Who Trolled Amber? - In the blood | Foundling Ep 3

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

Jess’s DNA results lead her to a close blood relative, who has her own extraordinary story. Foundling is a 6 part original series from Tortoise Investigates and The ObserverTo binge listen to all episodes today, ad-free, subscribe to The Observer and use the code AUDIO50 to get 50% off your annual subscription.You'll get access to:This series and all our podcasts before anyone elseAd-free listeningPremium newslettersPuzzles from the inventors of the cryptic crosswordExclusive offers from our partners including Mubi and iescapeTickets to join Observer events in our newsroom or onlineOr subscribe to Observer+ on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to listen to all our podcasts, including this one, without any ads.Reporter - Lucy GreenwellProducer - Katie GunningOriginal theme music - Tom KinsellaSound design and additional music - Rowan BishopPodcast artwork - Blythe Walker SibthorpNarrative editor - Gary Marshall Editor - Jasper CorbettClips: ITV/Wall to Wall Media Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Totus investigates. I want to use their words rather than my words because they spoke of terror, of them paralysed, of that fear just taking over, of them not making a sound. Some of the women might have birthed in their homes, maybe in a quiet room,

and they were biting down on pillows, and the fear was so great they still could not go until... Sylvia Murphy is a midwife and public health researcher at the University of Limerick in Ireland. She's one of the few people to have researched the phenomenon of concealed pregnancies. In 2013, she put an advert in an Irish newspaper calling for women who'd hidden their pregnancies to get in touch. 30 women came forward from all over the country and from different backgrounds.

But one thing united them during their pregnancies. Fear. fear of telling their families, fear of losing their job, or fear of their abusive partners. And they coped really by telling nobody, or on occasion maybe one or two people may know, but generally keeping the pregnancy hidden and concealed from the outside world. Most of the mothers she talked to ended up getting help before they reached full-term pregnancy, but a few of them never told anyone and ended up giving birth alone. Women who risk giving birth unassisted are generally young and or have had significant trauma in their lives.

So just to get that clear, the women you spoke to who had given birth unassisted were young and they'd had significant trauma in their lives. That is the trend that you saw. Yes. Yes. Every single one. It wasn't yes. Yes. I've been thinking a lot about trauma

and about what might drive someone to hide a pregnancy, give birth in secret, and then abandon their baby. Because the story I've been investigating about Jess, a newborn baby found lying by a remote country lane in Suffolk in 1987, has just taken an unexpected turn. When this was like 8 o'clock at night, it actually came up as Ariel Bruce. and I went, who earth is aerial proof?

I was like, who is this? And so I answered, I went, hello. Jess is staring at her screen, trying to understand her DNA results when her phone rings. When she spat into that tiny plastic tube and sent it off to a laboratory, Jess was hoping that the results might shed some light on the defining mystery of her life.

Who gave birth to her, and why did they abandon her? She hoped that somewhere in the vast library of DNA held by ancestry, there would be someone who shared enough of her genes to give her answers. And it seems to have worked. The scientific data shows that she is related to someone with the same surname as the nanny who found her. She's thinking it can't be a coincidence. But what she hasn't considered is that these commercial DNA companies, They work both ways.

When you send in your saliva, you don't just get to scan the vast database of DNA material. You become part of the searchable index yourself. Jess's DNA has only been on the site for half an hour, and already it's been spotted. Someone is urgently trying to reach her. I'm Lucy Greenwell, and from Tortoise Investigates and the Observer, you're listening. to Foundling. Episode 3, In the Blood. Without trace, they've had no way to unlock the secrets of their past.

There's so many... Ariel Bruce, the woman whose name has just flashed up on Jess's phone, is a post-adoption social worker. She's doing research for a long-running ITV show called Long Loss Family. The programme reunites missing family members, sometimes after years of separation. And it's massive. each episode pulling in millions of viewers.

One of whom's Jess. She's watched the show's emotional reunions for years. What she doesn't know is that they're putting together a special series about foundlings. Tracing birth families, using the latest DNA technology and painstaking detective work. As part of this detective work, Ariel Bruce has been keeping a close eye on the ancestry DNA site, looking out for potential matches for someone called Helen, who's trying to trace her family. And Jess's DNA profile has just pinged up. It's a close match to Helens. So Ariel's asking about Jess and about her family.

And I said, yeah, I was abandoned as a baby in Suffolk. And she went, oh, she said, right, okay. This is a bit more complicated than I first thought There are things Ariel clearly doesn't want to tell Jess over the phone She wants to do it in person But she does reveal who Helen is She is a half-siblings She hasn't thought about siblings But here's Ariel telling her that she's got a half-sister called Helen

And I was like wow And so we all sat there and was like What this just happened? The TV company offers to send a car to bring Jess to London. For Jess, it's a no-brainer. She's so intrigued to meet her very first blood relative that within 48 hours, she and her fiancé, Jamie, they're on their way to Ariel Bruce's house.

She tells me that as she sits in that car, she's aware that she's on the cusp of something big, but she doesn't know the extent to which her life's about to turn upside down. I was so full of nerves, so full of nerves. I felt like I was opening up a can of worms way quicker than I wanted to. Like it was just unfolding in front of me and I could do nothing about it. I didn't know if I wanted any of that. But then at the same time, like curiosity sort of overcomes, doesn't it, at the time?

Remember, at this stage, Jess is pretty confident she knows exactly who her mother is. And she's keen to meet Helen because she hopes Helen might shed some light on a while. she was left on that roadside. I know it sounds awful, but I kind of hoped. It was a really sad situation. She didn't mean it. And one day, if I did ever speak to her or see her, she'd be absolutely full of regret and be an actual nice person,

like a good person. And then I'd feel better about myself. Because I'd had this in my head that I was not a good person for so long. When Jess first meets Ariel, there are no cameras. It's just the two of them. And we sit down and she, She said, I'm sure you just want to get straight into her. And I was like, I don't even know if I do.

I was like, I'm not your average person because I've put a hold on this a lot of times. So I'm a bit scared about what you're going to say. Ariel's already told Jess on the phone that she has a sister. But she'd held something back. Now she tells Jess. Her sister Helen is also a foundling. How you doing?

All right, thank you. Come on in. Thanks, thank you. 150 miles north of London, the presenter of Long Loss family, Davina McCall, is at Helen's home delivering the same news. We have had a match. Okay, who is it? It's a half-sister. Half-sister.

Can't believe that. Did she know about me? She didn't know about you. She didn't know. She didn't grow up with your birth-mother either because she is also... a foundling. Oh my God. You're joking?

Oh no. The younger or older. Back in Ariel's house, Jess, the older of the two, is asking the exact same question. So she was like, so... She is younger. And it was just like that. Very calm, very slow.

And I was like... And so I shook. I just shook. And I was like, how much younger... Because again, that's really, really important. Why? Because how much time between her and me did this woman give herself before she got pregnant again? How old are?

14 months older. I've been serious. I can't believe that. 14 months. Oh, like no words can express when you think. that someone has dumped you on the side of a road, that they'd then go and do it again. Never, every scenario I came up with, never did that one scenario come up. Like, that she'd done it again.

Hi, Daphne, can you hear me? Yes. How are you? I'm old. But I don't, I don't feel myself old. Yeah. I'm 90. It's now 37 years since the December morning

when a newborn baby was spotted near the kitchens of the Scarsdale Maternity Hospital in Chesterfield, a very different part of the country to where Jess was found in Suffolk. One of the porters brought back child to me and told me, oh, that's not, tak me, sister, let's see, look what that goes. He just made a window that child was. and there's somebody that put it there and the child was hungry, good signs. Daphne Lewis still remembers it clearly.

It was just before Christmas in 1988 and Daphne was the senior midwife on duty in the hospital's special care baby unit. The person who put that baby there, she put it the baby there that the child should be seen. The child should be seen and she was seen and found her. Like the discovery of baby Jess, Helen's abandonment attracts attention. The stories covered in the regional and the national press.

The local TV station sends a reporter to interview Daphne and runs the story in their evening bulletin. She was found when she was just hours old by a maintenance engineer near the hospital kitchens. He rushed her straight to a special baby care unit. The story of exactly where Helen, is found varies. Some reports say near the kitchens, others mention the hospital laundry

or the doorstep of the special care baby unit. But everyone agrees about the cardboard box. On a cold frosty morning in December 1988, Helen Knox, at just a few hours old, was discovered in a cardboard box outside a hospital in Chesterfield. I just know that I was placed in a cardboard box with a pinnaker. right around me.

It was around half-past nine in the morning. That child was old. I could never forget that, that bit. And they left me here. It used to have been a horrible reason for them to do it. The babies named Jill by the midwives. And how is she doing now? Very well.

She loves being cuddled, fed feeds well. And for this brief moment in time, she's a local celebrity. are concerned about her mystery mother. She left it in hospital. That mystery mother never comes forward and Jill is adopted by a local couple and renamed Helen. Okay, so there's a little pathway between the fence and the high red brick wall. I'm just wondering about the kitchen. The Scarsdale Maternity Hospital no longer exists.

But most of the old Victorian building that housed it, originally the town's workhouse, is still there. It's an imposing, through. three-story brick building with a central tower. It's now been converted into flats, but it's possible to figure out where the kitchens once were and where Helen may have been left. And the thing that always comes back to me is

when you've left a baby, your baby, on a verge or under a window here, it's just the walking away that gets me, that kind of surprises me and makes me wonder what that's like, that sense of lightness. Is there a relief to it? Is there a misery to it? It's so hard to imagine what it feels like to just have a baby, wrap a baby in a bag

or in a box with sheets in it and then just go about your normal life. And you don't get to know the details of the next bit? You don't get to know. I was struck by this on the verge in Suffolk too, but since then I've begun to wonder. The verge was central to the story that Jennifer told the police

in 1987. But was it true? Did Jennifer ever actually leave Jess on the cold ground there? I put myself in Jennifer's shoes. I could almost imagine it, the first time, I mean. You're 18 and you discover you're pregnant.

You're terrified. You can't tell your parents. You can't tell anyone. You don't know where to turn. And in that panic, you make a choice. one that looking back is a muddled, short-term solution, the kind of terrible decision that perhaps only a frightened teenager could make. But doing it again, not just hiding a pregnancy,

but giving birth alone and abandoning the baby a second time, it's much harder to reconcile. None of the researchers or psychologists I've spoken to in the course of reporting this story have come across women who abandon more than one child. The point is, it's so unusual there really isn't any meaningful data on it. There was a story recently about three siblings abandoned in East London across eight years. That story attracted a huge amount of public and media attention,

precisely because it's such a rarity. The thing is, trying to understand what happened in 1987 through the prism of today's social mores, it isn't quite fair because it was almost 40 years. ago. It was a different world. My name's Fiona Gibson, and I was features editor on Just 17 magazine. Just 17 was the best-selling teen magazine of the day, and Fiona was an editor there in the late 80s. Teenagers read it avidly for fashion, for advice, true stories, pop stars. If anyone was taking the temperature of the time, it was this team of magazine writers.

There was a record player, music blaring, jazz would be playing, you know, Bross, Brother Beyond were great favourites. They weren't that much older than their readers, and the office had the vibe of a teenager's bedroom. Chatter, phones ringing, desk phones, of course. We were still on manual typewriters then, so it was clatter, clatter, clatter. A lot of laughter and chatter. They had in mind a typical reader, Tracy from Grantham. She didn't have loads of money, didn't live in a big cosmopolitan city, and crucially, wasn't that well informed.

These are the female reproductive organs, the ovaries, volopian tubes, uterus and vagina. This was key because sex education in the 1980s was minimal, to say the least. Here's how the menstrual cycle works. Each one of your two ovaries contains many tiny egg cells. There'd be the mechanics of sex and reproduction, maybe some diagrams that made you cringe, and for most of us, that was it. I mean, we'd have hundreds of letters coming into the problem page

every week at just 17, you know, and the level of ignorance and misinformation. The magazine had its work cut out. We often did things about myths, In those days, there were a lot of myths about sex, you know, and how babies were made. And things like, could I get pregnant if he puts his tongue in my mouth? Could I get pregnant if I have a bath after my brother? Amazing things, you know, if her boyfriend said, I don't want to use a condom, you know, I'll withdraw, it'll be fine.

Or, you know, it's your safe time of the month. That was a big thing back then. If I won't let him or I won't do it, something terrible would happen to his penis. His balls will actually explode. Do you remember that one? The overriding fear of pregnancy was always there. The backdrop to almost everything they did. Becoming pregnant by accident as a teenager, in those days, you can hardly imagine anything more.

Terrifying and awful, really. Today, teen pregnancy rates are at their lowest since records began, but back in the late 80s and early 90s, they were roughly twice as high, and teenage pregnancy was a major political flashpoint. Civilized society doesn't just happen. It has to be sustained by standards widely accepted and up. held and we must draw on the moral energy of society. Margaret Thatcher swept to power in 1979 with a Conservative Party which stood for traditional family values, self-reliance and individual

responsibility. Indeed, I wonder whether the family has been sufficiently highly regarded in recent years. One minister labelled single parents as part of an evil trend. The moral campaigner Mary White House saw single mothers as evidence of a slide in the nation's moral standards. Many of them will not bother with contraceptives, even if you give them to them. Because deep down, they want a child. And particularly the deprived and insecure young people, very often want a child to have somebody to love. Social housing was scarce, and a belief took hold that young single mothers, this symbol of national decline, they were welfare. scroungers who were deliberately getting pregnant to jump the housing queue. So when Jennifer was pregnant with Jess and then Helen, there was a genuine stigma.

Single mothers and their buggies were cluttering up our pavements. I mean, looking back at the 80s, I thought it was quite a modern time, you know, as a young woman myself. But we were literally in the dark still. Getting advice or help meant, God forbid, asking someone in real life. None of my friends had frank conversations with their mothers about sex. It was all between us, all ridden with myths and misinformation. I mean, I wouldn't have gone to my doctor about anything remotely embarrassing because my mum saw the same doctor and my dad did.

Even phoning a helpline. One family phone on the wall, perhaps, or on a table in the hallway, you know, you're not allowed to use the phone. It was the family phone. And mum, somebody was always at home. So talking to a doctor or accessing social services, it wasn't simple back then. I get that.

But not impossible. And it's not like we were in the 50s or 60s where you had no support. We're in the late 80s now, where you could have had an abortion. You could have gone to social services and said, I want to put this baby up for adoption. you could have got support.

And that's the thing that runs through my mind all the time is why would you not? Back then, abortion was legal, but not easy to access. There were only about 60 clinics in the whole country so you may have had to travel. And once you got there, two different doctors had to certify that the procedure was justified and the majority required a general anaesthetic.

I've spoken to a number of people who know Jennifer's health. family to try and understand the backdrop of her life in the 1980s. Her parents were teachers and Jennifer's the second of their three children. She was clever, did well at school. I've been told that her father, who died not so long ago in his 80s, was one of those strict old-fashioned dads. Keeping up appearances was important. People who knew him have told me that there was a contrast between his warm, public exterior and a more controlling side in private,

that at times he could be bullying, psychologically and occasionally physically. To put it mildly, Jennifer's pregnancy wouldn't have gone down well. I've been told Jennifer would have found it hard to go to her mother for help because she'd have immediately told Jennifer's dad. And she was petrified of her dad finding out. So when Jess asks,

why would you not get help? Maybe, just maybe, this is part of the answer. Sylvia Murphy's research is the closest I can get to understanding what it may have been like for Jennifer to give birth alone to Jess and then again to Helen. Most women, they would not be prepared or have any equipment or gathered

so women might have, you know, torn the cord with their hands or some utensil that they found in a bathroom or had lying around the house. these women could equally, you know, bleed to death. It's a hugely risky experience to give birth unassisted. And the risks don't end there. Giving birth alone can have severe long-term effects.

She has flashbacks around, you know, smells, because she can remember perhaps, you know, her bowels opening. She can recall that degree of, you know, birthing on her own, unassisted and the pain and it going on for a long, long time. What she's saying is that doing all this on your own is an experience that would never leave you. The concealed pregnancy left a ripple that lasted a lifetime, a ripple. That was a word one of the women used that, you know, that it's never left them. There's always still something, even where they went on maybe to have a career or a successful career or relationship.

that it was always something that stayed with them to a greater or lesser degree and it was a time of great sadness. So doing it twice, as Jennifer did, Sylvia can only speculate. So perhaps the family situation is still the same and the woman, you know, there's been no resolution so she's fallen pregnant a second time.

The trauma and fear that may have led Jennifer to make those decisions the first time round, perhaps they're still present. Women who abandoned babies are so little studied that there's no one to help really explain this double abandonment. Were there certain pressures, demands or threats around Jess and Helen's births which led to extreme decisions? If there were, they're known only to Jennifer.

A few weeks after learning of each other's existence, the long-loss family produces, choose a date to film Jess and Helen meeting for the first time. It's a big thing meeting my half-sister. It's a very big life-changing thing for us both. It's not just something that's going to happen today. This is going to be for the rest of our lives. It's exciting.

Being a foundling, you never think you'd find anybody. So meeting her today will be something really special. We're going to connect on a big level. I can't wait just to see her. person. They had like, I don't know, five, six, seven and eight cameras all around the room for different angles

and they literally just let us sit there and talk and we talked, I think, for maybe two hours solid. I can't believe. I cannot believe how similar we are over the moon. We all make some memories to get that highway. I can't wait to meet her kids, her fiancé, and it's just going to change.

both of our lives for the better. This is where the police poster. I was only tiny. After the cameras are switched off, they carry on talking. They're put up in a hotel and they stay awake, still talking,

till the small hours. There's so much to discuss. Helen knows nothing about their birth mother, so Jess shares everything, the nanny job in Suffolk, the suspicions that the old lady Jean and the policeman had both mentioned. Next morning,

they hug goodbye. get into their cars and drive back to their separate lives. Never in a million years did I think that was the one and only time I'd ever see her and ever meet her. What starts with a huge surge of hope and relief crumbles over the coming months. At the heart of it, they disagree about Jennifer. According to Jess, Helen wants a relationship with her mother badly enough that she's willing to forgive her. Jess isn't. Helen gets in touch with Jennifer.

They meet up and they've since forged a close bond. Over time, Jess tells me Helen stops returning her messages. Helen's invited to Jess's wedding, but she doesn't come. Which was gutting and I was really heartbroken. So many times I've tried to meet up with her. It just didn't come. I wrote to Helen to find out her side of this story. She didn't want to be interviewed, but she did send me an email.

In it, she disputes Jess's version of events around the breakdown of their relationship. She says she didn't stop contacting Jess. That it was Jess who didn't want to stay in touch because Helen had chosen to forgive their mother. She added that it was ill health that kept her from Jess's wedding. Nothing more. By the spring of 2021, a strange silence has settled over Jennifer's family. Her parents and siblings know about the DNA results. they know she's got two more daughters.

But nobody confronts Jennifer, and Jennifer doesn't admit anything to anyone. Her husband, who she's been married to for years, he knows nothing. Her two almost adult children, they have no idea about the existence of their half-siblings. And Jennifer doesn't reach out to Jess or to Helen. She doesn't engage with the producers of long-loss family.

But the show that they filmed months earlier, is about to be broadcast. Both foundlings are about to reveal their stories on national television. And so Jennifer finally breaks her silence. How might it be for a woman to have a concealed pregnancy and abandonment revealed by someone else? Oh my goodness. I think that is really difficult.

Women did talk about that, that exposure, about exposure to judgment, you know, that shame that you might have felt for what you did, you are punished. After Jennifer confesses to her close family, Jess tells me she expects her birth mother to get in touch with her and with Helen. But that's not what happens, not initially. Jess does get a call from Jennifer's parents, her new grandparents, and they begin a tentative relationship. They travel to visit Jess, and they invite Jess for a return visit at theirs. And it was lovely, like, you know, my granddad, it was a fantastic cook, he made us a lovely meal

because they're very well travelled. They've travelled the world and they've done lots and lots of amazing things and he's done some sort of South African chicken with sticky rice. They made us feel really welcome and it was lovely and it did have that essence of you're staying at your grandparents' house. It had a lovely feel to it and I feel like it started quite well. Jennifer's parents and her siblings, Sam and Rachel, heartily embraced Jess. There are meals, phone calls, WhatsApp conversations. If you find this hard to get your head around, you're not the only one.

Everyone's seemingly playing happy families, while Jennifer and the two daughters she gave birth to in the 80s don't communicate. Even though Jennifer's finally told her parents about the baby, she left. She doesn't explain how or why, and she's yet to show any interest in meeting the two women. Jess's grandparents do encourage Jess to contact Jennifer. Perhaps they encourage Jennifer to do the same, I don't know, but neither Jess nor Jennifer take that step. She gets scraps of information instead, details about Jennifer's life and about her two children. And Jess gets answers to a few questions, like, did Jennifer's mother not suspect something?

She says she didn't, but there is one story she tells. It's about a time when Jennifer's mum and her grandmother went to visit Jennifer while she was working as a nanny in Suffolk. And apparently they drove away and she said, if I didn't know better, I would say she was eight months pregnant because she was so big. I'm intrigued by this. So someone did notice her changing shape back in 1987.

but seemingly never mentioned it to Jennifer? If Jess is hoping that her newfound family will report back on exactly how Jennifer managed to hide her pregnancy and why she left Jess by a road, well, she's set to be disappointed. And Jess still doesn't try to contact her birth mother for answers. In a six years since she never has. They've spoken only once. seven months after Jess's DNA proved that they were mother and daughter. There was no warning, no one messaged me to say,

Jennifer's about to ring you. So there I am trying to get two kids to bed at seven o'clock at night with a number that I don't recognise. On the phone, sobbing, hardly able to get the words out, is Jennifer. It was hysterical. And again, that was another thing that I sort of picked up I thought, oh God, I cry like her. Down the phone, Jess hears Jennifer say

that she wants her to know that she's there if Jess wants to talk. And I just shut it down really quick and I just said, look, I'm not the one that wants to talk to you. Helen's the one that wants to talk to you, not me. I'm not interested in a relationship with you. I never have been. So many of the questions that Jess has about her origins

could have been answered in this phone call. But Jess tells me she feels a bit ambival. caught off guard without her thoughts in order. I have your number, so if I ever do you want to contact you, I will. But I said, I probably won't. And let's just leave it at that. What does she say? And she was like, I don't understand why you're not angry at me.

And I was like, because I've got no reason to be, really. I don't have them feelings because I've had an amazing upbringing. And I said that to her. I've got incredible parents. I have no reason to be angry. and I said, and I did say that she was, I said, unfortunately, you're just irrelevant in my life. To be honest, it sounds quite brutal to me. And then, like, continuously sobbing all the way through the conversation.

But I kind of cut it there and I said, look, I'm going now. And that was the end of that conversation. That's the only ever time I've spoken to her. Three days later, Jess texts Jennifer to say, sorry she hasn't been in time. her birth mother tells her, you have my number. I'm here to answer any questions, if you're ready, if you're ever ready. But Jess doesn't reply. It strikes me that she gave you away as a baby,

but she's there now, wanting, openly saying, I'm ready to talk. And I find it really curious that you, because I know you've got big questions about it. Why? Why didn't you get help or having an appointment? or get the social services or tell a friend or get your help from, even if you couldn't tell your mum. Yeah. But you said, but you've never contacted her since then. No, that was the one and only time. I mull over this for months.

It's so hard to get why, after years of hunting for her mother, when they finally get to talk, Jess effectively turns away. But the search and the meeting are two very different things. During the search, Jess is in control. She sets the pace, decides which leads to follow, and stores each new discovery, newspaper cuttings, names, numbers, clues on her laptop. But entering a relationship with Jennifer, that's very different. Her mother stops being an idea, one that she's wondered about for decades, and becomes real.

At that point, I feel like Jess loses her sense of agency. Perhaps what Jess is doing on this call is reclaiming control. But I just know I wouldn't ever get the answers that I need or want because I feel like her life has been built on a web of lies and so I'm not actually sure she even understands what's the truth and what's not anymore. A few months ago I sat down and wrote to Jennifer explaining that we were investigating Jess's story. I said that we weren't planning to identify.

her and I asked her if she'd like to talk to me for the podcast. But since then, I've heard nothing back. I remember it was a really hot day and we'd had lovely time in the garden and stuff for the children. Jennifer's sister Rachel has come to stay with Jess. The relationship between aunt and niece is warm and friendly. And Rachel's updating Jess about the effect of her arrival on their family. The revelations, yes, but on top of this, the way Jennifer's reacted since. The facts seem to be changing.

Her family sense that the full story still hasn't been told. It's causing rouse, anger and bewilderment. And there's still a missing piece of the puzzle. Jennifer knows everyone's wondering, but she's keeping quiet about who Jess's father is. I mean, you don't solve half a jigsaw, do you? You want the whole thing. And so, you know, I always said if, like,

I find out one half, I want the other half. You just do. I always wanted to know if I was going to ever find out, I wanted to know both. And I just, I said, like, we've got to try and figure this out. Rachel tells Jess that she and Jennifer, who are three years apart in age, spent a lot of time as teenagers in the local pubs, drinking, having fun and dancing. So Jess quizzes her. Is there anything she remembers?

Flings, one-night stands, relationships? Jess shows Rachel a page of her DNA results, a page that caught Jess's attention when she first saw it. It shows her genetic heritage in percentages. There's something strange. Over half of Jess's DNA has Germanic heritage. You know, look at this DNA, look, you know, 51%. It's there nobody you can think of that was like...

Her birth mother's family seemed. solidly English. So Jess is thinking, this must be some kind of clue to her paternity. Rachel's also curious. In fact, she's brought some old photos. They peer at them, fuzzy images, lie nuts of people with their arms around each other, mullets, beers and hand, and a dance board in the background. Rachel points to one man. She says Jennifer dated him on and off around She was, in Rachel's words, obsessed by him. She said, oh, I know the family still. Like, they're still within our town.

They're all there. And what's more? He has a Germanic surname. And I was just holding onto it. I really was holding on to the fact that it had to be something. Jess digs about online and discovers that this man has five children with his long-term partner, possible half-siblings for Jess. And I sat there and I found all five siblings.

That evening? That evening. In the garden with Rachel. Yep, in the garden. And I left it for a bit though because I thought, okay, I found them. I know they're there. And I said, but I just need to figure out how I'm going to approach this because I didn't want to just go all guns blazing over a glass of wine in the garden and destroy anyone's

world. So I just said, right, okay, I'm going to think about this. A few days after Rachel leaves. Jess receives a text message. It's sent from Jennifer's phone, but oddly, the message is written by her therapist. Leave it alone. Please back off and let sleeping dogs lie.

Jennifer genuinely does not know who the father is. Please have some consideration for the impact another search could have on another family. The therapist is asking Jess to stop looking for her dad. Jess's first thought is When has a professional therapist ever written a message from their client's phone and to their client's abandoned child telling them to back off And her second thought

What or who is Jennifer trying to hide Next time on foundling I did feel out smashing glass over his head to be honest And he just acted normal Because he knew that I couldn't kick off in pub car park or he knew I wouldn't kick off. I'm not out to break up families

and I'm sorry I was born. Like, what do you want me to do? I just started to like think of little things that had not made sense. I think I'll always be angry because you're constantly thinking could it have ended differently, had things been different.

Foundling was reported by me, Lucy Greenwell. It was really, written by me and by Katie Gunning, who was also the series producer. The theme music was composed by Tom Kinsella. Sound design and additional music was by Rowan Bishop. Podcast artwork was by Lola Williams. The development producer was Jess Swinburne. The narrative was Gary Marshall.

The editor is Jasper Corbett. Thank you for listening to Foundling. We hope you're enjoying the podcast so far. You can listen to all six episodes today by subscribing to The Observer, By subscribing, not only do you get all our podcasts before anyone else, you also get access to our premium newsletters, exclusive offers from our partners Mooby and Eye Escape, tickets to our events, and much, much more. Subscribe today at observer.com.ukau.uk slash subscribe or via the link in the show notes. Subscribe today for £1 for your first month.