Podcast Appearances
Skeletons are always going to come out eventually.
I'm Lucy Greenwell, and from Tortoise Investigates and The Observer, this is Foundling.
Episode 1, On The Verge.
Did you sort of start imagining who your mum and dad might be?
Did you build up little fantasies about the kind of people they might have been at any stage?
Whenever I tell this story to friends and I explain that I've tracked down the abandoned baby, they're amazed.
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 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.
Looking quite alert.
It's just a photo and underneath it says, Baby Heather, will she ever know her mother's identity?
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 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.
She says there were aunts, uncles and grandparents living on the same street.