as a teacher and started a family.

But he never forgot about his sister, Lynda.

I'd always wondered about Lynda and her circumstances,

what became of her,

but I was not really going to do anything to search for her

whilst Mr and Mrs Holloway were still around.

So I wasn't offending or showing little respect

for what they'd done for me.

It wasn't until six years ago,

almost six decades since he had last seen her,

that Graham finally began the search for his sister.

My aim is to find Lynda because she's the only sibling I have.

There is nobody else.

I got hold of her birth certificate,

which established what her full name was.

But when Graham tried to trace Lynda, he drew a blank.

I spent the best part of two years, possibly even more,

searching for the correct Lynda

and there was always some impediment

or something wrong with the information I was getting

in that the name I had found was incorrectly spelt,

the middle name was incorrect

or the year of birth was incorrect or the place of birth was incorrect.

I was looking at it on a day-to-day basis for a couple of hours per day

but I kept coming up to dead ends.

It is very wearing, very frustrating.

After years of disappointment,

Graham's search for his sister ground to a halt.

There would always be something that was not quite right.

There was always something that didn't tie in.

Ready to call it all off, he made one last attempt.

This time he brought in a professional family-finding company.

When Graham got in contact with us,

he hadn't had any contact with his sister in over 50 years

and he had absolutely no idea what had happened to her.

He only knew that she hadn't been adopted

because he had a copy of her original birth certificate

and when someone is adopted it does state on there

that the person's been adopted.

Lynda's foster parents had never formally adopted her,

meaning Lynda should have kept her surname at birth, Burchell.

But neither Graham not Dave could find any trace of that name.

Then Dave had a breakthrough.

He discovered Lynda had changed her surname herself.

It's quite common to see somebody

taking on the surname of a foster parent or perhaps a step-parent.

That's quite common to see.

For instance, in this case, we found she'd changed her name to Lynda Green.

We then looked for a marriage record.

Now, this was quite interesting because we did find one

but Lynda's name at birth was spelt with a Y in Lynda

but the marriage record we found on the index

has indicated that it was spelt with an I.

But we continued to look at that person and what we found was it was definitely the right person

but it would have been an error on the marriage indexes,

which is quite a common thing that people should look out for

when they're searching because quite often there are errors and mistakes on these records.

And the search didn't get any easier.

Dave discovered Lynda had married twice again,

which meant two more name changes.

I think the breakthrough moment probably came

when we found somebody living in Shoeburyness in Essex,

which is where we'd known Lynda to last be,

and she had the first name Lynda spelt with a Y.

She had the middle name of Jane and the exact same date of birth.

That really... At that point, we were fairly confident

that she was the right person,

we just needed to go away and investigate her a little bit further

to make sure that she tallied up with all the information.

Just a couple of weeks later, Graham got a phone call.

When I got a call to say that they had actually located

a last known address, I could not believe it.

I thought, "After all the time I've spent doing it

"and yet they've done it in a couple of weeks."

Without any delay,

I sent a letter off to her and gave her all the details that I had.

But after a search that had already led him down so many dead ends,

Graham was cautious about his chances of success.

I was, obviously, in some sort of trepidation

in that perhaps I've been raising my hopes far too high

and that it turns out that somebody somewhere along the line

has got it wrong.

It's the wrong address or the information is not valid

or that somebody didn't want to know about it.

You know, it's all a long time ago.

So what. It's all over and done with.

Tear it up. Throw it away.

All Graham's years of searching now rested on one letter.

120 miles away in Southampton,

Sarah Walker had succeeded

in her 25-year quest to find her mother's blood relatives.

The culmination of half my life's work is just wonderful.

But, assuming that her mum's half-sister, Muriel, would now be dead,

she turned her attention to tracing Muriel's children, instead.

Having found out that Muriel had seven children,

I then started investigating each child

and I found marriages for six of them

and I found the births of their children.

It was very exciting looking at names

that were going to be my cousins,

and it all... It made it very real for me.

However, Sarah was about to receive some extraordinary news.

I was updating records on Ancestry

and was contacted completely out of the blue

by an ex-relative of my aunt who announced that she was still alive

and that she talked to her on a fairly regular basis.

Jeannie's half-sister, Muriel, was alive and living in Australia.

Sarah couldn't wait to tell her mum.

She then called me and said, "Wait for this, I've found your sister."

And, erm...

And she said that she lives in Australia

and she's been married three times and has seven children.

It was a lot to take in.

You know, it's incredible.

Sarah e-mailed Muriel immediately.

I first wrote to Muriel

on the eighth of May at seven minutes past ten.

At 20 past ten, I received my first reply.

"Dear Sarah, I can't begin to tell you how exciting this is,

"to find that I have an extended family,

"the sad part is that we have only just found out. If only I'd known."

To finally make contact

after so many years of searching for information on her father,

my mother's father, and knowing that she finally existed...

just wonderful.

A feeling of completion...

..and...and disappointment because we hadn't met before.

My aunt got to the age of just short of 90 years old

not knowing she ever had a sister.

Just a day later and Sarah received a phone call

from one of Muriel's sons, Franz.

Franz and his brother Ricky are two of Muriel's seven children.

They stayed in the UK when their mother moved to Australia.

Mother was like...

-a mother hen. She...

-Mother was very protective.

Very protective.

Their mother, Muriel, had been abandoned by her own mother

as a child.

Her mother walked out one day and said goodbye to her.

She told her to go next door to a neighbour

and that is the last time that she ever saw or heard from her mother.

Shortly afterwards, her father placed her in foster care.

Nobody sort of wanting her, not a lot of love given to her.

I think Mother's past shaped her future

of how she dealt with everything in her life.

Out of her hard times,

she's tried to give us good times and she's done a good job.

She was missing a lot of affection in her early life.

Therefore, when we came along as children,

we were smothered in affection and love by our mother.

-Yeah.

-Yeah, she was.

What she had missed she wanted us to have.

Mother would be forever darning the backsides of our trousers

because we used to come home with holes in everything all the time.

We'd go scrumping and she'd take the apples home

and she'd tell us off for scrumping

-but make an apple pie.

-THEY CHUCKLE

I don't think anybody could have asked for a better mum.

Muriel grew up in the UK with her foster family.

She emigrated to Australia in 1978 where she has lived ever since.

She wasn't aware she had a younger half-sister

until Sarah got in touch out of the blue.

She was so excited.

She was like a child. She was bubbling with excitement...

..to find her sister at her age - I mean, she was then 90, I think -

to have lived that long and not known.

We even lived a few miles apart at one time in Birmingham

and not known about each other.

As Muriel was halfway round the world in Australia,

Sarah and Jeannie never imagined

they would ever meet her face-to-face.

I was planning my 50th birthday party in June

when I heard from Muriel

that she was thinking about coming over for four months.

"Could we meet up?"

I said to my mother, "Let's hold a family reunion for Muriel

"and as many of her children and grandchildren

"and great-grandchildren who can come."

I was really excited.

You know, the thought that we were actually...

We'd spoken but the thought that we were actually going to be able

to talk face-to-face.

It was incredible.

When I heard my aunt arrive, I went straight out and gave her a big hug.

-Oh, dear.

-It's wonderful, isn't it?

-I know - absolutely wonderful.

-And amazing.

-'I felt such a huge bond with her.'

Somebody was filming us

and then I brought her through and they met for the first time

and there were tears all round.

It was as though we'd known each other for a long time.

I hadn't thought that meeting a sister could be...

..quite so emotional.

It did feel as though it was a real relationship.

I couldn't believe the similarities visually

and I think the fact that

they developed a sisterly bond now is amazing.

In the end, I had to ask them to stop hugging each other

because it made me cry every time.

I've never seen so many tears shed from two ladies.

A really happy time for my mother

of which I am completely thankful...absolutely thankful for.

I don't remember seeing her cry so much or so happy.

That day when Jeannie and Mum met

must have been one of the most memorable days of her life.

It was wonderful and we talked nonstop.

That made me even...wish even more that I'd known her.

You know, when I was about 19 or so.

We would have had some fun, I'm sure we would.

Now the two sisters have found each other,

both have discovered a family they never knew they had

and they stay in regular contact via the internet.

Today, the two UK sides of the family are reuniting again.

Muriel's sons Franz and Ricky

are meeting their new-found aunt and cousin

to find out more about the grandfather

they never knew, Alexander.

-Well!

-Hello.

-Welcome.

-Thank you.

-Oh, it's good to see you.

-And you, darling, you all right?

-Oh, yes.

-Sarah, hello.

-Hello.

Oh, yes, I'm fine thank you. Lovely to see you.

-Are you all right? You're looking good.

-Thank you ever so much.

-You're welcome.

-Thank you.

Sarah's managed to track down a photo

of their mutual grandfather, Alexander.

When was the last time you saw your father?

Oh.

1966, I think.

Even as late as 1966, if he had just said something...

-Yes.

-Yeah.

-You know.

That's the first time I've ever seen my grandfather, yeah.

-Oh, wow.

-Yeah. Properly like that.

-Yeah, it's fascinating.

-Yeah.

Sarah's research has uncovered a wealth of information

about her, Franz and Ricky's grandfather,

including his request to become a British citizen.

So, this is the application for a naturalisation certificate

and we've got information here about exactly where he was born.

He sailed from Murmansk, North Russia.

He was an Ordinary Seaman,

-landed in Cardiff...

-That's amazing.

-..so it gives a lot of details here.

I can see that.

And if only I'd realised

exactly what information this would have given me,

I would have found you all a lot sooner.

-FRANZ:

-A lot earlier. Well, it's fascinating.

It's things we never knew about.

Mainly because we didn't know we had a grandad at all.

There's one other family member keen to join in today's reunion.

-MURIEL:

-Lovely to see you, Judy.

Oh, it's great to see you, Muriel.

We should have known each other years ago.

-Oh, 30 years ago at least.

-Yes.

-That's right.

-Yes. Yes. It should have been a long time ago.

We're making up for lost time, though, meeting up.

-Yes.

-It wonderful that we're able to talk to each other like this.

For me to have my two nephews here when five years ago,

I didn't know they existed.

It was nice to Skype tonight and the fact that we could do it together...

I was with my aunt and my mother

and the boys were with their aunt and their mother

-and it was really nice.

-Yes.

-It's been lovely talking to you again, Muriel.

-Yes.

-Absolutely lovely.

-Lovely to see you, as well.

-Yes.

-Yes.

That makes a difference, doesn't it?

Lots of love.

-Bye-bye.

-RICKY:

-See you, Mum.

-FRANZ:

-Bye.

-Bye, Muriel.

This has been beyond my widest dreams.

To be able to reunite my mother and her sister

has just been unbelievable.

I'm so glad that we have been able to meet all of Muriel's children...

-Yes.

-And to get on so well with them.

I am very thankful to Sarah for doing the work she's done

and finding out as much as she has done and uniting us all.

We've had nothing but positive things come to us

over the past four years.

Every single member of their family has embraced us as their family.

And it's been wonderful.

See you soon.

-Bye.

-Nice to see you.

Graham Holloway was trying to solve his own family conundrum.

He hadn't seen his older sister, Lynda,

since they were children living in care.

A family-finding company had tracked down an address for Lynda,

and Graham had written a letter.

Little did he know the address was out of date.

But this time, luck was on Graham's side.

Out of the blue, I got a message from my daughter

to say that a letter had arrived at her father's house,

addressed to me,

and it had my birth name on it and my new surname.

And she said, "I hope you don't mind, Mum," she said,

"but it looked rather important so I've opened it."

And she said, "Do you want me to read the letter to you?"

Which she did.

"Dear Lynda, Following several years of trying to locate you,

"I believe I may at last have done so.

"Do recall being taken into care as was I in 1951.

"Can you confirm that these details ring a bell?

"I apologise if I imposed but earnestly believe

"that I may finally have made contact with the right person.

"Please confirm this ASAP.

"Regards for the time being, Graham."

And I thought, "What shall I do here?

"Do I e-mail him?

"Do I telephone him?"

And I just took the bull by the horns and just dialled the number.

And he answered.

And I just said, "Graham, this is Lynda."

It was incredible.

Absolutely incredible.

That after 63 years or thereabouts,

we actually caught up with each other.

I hadn't spoken to Graham for 60 years.

At least 60 years.

He did say that he wanted to see me

and what was the best way to do it.

I said, "Great."

I said, "I'll be down to Southend in a shake of a lamb's tail."

And she said, "That won't do you any good." I said, "Why not?"

She said, "I don't live in Southend.

"I don't live in Shoeburyness."

I said, "Where do you live?" She said, "Cyprus."

Graham had finally tracked down his big sister -

60 years on and 2,000 miles away from where they last saw each other.

I can remember him as a little, ginger, curly-haired boy.

So I knew he was my brother but they kept us apart.

On a couple of occasions, Graham and I were fostered together

but, obviously, it didn't work out

because we were sent back to Seaview Homes

and then I was fostered, singly,

to my wonderful foster parents who gave me a good life.

It was a loving home.

My foster parents did everything for me.

I wasn't the easiest person for them to deal with.

But I'm very grateful to them for what they did for me.

But I never saw Graham again.

I think it would be completely different now.

I think they would make an effort to keep children together.

Not to force them apart.

The effect is that I spent all my life wondering

whether he was alive, whether he was dead.

It was always at the back of my mind.

Where was my brother?

"I know I had a brother. Where is he?"

I did go through procedures to try and find him.

Salvation Army, Southend Council.

All the normal routes that you'd take to try and get some history.

Salvation Army were very helpful

but said they could not give me any information

apart from the fact he was legally adopted.

I thought, "Well, there isn't any hope of me ever finding him

"because I don't know his surname.

"I've got nothing to go on.

"I don't know where he lives."

So it was a dead end for me so, really,

I left it although I never stopped thinking about him

and always hoped that one day he might just turn up out of the blue.

And 60 years after they lost contact,

that's exactly what Graham did.

And now he had finally found Lynda,

Graham wasn't going to let anything get in the way of their reunion.

Having discovered that I had the right person,

having discovered that she lived in Cyprus,

I told her that I'd be over there as soon as possible

in order to visit her and which I did

because I was there within a week.

As we walked through the baggage collection

and through to the arrivals lounge, as it were,

we saw each other.

Lyn was already on her feet

cos she'd spotted me from, you know, yards away.

And I just ran to him...

..and threw my arms round him.

He was crying, I was crying.

-Very emotional.

-Floods of tears.

All over the place.

60 years is a long time

but you never forget that there is another member of your family.

And it was so emotional.

I've never known anything like it before. It's incredible.

And still is.

After so many years, you just give up hope.

But this just goes to show, you shouldn't ever give up hope.

It's been two and a half years since Lynda and Graham were first reunited.

But with Lynda in Cyprus,

they can't get together as often as they'd like.

So they've planned a special trip to the hometown where they lost touch

over 60 years ago.

I do feel really nervous today.

A bit like the first time I saw him, to be honest.

Quite emotional.

And we've still got a lot of catching up to do.

We have both lived very different lives, I think.

And it would be nice to know

more about Graham's foster homes and when he was finally adopted legally,

which was, I think, probably a wonderful thing for him.

I can't believe it.

I cannot believe it.

-What are we going to find to talk about then?

-Oh, everything.

Remarkably, these two siblings both lived in Southend

for many years of their lives, not knowing the other was still there.

So today brings a chance to make up for lost time

and share their memories of the town.

I used to think that was France over there when I was a little girl.

Yeah, so did I.

I'd go, "Oh, let's go to France."

-Do you remember the... Was it The Ship?

-Yes.

That was there. That's gone.

Well, there used to be a pub about every ten yards along here.

-Or every 20 yards.

-There still... Well, there is cos there's The Fal... Well...

Yeah, The Falcon. Yes.

That used to be a boating lake over there.

-Did it not?

-Yes, it did.

-And there used to be a boat go out over to the other side...

-Kent.

-Kent.

-Yeah.

It turns out Lynda and Graham's paths may have crossed

without them knowing it.

For many years, Lynda worked in the bank on the high street.

Here you are, Graham. This is where I used to work.

-You're joking.

-No. I used to work here.

For heaven's sake, I used to drink in the pub down there.

We must have walked passed each other dozens of times.

Dozens.

It seems only right to pop into Graham's old watering hole to celebrate.

This is nice. Cheers.

Cheers to you.

Cheers.

Lynda's been tracking down their records

and it's the first time Graham has seen their fostering paperwork.

There's a few little things in here that are quite interesting.

The fact that the two of us being together...

-Yeah.

-..wasn't working out very well.

-Hmm.

And, basically, that I was stopping your chance of having a good home.

-Huh.

-So, they decided to leave you there and take me back to the home.

Did they, indeed?

At which time you were quite happily playing in the garden

with your toys.

Had you been you aware of any of this proposal at all?

No. It would appear that I was...

..the main culprit in our being separated

from what I've read from these notes.

See, it says here that I have outbreaks of temper,

which apparently I still do.

SHE LAUGHS

I got through. I got by.

You got through. You got by.

And at the end of the day, that's the important thing.

We are now who we are and we know why we are who we are

and we accept each other's thoughts.

And we can understand it more now because we know more about each other's movements.

Having my sister back in my life after a long, long time

has just been one of the most fantastic experiences of my life.

I feel like I now have the brother that I've not had for 60 years

and there's still lots we can talk about and lots of memories

and lots for the future.

I'm really proud to have you as a sister.

Oh, thank you.