David Batty

So I had set up a Google alert on her name, and it was an alert for a probate notice.

And I rang the solicitor who told me, yes, she'd been killed in this, well, I think they called it a car accident.

I heard from my birth mother's sister, that's my maternal aunt, to tell me more details.

And really just painted this picture of a very sad and lonely end to my birth mother's life.

So, yeah, that was numbing.

The part of her that had been missing for all those years was that baby.

not the adult that that baby became.

And that's the challenge of our reunion and I think a lot of other reunions.

It's very shocking to realise that this very sort of private, personal, traumatic thing that you've been through is something that is the result of a huge social injustice.

So I was seven years old and I don't really remember very much about it.

I remember the aftermath, being in the garden shed with my sister who's four years older than me and crying.

And I spoke to my dad about this, my adoptive dad about this incident.

and asked him what happened when they told me.

And he said, well, you didn't really have any reaction.

And obviously looking back now, I just think that's incredibly telling that I just completely sort of blanked it or just couldn't take it in.

All he told me was that they'd been advised, that's him, my adoptive mum had been advised by the adoption agency that they should tell me at some point between I think the age of five and 10 and just choose the right moment.

And it really didn't sound like they'd had any more advice than that.

No, it wasn't something that was discussed.

It wasn't like it was actively discouraged.

It was just like there was no opportunity to sort of raise it or talk about it.