Lucy Greenwell

It was always a far-fetched idea that a crime from 1984 would have anything to do with Jennifer.

She would have been just 15 at the time, at school in another part of the country.

But whenever I think about those officers turning up on Jess's doorstep, I think about how it makes the chance of Jennifer ever speaking freely even more remote.

In America, DNA is being used to prosecute mothers who have abandoned their babies in some instances decades ago.

I do wonder, though, if this makes it harder to reach the truth or to understand why it happens.

I wanted to paint a portrait of a human being.

I wanted to understand Jennifer, but the truth is, she didn't want to be found.

A sociologist who studied child abandonment tells me that mothers who leave their children find it almost impossible to talk about.

I've spent a lot of time looking for other mothers' tales of child abandonment, but there are vanishingly few out there.

This is one of the most subversive human behaviours.

And it's as if the explanation for it is unprintable, unspeakable.

Jess's husband Jamie said something to her the other day.

He said that she hasn't been the same person since her search for answers began.

The joy has gone from her, he said.

So now she wants to find her way back to her old self, to look to the future.

Jess is still scared of coming face to face with Jennifer.

What would you be worried about saying in the room to her, like forgiving her?

Jess says she's chosen not to have a relationship with her mother.

But truthfully, I feel that's only because her mother doesn't appear to have made any space for Jess in her life.

Not at the start of Jess's life and not now either.