Who Trolled Amber? - On the verge | Foundling Ep 1

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

Journalist Lucy Greenwell goes in search of Jess following rumours and unanswered questions about where she was born and who gave birth to her. 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 Corbett Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:04 Tortus investigates. You wouldn't just drop it off in the middle of the countryside. And hope to the best. It goes to the best. Yeah. There's obviously something fishy about the story. So the story didn't ring true, but we couldn't quite work out why for ages.
Starting point is 00:00:19 Yeah, it didn't really wash. I'm sitting around a table with my sisters. We're drinking tea and going over a memory from when we were kids. It's something we've been through so many times over the years. We were like, why did you stop? Because she was driving. We said, what made you stop to look what it was? Because she said it was in a plastic bag.
Starting point is 00:00:42 And she said, I saw it's... You see, this is a story my family can never quite put to rest. Maybe every family has one of these. It's that thing that always comes up when you're together. Someone mentions a name, a place or a particular memory, and there you all go again. The story gets told and retold. Details are debated.
Starting point is 00:01:07 Bits get embellished. and over time it becomes family folklore. We talked about it over the years and we like, it's so weird and we used to guess where it was on that road. But the thing is, this isn't our story. It belongs to someone else. The £6, 3.5 ounce baby is doing well in hospital after being dumped in an orange and white plastic bag around mid-morning.
Starting point is 00:01:38 A baby girl who appears from nowhere on Tuesday the 6th of October, In 1987, lying on a patch of damp grass beside a remote country lane in Suffolk. She was wearing a nappy and this oversized Adams-Make thermal vest. The vest is white, sleeveless and much too big for her. She's lying half-wrapped in a Sainsbury supermarket bag, like a makeshift plastic cradle. Late that morning, a passing driver spots the baby. She's picked up, wrapped in a jumper and taken to hospital. A small miracle.
Starting point is 00:02:30 For years, I've thought about that day and wondered about the baby and the mother who left her there because right from the start, there were questions. Because we were just like, how did it get there? How did it get there into this place in the middle of the fields in the middle of nowhere? We lived nearby. I was just eight at the time. But even at that young age, we knew that this real life
Starting point is 00:02:53 mystery happening on our doorstep was a big deal. I can still remember where I was when I was told about the abandoned baby. I can see myself now. I'm walking out of the black school gates. The sun's on my face. Our nannies come to pick me up and she's standing there in the car park. You won't believe what happened today, she says. And what she recounts, the lane, the baby, the passing driver, it feels like a scene from a film. Except it's a film that to this day, my sisters and I still can't quite make sense of. When we got older, we were like, she found a baby. She what?
Starting point is 00:03:34 How do you find a baby? Like we talk about it occasionally. That evening, we watch the 6 o'clock Anglia News. Our big boxy telly lived on a tall chest of drawers, and I had to crane my neck a bit to see it. When you saw the baby, I mean, what did it look like? Very happy. It was gurgling, smiling. It was...
Starting point is 00:04:01 No one knows how the baby came to be there, but we feel like detectives, because we're close to this story. We actually know the woman who found the baby. She's our friend's nanny. And now, there she is, being interviewed on TV. Its feet and hands were blueish. But it was perfectly happy.
Starting point is 00:04:21 Very sweet. So what did you do after you got into the car? Well, I'd wrap my jump around it by this point because I knew that you had to keep babies, you know, keep them warm, drove all the way down the road again just to turn around and sort of sped back and thought, the garden is going to be at home. He'll know what to do because I didn't know where to go next.
Starting point is 00:04:42 The newsreader tells us that the midwives at the hospital give the baby a name, Heather. For years we focus on that day, that grassy verge, the baby. Over time, the story, of the Suffolk foundling is rubbed so smooth by years of retelling, I can no longer get a firm grip on it. A newborn believed to have been delivered in the last 24 hours has been abandoned outside South Tuganong Fire Station in Canberra. And every so often, stories about babies being abandoned crop up. A woman has been arrested after a newborn baby was found dead in a plastic bag in London last week.
Starting point is 00:05:22 The sheriff's office says this is an epidemic after this is now the third baby found either a Or Dead within the last month. Each time it happens, I think of that Suffolk Baby. Whose was she? What happened to her? And occasionally, when I search online for child abandonment, I find there's very little to explain what happens to the babies who are left. And there's even less about their mothers. I've spent decades as a radio producer researching true stories,
Starting point is 00:05:55 and yet after all this time, I know. no more about the Suffolk baby than I did as a child. So I make a decision to go back. Back to the Suffolk of 1987, to try and answer the questions that have gnawed at me for years. What happened to that baby? What does it do to you to know that you were left abandoned? And perhaps even more intriguing for me
Starting point is 00:06:24 are the questions about her mother? Who would carry a beautiful, health, baby girl to a lonely country lane and just dump her there in a plastic bag. When I was eight, it had felt like a beguiling who done it. Later, I'd imagined a more nuanced story of trauma and loss. But what I've uncovered over the last year is a story which is much more troubling than anything we dreamt up as children. It's about family.
Starting point is 00:06:59 I think I'll always be angry. because you're constantly thinking could it have ended differently had things being different. About motherhood. I don't think I've still fully accepted it, to be honest. There's still a part of me that thinks this can't be happening.
Starting point is 00:07:15 It's not real. And about how secrets can, in the end, bubble up and destroy things. Lies always come out, don't they? Skeletons are always going to come out eventually. I'm Lucy Greenwell and from Tortoise Investigators, Investigates and the Observer, this is Foundling.
Starting point is 00:07:33 Episode 1, On the Verge. Did you sort of start imagining who your mum and dad might be? Did you build up for little fantasies about the kind of people they might have been at any stage? You always hope that it was this lovely love story, that they just couldn't be together. You just wish any family and anyone from any adoptive background. You always hope and wish that it was some beautiful love story, that it was just unfortunate. Whenever I tell this story to friends and I explain that I've tracked down the abandoned baby, they're amazed. I've got this huge mass of curly hair and that's always been in the back of my mind.
Starting point is 00:08:34 I instantly thought I'd have someone at the end of, you know, if I ever did find them, that would have a huge mass of curly hair. Over the years, we referred to the baby as Heather, the name she was given by midwives. But when I start asking around in the local area, it's... It turns out a few people know her new name, and it doesn't take too much detective work to track her down. So, meet that abandoned baby girl. Jess. She's now 38 years old, has big eyes, a huge smile, and that distinctive curly hair. So these are the newspaper cuttings that...
Starting point is 00:09:15 I wasn't the prettiest of babies, but there's little crocheted dress with crocheted booties. Oh, there you are. When I first got into hospital. Looking quite alert. Yes. It's just a photo and underneath it says, baby Heather, will she ever know her mother's identity? And then this one's a abandoned baby Heather made ready for adoption. For decades, this flimsy folder of newspaper cuttings is all the information Jess has.
Starting point is 00:09:44 So Heather had been transferred into a loving home just days after being left beside a lonely Suffolk Road. So that's obviously where I went into foster care. So that's about a week after. These articles lay out what happened to baby Jess after she's handed to the nurses. Reading them, it's clear to me the midwives, social workers, the police and the press are all desperately trying to persuade Jess's mother to come forward. Despite these repeated appeals, no one does. Jess is placed in foster care and after three months she's matched with a Suffolk couple
Starting point is 00:10:21 who already have one adopted daughter. After this dramatic start, Jess tells me her life was pretty happy. Actually, what she describes is an idyllic childhood. We had the park across the road. My best friends were in the village next door. Yeah, we'd be playing outside all day every day and then come in for a home cook meal at 5 on the dot every day. And always a dessert, which my friends always thought was amazing
Starting point is 00:10:47 because they didn't have dessert. You know, there was lots of jelly, there was lots of angel delight, lots of crumbles and apple pie. and trifles. She says there were aunts, uncles and grandparents living on the same street. Jess and her sister Laura roam free,
Starting point is 00:11:03 surrounded by love and affection. Jess has always known that she's adopted, but she tells me that until she's 11, she never really thought to question why. Until this one day. For her birthday, her parents had given her a TV for her bedroom. But the screen kept going fuzzy, so she and her dad are out shopping for a new aerial.
Starting point is 00:11:29 There they are, just parking up outside B&Q. And then I just kind of said, oh, I did wonder a little bit about my adoption, as Laura knows about hers now. Laura is Jess's older and also adopted sister. A few weeks earlier, Laura had found out about her own birth parents. And being dad just naturally said in a suffolk, accent, oh bloody hell, he said, I always hoped that your mum would be here when you asked that question, because it's not so straightforward as your sister.
Starting point is 00:12:03 Then and there, in the car, he tells her that she was found abandoned and that no one knows who her birth parents are. And then we kind of sat there in the car, in the car park of being cute, and I just sat sobbing. I didn't think, well, you wouldn't. But it didn't ever cross my mind it would be something like that. And I instantly felt very little again. I felt really young
Starting point is 00:12:30 because it felt like it was too much information. Most of us have an origin story, how we arrived into the world, who was there, what was said. Jess has assumed that she has one too, just like her sister, Laura. But from this moment on, she's aware of a void,
Starting point is 00:12:49 a complete blank where her beginning should be. and that not knowing, it's tough. I instantly felt, well you do, you just instantly feel rejected. Like you feel that you can't, that you're not really wanted, although I've had this incredible upbringing where I was so wanted, so loved. Why didn't that person want me? And I felt like I didn't even want to know anymore because it kind of ruined.
Starting point is 00:13:20 Yeah, that that perfect childhood suddenly had something else, laced in it? Yeah. Yeah. Um... To pause for a bit. Sorry. Um,
Starting point is 00:13:34 for me, it kind of, it did, it broke my little world of this perfect little family that I'd been brought up in. Jess tells me her parents reassure her
Starting point is 00:13:47 that nothing's changed, that she's still the same person. You know, constantly trying to tell me, you know, you're a good person. You know, You know, as much as anyone tells you that, you don't feel like you are.
Starting point is 00:14:01 Like, you feel like your roots are bad. You're like rotten. You've come from someone that can discard a baby and have no thoughts or feelings about that. As a teenager, Jess says she tells her friends that she was found and they tell their friends. And the story sort of takes on. a life of its own.
Starting point is 00:14:32 It was a big deal for my friends and stuff. And it was just that whole constant of why do you not want to know? Why are you not going to find out? For years, she just didn't. But slowly that changes. And by the time she's in her early 20s, she's intrigued by the mystery of her beginning. And I actually felt a little bit excited about it because I wanted to get the bottom of it, just the whole Sherlock Holmes situation of it all,
Starting point is 00:15:01 I wanted to figure it all out. From the very first time I call her, Jess is really open with me because, let's be honest, a total stranger calling you up and telling you that they're obsessed with your origin story must be a bit weird. But she seemed to get it,
Starting point is 00:15:18 why the mystery of who she is and the questions around it are in some way bigger than just her. And so she's happy to humour me and let me play homes to her. Sherlock. But when I first meet her, there really isn't all that much that she can tell me. In the UK, all adopted children have the right to find out where they come from. It's been enshrined in law since the mid-70s. The UN also recognises that children have a right to an identity
Starting point is 00:15:49 to know as far as possible who their parents are. But if you start out as a foundling, a lone baby with no backstory, this basic right is denied. There's no official record for foundlings to uncover. No paper trail. When she's 22, Jess decides she wants to see the place where she was found. So she sets off with a friend armed with those newspaper cuttings. I said, but I'm not 100% sure where the road is. So we might have to just knock on a few doors and hope for the best.
Starting point is 00:16:24 She tells me she remembers feeling intrigue, but also, dread because until now it's all felt very abstract. But by going to the spot where she was left, she's hoping she might glimpse some clue, something that might explain why she was abandoned. So we kind of just drove around looking for little lanes. In the cuttings, it's variously described as the side of a quiet road, a lonely roadside verge,
Starting point is 00:16:53 or the side of a lane near Ipswich. One article gives a more detailed description of how the lane runs between two small villages and how there's a field on one side and a wood on the other. But it's hard to be certain where the place is. There are just so many back lanes nearby, so many fields, so many clumps of woodland, and with no other distinguishing features to go on, they don't manage it, they can't quite figure it out. But by now they've got the bit between their teeth. They spot a bungalow nearby, set back behind a thick privet hedge, and they They knock on the door.
Starting point is 00:17:30 This lovely little lady who'd lived in the village all her life instantly welcomed us in with a cup of tea and a piece of cake. There are a lot of what-ifs in this story, and this is one of them. What if Jess hadn't knocked on this particular door where a woman called Jean lived, because with Jean, Jess had struck goals. And she couldn't be more excited because she just had just. remembers every last detail. She said it was such a hoo-ha.
Starting point is 00:18:07 You know, there was so many police around in the village. And then there will see the rumours start flying around, that there was a baby left down this road. And we all couldn't believe it. We just couldn't believe it. She tells Jess that people talked about it for weeks afterwards. And that there were a few theories circulating about who the baby's mother was.
Starting point is 00:18:26 She said, it has to be someone local because no one would have known about that lane. so instantly that's where my mind went. Jean takes Jess into her back garden. And she said, you nearly got the right lane. She said, it's that one down there. And she pointed, she said, should we have a drive down there?
Starting point is 00:18:44 Should we have a look? I said, yeah, all right then. So she got in my car. And she was so excited. It was brilliant, really. She made me excited about it. It was a different feeling altogether. At this point, Jess tells me she feels like an old-fashioned.
Starting point is 00:19:00 sleuth. Yeah, we jumped in my car and she went, take the next right, and she said, I know exact spot where it was. They drive about half a mile to a passing place on the lane. And she said, that's where you were, right there. Jess has quite strong feelings about the verge. You know when you see flowers on a roadside marking the place where someone's died in a car crash? Well, for Jess, it's the exact opposite, the mirror image, in fact. She almost memorialises this verge because it's the place where she believes her life begins. She once sent me a photo of it with a heart emoji, the fact that it's beautiful and it really is, it matters to her. But being at the verge that day has another effect. It alters how she feels about the fact that she was abandoned.
Starting point is 00:19:59 It makes her feel something more like anger. Of all the places you could have left me, you've left me somewhere that nobody goes, like, unless you were local to that village, like nobody goes down that lane. Why would you think anyone would have picked me up from there? She's thinking, perhaps whoever left her there didn't necessarily want her to be found. It wasn't even a road, it's a track, so that in itself is difficult to stomach because it's so remote. And for the first time in all these years, she says it strikes her that if she hadn't been picked up that morning, she might not have survived. As Jess leaves the verge and says goodbye to Jean, Jean repeats her theory that only someone
Starting point is 00:20:46 local could have known about that lane. And then she drops one more vital clue. She said, I've got my suspicions. And she said, well, there was a couple of nannies in the village. She said, and they weren't from around here. She said, I'm sure one of them has something to do with it. For the police, this is an old case, long forgotten and largely mothballed after Jess was adopted back in 1988. But I reckon there must still be a case file somewhere.
Starting point is 00:21:19 I begin making some inquiries of my own and I send off a request to suffer constabulary, asking to see any paperwork they have about the investigation. And while I wait, I try to track down the police officers who were involved. Their names aren't on social media, so I trawl the electoral register looking for addresses. It seems they all still live in Suffolk, and I end up driving round the county, parking in unfamiliar streets and posting letters through front doors. I assume it's going to be straightforward that they'll be amused, flattered even, to dust off an old and puzzling case.
Starting point is 00:22:06 But I'm wrong about that. The detective who's in charge of the case doesn't want to talk about it and neither to the two other retired officers who also worked on it. I'm struck by this wariness I've touched on for something that happened so long ago. It's only when I start to dig into the laws around child abandonment that I begin to see things more clearly. Now, I know this might sound simplistic,
Starting point is 00:22:36 but I simply hadn't thought of this story as a crime. For us as kids, any police involvement was just about helping to reconnect mother and baby, almost like a missing person case. And the police were keen to find the missing mother, but Jess's abandonment was still investigated as a crime. The roadside verge was treated like a crime scene. You see, it's an offence. to abandon a child under two if it endangers their life or causes them harm.
Starting point is 00:23:12 That's punishable by up to five years in prison. Then there's a broader offence of cruelty to a person under 16, including neglect, ill-treatment or abandonment, and for that you could get 10 years. And because we don't in the UK have a statute of limitations for serious crimes, someone can be prosecuted today for abandoning a baby back in 1987. This case was never actually solved, so new information, fresh evidence,
Starting point is 00:23:47 or a recent forensic technology like DNA, could open it up again. You and I know that we don't want, that's absolutely not the motivation. Yeah, of course. No, that's not. I mean, I don't want that either, so... Exactly. You know. I know you don't. us wants that. Yet several former police officers seem genuinely concerned that my reporting of
Starting point is 00:24:11 this story may have a real-life effect, a fresh criminal investigation. All of a sudden, the stakes feel much higher. I check in with Jess. She's still certain that she wants to tell her story and to try and find answers to the questions she's been asking for years. I write again to all the retired police officers, assuring them that neither Jess nor I are looking to reopen the case that we're not seeking new evidence. But they don't change their minds. Eventually I find a fourth former police officer. Initially he says no, but after thinking it over, he agrees to talk, because he tells me, Jessica deserves some answers. Hello, I do you. You must be Lucy. Yes. In his retirement, Oldwyn Jones sits on the committee
Starting point is 00:25:06 of a village hall, and so we meet there. Okay, thank you. So we're going to go into this. Yeah, yeah, come in. He's a former detective chief inspector at Ipswich Police Station. He's a tall, polite man with glasses and salt and pepper hair. It happens very rarely in Suffolk. In my experience, unfortunately, the baby's more likely to have been found dead than alive.
Starting point is 00:25:27 It was a rarity to find the baby alive. Babies are abandoned intermittently, but more often than not, it's their lifeless bodies that are later found. Of the four babies abandoned in Suffolk in 1987, Jess was the only one found alive. What would you have been looking for when you went to the verge? Well, obvious things, to get the feel of the place where it's been left and trying to weigh it up, why would you leave a baby there?
Starting point is 00:25:53 Aldwin Jones visits the place where Jess was discovered just a few hours after she'd been taken to hospital. It's always good practice to go and visit the scene of any major crime. But there could be things forensically that may be available. such as tyre tracks or footprints. And had you found a footprint or a tyre mark, what would you have done? Well, they could take a cast. That was how they used to do it in those days.
Starting point is 00:26:18 Take a cast and then you can identify the tyre. And then you could, for example, identify the tyre, and then they could tell you the make. And it gives you a lead, but there was nothing from memory that I can remember like that had been found. He tells me that any potential leads had been washed away. One thing I'd remember about that day was the rain. And as we went up to it, there was a torrential downpour.
Starting point is 00:26:44 And I couldn't help but think that if this had happened at R.O2 ago, the consequences were the baby who had been exposed at that heavy rain. In the first week, around 20 officers were on the case, doing house-to-house calls, manning the verge, running vehicle checks and monitoring a dedicated phone line. Meanwhile, police have set up an incident room where relatives, friends or anyone with information can talk to a woman police constable. If you can help, ring Ipswich, that's 0473, 610579. It's the 1980s, remember. So the officers are working without any help from CCTV, computers or mobile phone records.
Starting point is 00:27:30 And investigations using DNA were in their infancy. When the case paperwork arrives from Suffolk Police, it paints a picture of a pretty analogue investigation. There's the appeal poster that was pinned up on notice boards across the county. It carries a photo of Jess taken in hospital when she's a day or so old. She's wearing a pale crochet dress and next to her is a picture of the vest she was found in, with an Adams label showing. Adams was a popular kid's clothing brand at the time. I'm also sent two hand-drawn maps with a small cross marking the spot that Jess was found
Starting point is 00:28:11 and several ordnance survey maps of the area with handwritten notes and markings on. There's a list of the 18 house-to-house inquiries that were made in the days after. There's something else that arrives with the documents some new press cuttings. These ones were written by a young reporter just starting out on the local paper. I'm Terry Hunt. I was the editor of the East Anglia and Daily Times newspaper between 1996 and 2017. When the baby was found in 1987, I was working in the newsroom at the newspaper. Terry Hunt still remembers the call coming in. I looked around the newsroom and the newsroom was empty.
Starting point is 00:28:56 Even in 1987, we didn't run on lots of staff. I didn't have any option, really. We had to go out. So I grabbed a photographer and we headed out. I think there was one policeman standing there. How did you describe what it looked like, that place? Just very, very lonely. Very lonely, even for Suffolk, very lonely. Which made me think it was strange.
Starting point is 00:29:24 There was a bit of muddled thinking on behalf of whoever left it there. That was my initial thought that I don't know what the thing. thinking is why didn't the person who left it leave it somewhere where they knew it was going to be found? Everyone, the journalists, the police, even us young kids, though we can't quite put our finger on why, we all think there's something strange about this story. Most babies are abandoned often in places where they can be found readily. Public toilets, public libraries, hospitals near police stations, that's all that's been.
Starting point is 00:30:04 the pattern of abandoned babies. That's interesting. So there was something unusual from the get-go? Probably, yes, yeah. The police did receive some tip-offs. There was a green Austin car seen parked nearby at a crossroads at 825 that morning. The car's engine was running and a woman was spotted at the wheel, covering her face with her hands.
Starting point is 00:30:28 There was a sighting of a second woman, seen a few minutes later, parked in a different lane, not far from the verge. Two calls came in to the dedicated phone line. One was just silence and one was a local, a woman with a local accent, a suffolk accent, saying words to the effect of I didn't mean it. A week later, a parcel of clothes was sent anonymously to the hospital, a dress simply to baby heather. Inside were five dresses and a romper suit.
Starting point is 00:31:02 As the search for the baby's mother continued, the district medical officer was quoted in the press saying, the mother is probably tired, exhausted, he says. She's at risk of hemorrhage and infection. At risk of infection, tired and exhausted. Aged 8, my focus had been firmly on the infant. I couldn't have fathomed the emotional cost of carrying a baby for nine months, feeling it flutter and kick and then giving birth.
Starting point is 00:31:35 There can't be many lonelier situations. I hadn't considered what those final moments must have felt like, dressing the baby, travelling to the verge, laying it down and walking away. Sometimes I would cut through that little lane and I would always slow down and kind of try to remember where the baby was left. And then I'd think, I wonder what happened to that little baby.
Starting point is 00:32:09 In 2010, after Jess visits the verge and gets that tip-off from Jean about the local nannies, she tells me she gets in touch with the police. One of the detectives agrees to meet her in a supermarket cafe. He tells her everything he can remember, the car sightings, the strange phone calls, door-to-door inquiries. much of the information I've seen in the police files. He tells her about the frustration they all felt when they got nowhere. This detective, he's one of the former police officers who didn't want to do an interview for the podcast.
Starting point is 00:32:51 But he does send me a note about one other thing he said to Jess. She should try and trace the young lady that found her that morning. It chimes with what Jess has already heard from Jean. He's telling Jess. that if she wants to know more about what happened that day, she should try and find this former nanny. And he tells me he hands her something. I left her with a press cutting so that she had the young lady's details.
Starting point is 00:33:19 Jess tells me she's never seen this particular press cutting before. It's new to her. It's the interview which Terry Hunt did when he spoke to the young nanny who found Jess, and it includes a photograph of her. And then underneath it said her name, her full name. Armed with a name, Jess and her sister Laura go online. Laura posts a message on a family reunion site. Does anyone remember an 18-year-old nanny who found a baby in Suffolk in 87?
Starting point is 00:33:57 And Jess turns to Facebook. I just bombarded every single one I came across with the same name, roughly the same age. with the same message. It was a copy and paste scenario. I think at least 20 people got that message with the same name and surname. She says she keeps it simple. She names the village where she was found
Starting point is 00:34:25 and asks them, did you ever live there? Most never reply. A few get back to her saying, no, sorry, they've never even been to Suffolk. But then, two days later, a message. pings in. It reads, yes, I did live there. I was a nanny there. Does that help? Jennifer. I then replied and said, thanks for replying. Did you find a baby abandoned in the village by any
Starting point is 00:34:53 chance? Jess. Yes. Why? That's a long time ago. Jess explains that she is that baby and that she's looking for information about her birth, that she wants to find out more. Jennifer replies, Gosh, I'm so very glad you're okay. Last I knew, you were called Heather. On the grass verge, there you were, wrapped in a blanket or sheet. I'm sorry, I can't remember exactly, with a bag of some sort under you. You were taken to the hospital and I never saw you again, I'm afraid. I did a TV appeal for your mum to come forward, but I was never kept in the loop as to what happened.
Starting point is 00:35:35 Jess writes back, she's certainly doing fine, she told you. I've been trying to track you down for quite some time just to say thanks really and that you saved my life. Very lucky to be here. She goes on to ask, I have a newspaper article with a picture of you on the front. Did you get questioned by the police a lot? I've met one of them and they said they spoke to you.
Starting point is 00:35:56 Thanks so much, Jess. Oh, you're so very welcome. Right time, right place. The police were a bit full on to begin with. It was a big thing in a little rural area. I'm glad to have been one of the first people to have met you. If I'd been asked, I would have called you Rebecca. Heather never seemed you.
Starting point is 00:36:19 When I read that out loud to my mum and dad, we all just went, that is such an odd thing to say. Because why would you say that? I think I've got it here. You got it? Yeah. If I had been asked. If I had been asked.
Starting point is 00:36:36 I would have called you Rebecca. Yeah. Two exclamation marks. Heather never seemed you. Heather never seen me. See that, I think that's even weirder. That she's got a version of you in her mind. Heather never seemed you. Like, never seemed me. Like, you don't know me. If you just found me, you don't know me then, do you? I then replied and said, a lot of people in the village still think you have something to do with it for some reason.
Starting point is 00:37:08 Next time on foundling. If I'd have known it was going to be as traumatic as it had happened. has been, I probably wouldn't have carried on digging. Do you really mean that you'd turn? Absolutely, 100%. You turned back the clock? Yeah. And I dug a little bit, not realising that tiny little bit of a digging
Starting point is 00:37:29 would turn into this huge pit of problems and a spindle of lies. Foundling was reported by me, Lucy Greenwell. It was 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 Blythe Walker Sibthorpe. The development producer was Jess Swinburne. The narrative was Gary Marshall.
Starting point is 00:38:23 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 I Escape, tickets to our events, and much, much more. Subscribe today at observer.com.uker.uk slash subscribe or via the link in the show notes.
Starting point is 00:39:03 Subscribe today for £1 for your first month.

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