Episode 8 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 you've 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 search for long lost relatives,

if finding a distant family member can be an extraordinary moment,

then finding a sibling can be a momentous event.

Across the UK, there are hundreds of organisations who specialise

in bringing brothers and sisters who have lost touch back together.

But many people decide to turn family finder on their own.

Today, we follow two stories of sisters who started out

by doing it for themselves.

First, we meet Jacqueline, whose quest to find out about her

birth mother uncovered a sibling she never knew she had.

Suddenly, there was someone in my life...

..who I could identify with, really.

I cried.

And it was my sister.

And we follow the story of Teresa and Tracey as they search

for the sister they haven't seen for 40 years.

-I've got butterflies in my stomach.

-Have you?

-What about you?

Uh, I've got a massive moth, I think.

Oh, this is getting almost unbearable.

Actress Jacqueline Clarke has spent a career playing out the fictional

dramas of other people's lives on both stage and screen.

Good Lord!

You haven't started throwing crockery at each other already?

Yes, it does take two - your husband and his secretary.

But the true story of Jacqueline's own family life has also taken

several dramatic turns.

She was born in 1942 and grew up in south-west London.

I remember my mother always, because she was a pianist,

playing in the morning, which was glorious,

so I was brought up with a lot of music.

Not that I understood much about classical.

And I remember going down to the local sweet shop with my father

because we had coupons in those days, it's just after the war.

While Jacqueline was still a young child, her mother revealed

something that was to change her world forever.

I was nine when I was told and she called me in from the garden.

She said, "Sit down, darling, I want to tell you something.

"It's something important. Your father didn't want to tell you,

"but I think it's important that you know."

And then she said, "Do you know Daddy and I adopted you?"

"Yes. What does that mean?"

So she said, "Well, I'm afraid your mother was a young girl

"and she couldn't keep you, darling, and we went and chose you,

"you're very special and we love you very much." All that went on.

And I said, "So, do you mean I don't belong to you?"

And she said, "Well, you do belong to us, darling, of course, you do."

I went to the bottom of the garden and sobbed.

I was...

..so disappointed that they weren't my real mummy and daddy.

And I thought, "OK, it's all right, you know, it'll be fine."

And I thought, "I'm not going to talk to them about it,"

because I know my mother found it so difficult to tell me

because Father really didn't want to tell me.

And I thought, "OK, it'll be all right."

OK, then got myself together and decided, that's it, I'll just go in.

I went in had tea and it was never spoken about.

Jacqueline's parents never mentioned her history again,

but as she grew older, she did glean some information about her past.

When I was going to France, I remember coming in

and I went up where my father was sitting

and I went over his shoulder to give him a cuddle and I looked down.

Now, I think it was a passport.

I needed my passport for France and he had written Valerie Wilson

and I looked at it and I said, "Who's Valerie Wilson?"

And he just...

There was a pause and he said,

"Well, dear, that was your name before you became Jacqueline."

I thought, "Oh, well, that was what my name was, forget about it."

During my teenage years, during growing up, getting married,

it never crossed my brain about even thinking about finding out

about my birth family at all.

It was only after that my father died that I sort of thought,

"Ooh, I might want to know about it," but I wouldn't have done

because Mother was still alive.

When she died five years later, then I thought, "Hmm."

So, in 1991, after the death of her adoptive parents,

Jacqueline began to search for her birth mother.

At the time, she was appearing in a theatre near

St Catherine's House records office in London.

Between performances, Jacqueline began browsing the family registers

for any trace of her birth mother.

I just looked through loads of marriages because I had figured

that if my mother had had me at, I believe 17, actually.

I didn't know she was 20, I believed she was 17.

And I thought, "Well, if she's had the baby and had it adopted,

"then she might meet somebody and then she might marry."

So, I gave a timescale whereby I thought,

"Right, I'll look between '43, '44 and '47."

My partner was a bit concerned that if I found my mother in 1991 -

and now I know that she was alive then - he said,

"How would you really feel, Jackie, if you are rejected again?

"In other words, you make contact, but she doesn't want to know."

It's a long process of crosschecking

and you have to keep applying for birth certificates, then if not,

you have to apply for death certificates

or go through an electoral roll to see if someone lives there

and it can be so daunting.

When the records failed to throw anything up, Jacqueline gave up.

Before the advent of the internet, trying to trace family could be

a lengthy and complicated endeavour.

If you were trying to do your family history, it would've meant

writing away, waiting for a response, taking a trip to look at

birth, marriage and death indexes.

And that would have meant for many, many people sometimes days

of travelling to get there and get back.

Only to go home, assess the information,

find out it's the wrong one and have to go back again.

But today, there are a wealth of family finding options

to suit all budgets

from bespoke search companies whose fees vary to charity-funded

family tracing units.

And with the rise of genealogical resources online, many people

are deciding to turn family finder themselves.

These days, what we can do online is we can condense months,

if not years of work into the turning of an hourglass.

You know, it is just so quick and easy to do that today.

You know, we talk about the democratisation of history and

I think that is what the technology has brought to family history

and history more generally.

Following the death of her husband in 2008, Jacqueline decided

to resume the search for her birth mother.

By then, the growth of interest in genealogy has opened up

a wealth of new resources.

I decided to find out about my past

when a friend, who was living in the Cotswolds with me at the time,

said she was going off to a family history fair in London

and would I like to go.

And I thought, "Ooh, that might be..."

I said, "Yes, of course, I'll accompany you," but I knew

in my heart that I would probably want to find out something.

Sure enough at the fair, Jacqueline found a genealogist

who was willing to take on her case.

I knew I didn't have time to follow the vast amount of work that

has to be done to finding it.

I was told it would take probably six to eight hours.

Eventually the genealogist hit gold.

It took eight months before I actually got a positive result,

but my birth family had been found and an aunt.

And it was her granddaughter, in fact, that sent a letter

to the genealogist saying, "Yes, my aunt does remember."

But there was even more exciting news.

The family finder hadn't just found an aunt.

My genealogist said,

"Are you sitting down and have you someone with you?"

I thought, "Well, why do I need that?"

So I didn't sit down and I didn't have anybody with me

and I rang and I was told,

did I know I had a sister?

Gobsmacked!

I don't know what to think, I didn't know what I felt.

I sat down, that's for sure, and I thought, "I've got a relative.

"I've got somebody in this life."

30 miles away in Reading, siblings Tracey and Teresa knew

they had an older sister out there somewhere, but she had disappeared

from their lives 40 years earlier when they were still children.

The girls grew up with their parents in Hounslow in London

and, for a few years, they knew nothing about another sister.

When we were children, it's only

forever felt like it's just the four of us and that was it.

I think we kind of were reasonably close because

of the upbringing that we had.

But one afternoon in 1974, a visitor to their home would alter

everything they thought they knew about their family unit.

We were about ten and seven, our parents, they'd gone out shopping

and I can remember before they went our mum said,

"If anyone knocks on the door, don't answer the door."

And lo and behold, there was a knock on the door

and this couple at the doorstep, and a lady with dark air,

that's all I can remember and they asked, "Is your mum and dad in?"

It was like, "No. Sorry, Mummy's not back.

"They'll be back in half an hour."

And then my mum and dad came back from the shops,

they greeted them as if they knew each other.

I can remember feeling as a little child thinking,

"How come they know them? I don't know them.

"I've never seen them before. Who's that?"

It wasn't until some months later that the girls learnt

the true identity of the mysterious lady called Lesley

who had turned up at their door.

Mum said, "How would you feel if Lesley was your sister?"

And being a typical little girl it was like,

"No. No, I wouldn't like that. We'll argue."

Then a couple days later, our dad sat us down and said,

"Actually, Lesley is your sister." He was married before.

-So, that was the first...

-That was the first we knew.

-Yeah.

Teresa and Tracey began to build a relationship with their

17-year-old big sister, Lesley.

It was quite exciting to know that we had another sister.

I used to love going round there and staying overnight.

I think they had a sofa bed thing and we used to sleep in the lounge,

didn't we? And I remember...

-Having Sunday dinner.

-Sunday dinner there, yeah.

We remember going to a function.

-We are assuming it was her wedding that we attended.

-Hm.

But Lesley didn't stay in their lives for long.

After Tracey and Teresa's parents moved house, they lost contact.

It was very difficult really because it wasn't long after that...

-I can't remember Lesley after that.

-Yes.

It's almost like she disappeared.

I mean, we've always remembered Lesley and we've spoken about her

quite a lot, sort of saying,

"We've got another sister out there somewhere, you know?"

As the years went by, Teresa and Tracey grew up

and started families of their own, but thoughts of their

long-lost sister were never far from their mind.

I've never kept it a secret that I've got another sister, Lesley.

It did feel like something was

missing because obviously, we had met her.

We've always wondered where Lesley was,

always wanted to know how she was and where she was.

So ten years ago, after taking up genealogy as a hobby,

Teresa decided to look for Lesley.

About 2006, I did approach my dad.

I actually sat him down and said,

"I'd really like to look for Lesley," and he said, "That's fine."

But he didn't give me much else to go on, really.

Teresa started with the two things she knew about their older sister.

First, her name at birth, Lesley Probert.

Secondly, because Teresa and Tracey thought they remembered being

at her wedding, they assumed Lesley had married.

I found her birth and I found her birth certificate,

but I was trying to find her marriage.

And we were pretty sure it was around 1974. I tried everything.

I thought maybe she'd reverted back to her mum's maiden name

or anything like that but no.

-We just drew a blank.

-We just drew a blank, yeah.

So I decided to start looking into Lesley's mum and found Rita

and our, our dad's marriage.

Unfortunately, because I couldn't ask anybody,

I hit a brick wall again.

Very frustrating because I got folders galore,

certificates galore, census galore,

but the one person I was really trying to find, I couldn't find.

Then in October 2015, something happened that was to make

their quest to find their sister all the more urgent.

Brian, the father they shared with Lesley, died.

I felt that she deserved to know that her dad had passed away,

whether she had a relationship with him or not.

You know...

I think you've got to know these things, haven't you?

We decided we needed some outside help

because I just could not find Lesley's marriage and...

No. We just hit a brick wall.

Desperate to find their sister, it was then that Tracey and Teresa

turned to a professional family finding company.

So when it came to Tracey and Teresa's search,

we fairly quickly confirmed that

there wasn't a match for Lesley with

the surname that she was born with.

We'd searched all the potential marriages and ruled those out.

So, at that point, we then started to look at her mother

and what she'd done after the separation from Lesley's father.

But would the professionals have any more luck in tracing Lesley

than Teresa and Tracey?

All this waiting and finally...it's going to happen, isn't it?

Oh, my God!

Television and theatre actress Jacqueline Clarke hadn't been

looking for siblings when she started delving into the

circumstances surrounding her adoption, but now it looked like

she had uncovered a sister she never knew she had.

I didn't cry, strangely enough, which I thought I might blub,

but I didn't and I thought, "Wow!"

But because that sister was an unknown being,

I didn't even think what she might look like,

I didn't think anything about it.

I just thought, "Oh, this is wonderful,"

cos I'd always wanted a sister.

And I thought, "Oh, this is another adventure and I've

"got to follow this one up."

The next stage was to make contact.

The genealogist wrote a letter to the woman she suspected

to be Jacqueline's sister.

70 miles away that letter landed on the mat of Sylvia Bowman.

When I opened it, that was a shock.

It was from an adoption agency

questioning if I could kindly help

because they were seeking some

relatives from a person named Valerie.

When I saw that name...

Well, I did, I cried.

And it was my sister.

Oh, yeah.

Sorry.

And this lady asked me...

..if I wanted to find her.

Anyway, yes, I did. She had given me a date.

I couldn't wait for two o'clock.

Then suddenly, the phone goes and it's two o'clock, dead on two

and I pick it up and I hear, "Could I speak to Mrs Gosney, please?"

And I went, "Hello, sister."

She went, "Oh, I don't believe it!"

It was my sister.

69 years later.

It was amazing.

And she's absolutely great. We must've...

We must've been on the phone for an hour.

After the phone call, I sat on the edge of the bed, I did have a cry.

INHALES SHARPLY

Cos...

SHE SOBS

Suddenly, there was...

..someone in my life who I could identify with, really.

And...it was a strange journey because I didn't know quite just

after a phone call, how do you know where that quest is going to go?

Jacqueline had found her sister and now they had made contact,

the sisters could start filling in the blanks about just what

had happened 70 years ago.

Sylvia was born two years before Jacqueline.

She was adopted at the age of four.

Being told I was adopted was because of my friend, close friend,

she was adopted too.

And so, I remember talking about her and saying to my mother that she

was adopted and I probably wasn't aware what it meant.

So then Mum chose to tell me that I was similar to her,

that I was adopted, they cared for me.

When Sylvia was born in 1939, her birth mother Margaret

had been 18 and unmarried.

Two years later, Margaret went on to have another daughter who

she called Valerie.

During the Second World War, Margaret met a US serviceman

who she started a new life with in America, but she couldn't take

her daughters, so she left them in the UK to be adopted.

As time wore on, well, I begrudged

Mum, my birth mum, you know,

for having at such a young age...

..decided to give us away.

Unlike Jacqueline, Sylvia was told she had a sibling

by her adoptive parents.

I was aware that I had a sister, I was aware that she was younger.

I was given a shoebox and it had a china doll in it.

And I remember naming that after my sister Valerie.

Later in life, Sylvia tried in vain to find her missing sister.

When I first wanted to make contact

with Somerset House was in 1990.

I regret not going any further and as it happened,

as it's turned out, it's, you know, absolutely lovely.

Now after 70 years apart, the two sisters were back in touch.

They wasted no time in meeting up.

My daughter was over from Italy and so excited for me.

"Toe curl," she used to say.

"Mum, it's terrific, it's going to be great." I went, "Ooh."

Anyway, I had my hair done, I said I'd wear my linen jacket,

I'd wear a yellow gerbera so that she would know it was me.

We were going up the stairs and my daughter as we just got to the

top of the stairs says, "Mummy, she's here."

Fell into each other's arms, that was it. Just spontaneously.

I can't believe it.

We hugged and we cried.

And then we went for a drink and we just stayed there for hours...

..just talking and laughing.

She is so lovely.

And it's been great ever since.

And she is such a live wire. She's lovely. And it just clicked.

You're never quite sure how long you've got to look at each other

cos I thought, "Oh, that's what you look like."

I was really chuffed. She looked great.

And we chatted from 11.30 to 3.45.

She's so pretty, my sister. Curses! But anyway, she's very lovely.

It's as if I'd known her for years.

No airs and graces, it was just so natural

and so lovely.

I didn't think I'd be so lucky. Yeah, it's come at a lovely time.

Now the sisters play a huge part in each other's lives.

It's another new chapter in my life.

A great chapter.

We exchange confidences. It's very easy to talk to her.

And we empathise a lot. There's a bond which I can't even explain.

Each time I go to the knock at the door and she shouts,

"My sister! My sister!" I think the whole street can hear that.

And yeah, we get on superb, superb life.

The newly reunited sisters still have lots to catch up on.

Today, they are meeting up again to find out more about

the years that they spent apart.

I have never seen photographs of Jacq's album and her life

and I've also brought a few of mine.

Really, from the time of five, I can't go back any further than that.

So, yes, it should be a giggle.

SHE GIGGLES

-Hello! Come in.

-Thank you!

-Sweetie, what you got? Ooh!

-Love you to bits! Come in, come in.

-Thank you.

-Come sit down.

Right, I want you to really understand what I was like

when I was first adopted, OK? Here we go.

-Oh, wow!

-SYLVIA LAUGHS

I'm just worried about my mouth being opened, but perhaps I was...

-Well, that's not... That's not old, is it?

-No.

-It's never been closed since, has it?

-How lovely is that?

But look, you've got to see this, which is hilarious.

That's what I'm really like now, though. Have you got one like that?

-A little bit older, I would say.

-Ah!

-This is in the same house.

It's great, isn't it? That's lovely. I do look quite sweet, do I not?

-Yes.

-Apparently I was a very...

One changes as they get older, don't they?

First time dressing up, dear.

Beginning of the theatrical career.

-Wow, this is you with long hair.

-Yeah.

-Gosh, how old were you there?

-15, 16?

-Oh, I would say a little bit older than that.

-That was me at school as a prefect.

-I was one as well.

-Were you?

-Yes.

-How long for?

-Three years.

I was meant to be a second year prefect and I walked into Ms Wade

and told her I was going off to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts

and she called it RADAR.

"Are you off to RADAR?" I said, "Yes, I am. Is that OK?"

And I actually left that morning and didn't complete a term or anything.

-This is in Weybridge.

-Is that you?

-Yes.

You've always remained a corker.

-Gosh, you were pretty, darling.

-I like that I was.

-And still are.

Somebody said to me, "You used to be quite attractive."

They said that to me other day. I said, "Thank you." Anyway...

-But the real ones.

-Ooh.

-Yes.

-And that's you there by the sea. Where did you go?

-Pagham.

-Yeah.

You ought to see the sort of caravan we stayed in.

-You stayed in a caravan?

-SYLVIA LAUGHS

-They're real old-fashioned, though, today.

-A little round one.

-Yeah.

-That was my mum.

-That's your mum? Oh, that's your mum.

That's Tess, the dog. That's...

-Is that your mother?

-It is.

-Ironing and she's got a fag in the mouth.

-I know.

My mother used to smoke, but she gave up.

No, Mum used to smoke a lot.

-Love the knickers. Look at that.

-No, that was a knitted bathing costume.

Every time I went into the water, it stretched!

-Brilliant!

-I know. It was yellow and brown. I felt like a bumblebee.

Not a good colour. How awful.

-It is that beauty competition?,

-Yeah, it was.

-Did you win?

-No, she did.

-Well, she's very buxy.

Today, the sisters are also taking the chance to make up

for all the birthdays they have missed out on together.

-Aw!

-Sister, this is your cake

you made for me, though.

-Well, it's... Our birthday's in February.

-February 5th.

And yours in a few days' time.

-In three days' time.

-Yes.

So we must celebrate it.

And you made this for me

and I am absolutely astounded by how beautiful it is.

-That's your artistry and I love you for that, thank you.

-Pleasure.

-So...

-BOTH:

-One, two, three...

Happy birthday.

How lovely is that?

Finally, the sisters have one last piece of their family puzzle

to put into place today.

They're going to see the house where their mother lived

when they were both born.

Are you looking forward to seeing where we used to live together?

Yes, I'm interested. I've never been interested before, but now I am.

-Mainly cos it's us seeing it together, though.

-Yes.

-Ooh!

-JACQUELINE CHUCKLES

Here we go.

That's where we used to live all those years and years ago.

-I don't remember a thing.

-You don't remember anything.

-No.

I couldn't even envisage where

-or what the house would be like, actually.

-No.

-We wouldn't be here if we hadn't got in touch, would we?

-No.

-Right.

Well, there you go, Mum.

We're back.

-Little did you think we would be.

-Yeah.

-Or even know about it.

So that's good.

Yes, I was actually born there, so that's a full circle now.

Wow, all these years later. 74, in fact.

Yes.

I find finding Jacq a whole new life,

a whole new venture for me and my family.

She is great.

Ooh, it has been a long journey, but it's been remarkable having met

my sister and I think we both needed to be here together today

and I think that will make it even more of a cemented thing,

that we actually know this is the place we both were

when we were very small.

Incessantly we say it's great to have found each other, haven't we?

Yes. Ooh, I'm so lucky, it's great.

We're both lucky.

And the fact that we get on so well.

Yeah, we do, don't we?

We laugh a lot, we chat a lot, we're everything...

And I just know we can always be together

and confide in each other and be there for each other.

Yeah. Always.

-Yes, we're proud.

-It's good.

Enough.

In you go, Sis.

In Reading, Tracey and Teresa's search for their long lost

half-sister Lesley had hit a brick wall.

Very frustrating because I got

folders galore, certificates galore, but the one person

I was really trying to find, I couldn't find.

After the death of their shared father,

they made one final attempt to find her

this time with the help of a professional family finding company.

There wasn't a match for Lesley with the surname that she was born with.

We then started to look at her mother and what she'd done

after the separation from Lesley's father

and found that she'd remarried in the 1960s and saw that

her surname had changed.

The researchers discovered that Lesley had officially adopted

her stepfather's surname.

This is why Teresa and Tracey hadn't been able to find her.

So, although this was a fairly short trace,

we did find an awful lot of information and there was

a lot to get through before we were then able to go away

and trace her to her current address.

The best part of our job is being able to phone our clients

and tell them that we've been successful in the search.

So it's wonderful for us to be able to do it because

we know how much it means to the people that come to us.

It was absolutely amazing because I spoke to her in the morning and

by the afternoon, she had found out what Lesley had changed her

name to and tracked her down and, yeah, found her within 24 hours.

It was just...you know, amazing.

-You phoned me, I was in the high street.

-Yes.

And I let out a big scream in the middle of the high street.

The family finding company contacted the Lesley they had found

to confirm she was the right person.

When I spoke to the lady on the phone, she said,

"Do you know this Lesley Probert?" I said, "Yeah, it's me."

"Do you know a Teresa and Tracey?" I said, "Yeah, they're my sisters."

And she said, "Thank God we found you."

And I thought they must've been looking for me.

I don't know how long they'd been looking.

Her first response was, "Oh, they're my sisters."

-And, I don't know, it just really meant a lot...

-Yeah.

..that that was her first response.

I felt really quite flattered that they wanted me in their lives again.

It was just... It was amazing. to think that she actually...

Well, right from that we knew she'd probably wanted to be in touch.

After making contact through the family finding company,

now the sisters could be put in touch directly.

I said, "Yeah, I do want to be in contact, yeah,"

so I gave her my e-mail address and it's just been constant.

We sent an e-mail just to sort of say hi.

We even worried about what to put in the subject line, actually.

"What shall we put, what shall we put?"

-And we just put...

-It's Teresa and Tracey, sort of thing.

-I think we were so more worried about putting her off, weren't we?

-Yeah.

There was no hesitation, no doubt. No doubt in my mind.

I thought, "Well...

"..I'm not going to reject them."

For the last two weeks, Teresa and Tracey

have only been in touch with Lesley by e-mail.

Much of their older sister's early life is still a mystery.

Lesley's parents, Brian and Rita, had married in 1954.

Two years later, Lesley arrived, but her parents split up

while she was still a toddler.

I can't remember them being together...

..cos I think I was only about two when they split up.

But I do remember going to my father's house where

he lived with my nan and grandad.

Years ago parents didn't divorce too often

and so I was sort of an outcast.

"Ooh, where's your dad, then? Why don't you live with your dad?"

And then I was bullied at school because of my surname.

So the kids used to say Probert the robot.

My mum remarried when I was six so my mum said,

"Do you want to change your name by deed poll?"

Think about it and she explained to me what's going on to do that.

And I said, "Yes."

From then on, everything was in the name of Cross.

Lesley's birth father, Brian, had also remarried

and had Teresa and Tracey.

Although the two families lived near each other, there was no

contact until 1974.

I was 17. I knew by this time that he had remarried and got children.

I think I just got up one morning and thought, "I'm going to go

"and see if they still live in Sunningdale Avenue."

I was intrigued to meet them.

Um, I think that's what made me go and knock on the door, really.

And I can remember Tracey answering the door.

She was only little and I thought,

"God, it it's like looking in a mirror."

I thought, "Yeah, I've definitely got the right house."

It's a little mini me standing there.

I was getting married that year.

I just really wanted them to be a part of it.

In my wedding photos, you can see Brian standing behind me.

You see a very small little head standing behind me.

It meant a lot for them to be at my wedding.

But her two half-sisters were soon to disappear from Lesley's life.

For a couple of years, they were part of my life and then,

I don't know, all of a sudden, they just moved.

There's not really much I can do about that

if they don't want to give me their address.

I never heard from him again.

I just put it down that he didn't want me in their lives, really,

so that's another reason why I didn't look for them.

I didn't really want to be rejected.

Lesley had no idea that Teresa and Tracey were looking for her,

until now.

I'm bursting, I'm busting to get to know them.

I mean, it's 40 years! That is so sad, isn't it?

That makes me feel really old. 40 years since I've seen them.

The sisters found each other just two weeks ago.

They still haven't met yet.

Tomorrow, they will see each other for the first time

since they lost touch all those years ago.

It's been a whole mixture of emotions all the way along,

but I think now that we're getting closer and closer

to meeting her, it's just excitement.

To meet Lesley, it's going to mean the world. I really can't wait.

It will be fantastic.

I've always wanted more of family, to be honest with you,

and this might be the chance.

I don't think I'm going to sleep properly tonight knowing that

they're going to be here.

It's hours away now and in 2.5 weeks, it's just gone crazy

and now it's down to hours.

Absolute... I'm... Oh!

I'm bursting. I'm bursting!

I'm no longer the older sister, I'm the middle sister.

She can take the title of older sister now.

THEY LAUGH

It's that sort of churning, churning in your tummy.

It's more than butterflies,

this is a hippopotamus going round in mine, I think.

Today, Teresa and Tracey are writing the final chapter

in the story of their search to find their half-sister Lesley.

-The big day's here now.

-Yeah. I can't wait to meet her. No.

-I wonder what she looks like.

-I know!

-Will she look like us?

I wonder if she's as nervous as we are.

All this waiting and finally, it's going to happen, isn't it?

It's almost a lifetime...we've lost.

All those years when we could've been...

..we could've been really close all those years.

But after so many years of looking, now the time has finally come to

meet, nerves are beginning to get to everyone.

-I've got butterflies in my stomach.

-Have you?

-What about you?

I've got a massive moth, I think.

Oh, this is getting almost unbearable.

That's the road. That's the name of the road?

-What, Lesley's?

-Yeah.

-Oh, my gosh!

Oh, my God.

After being separated for most of their lives, now the three sisters

can finally be reunited.

Oh, my God.

ALL THREE SOB AND LAUGH

-I can't believe it's been so long. So long.

-40 years!

-I know.

Where does the time go, huh?

-This is the strangest thing, isn't it?

-Yeah.

-I know, it is.

-Do we look anything like we did?

-No.

-No!

-No!

-Good, good.

No, not a bit.

-It's really nice to see you, it really is.

-Yeah, it really is.

Now they are back together, Teresa, Tracey and Lesley

can start to fill in the blanks of the last four decades

and solve some of the family mysteries.

-Did you go through school as Lesley Probert?

-No.

-Oh!

-I was getting bullied at school because of my surname.

-Really?

-Our surname.

-Our surname, yes.

-OK.

Probert the robot. I think it must've been my mum. She said,

"You can have your name changed by deed poll, if you want to."

-Oh, right.

-Until we all became...

And that's why I couldn't find you on Ancestry.

They have years to catch up on.

And there's one photo that has special significance for them all.

Pictures already.

-Oh, there we are!

-You've got that horr...that dress on.

No, you loved that dress.

It was long.

-Wow.

-You can just see your head.

-You can see my little head popping out.

So, it was your wedding day.

And look at me in that yellow jacket, wow.

Tracey, I'm so glad you put your head forward like that.

Today, the three sisters have finally been reunited.

And despite the years apart, there's clearly a strong bond.

Oh, my!

-Well, I'm blowed. We brought the same...

-Bought the same thing.

-We nearly went with a plaque.

-We nearly went with the plaque.

And then we thought, "Well, we'll get the mug."

You see, we're all cut from the same cloth.

That's weird.

I said, "Tracey, the words on this mug is brilliant.

"We'll have to get it, we'll have to get it."

-Is true, there's nothing you can do about it now.

-Absolutely not.

THEY LAUGH

While they reminisce about the years passed, after nearly half

a century apart, the sisters can now look forward to a future together.

It's been brilliant and I really feel like I know Lesley already

even though it's just been today. And, no, I'll never forget it.

It's been wonderful.

I've only met her a few hours now,

but I feel like I've known her all my life

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

And I feel that we've missed out,

I really do, but now's the time to make up.

To be in contact with them is just the best. It's lovely.

I'm not an only child any more.

I wish it had happened sooner.

I do wish it had happened sooner, but it's happened now and it's...

That's going to be us. We're family now. That's it.