Under one roof | Foundling Ep 2
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Tortoise Investigates. It's half past ten on a December night in 2010. Jess, who was found abandoned as a newborn baby 22 years earlier, is sitting on her sofa, having a conversation she's waited half a lifetime to have. She's on Facebook, messaging the person who found her, the woman who spotted a Sainsbury's plastic bag on a lonely verge and looked inside.
Just to thank her because she'd obviously saved my life and just, yeah, just to say, hi, thanks for finding me.
Except that's not all that Jess wants from this conversation. Six months earlier, an elderly lady called Jean, who lived near that verge, had mentioned something. Rumours, she said, that some people in the village may have known more about the baby than they let on.
Well, there was a couple of nannies in the village, she said, and they work from around here. She said, I'm sure one of them has something to do with it.
The woman Jess is messaging was a nanny who worked nearby at the time. So once Jess has thanked her, she takes the plunge.
She types. A lot of people in the village still think you have something to do with it for some reason.
What significant event prompts Jess to take a DNA test?
And that's when the messages turned from being quite pleasant, I suppose, to a little bit more defensive and sour.
Not sure why anyone would think I had anything to do with it. I'm a bit confused. I lived within a large family who saw me every day. It's a bit hurtful to think that people are so cruel. I didn't really know anyone in the village. I don't even know if the family I nannied for is still in the area. I also mixed with other nannies in the area, but God knows where they are now. Sorry, I'm not much help. But I can assure you, if I knew more, I would tell you.
But Jess isn't convinced.
Yeah, I was kind of a bit taken back because it was just, I was trying to put myself in her shoes and think, well, if someone had said that about me, I would just be like, oh, no, I'm not sure. I'm unsure about why they think that. But I certainly wouldn't have been defensive. I think she was perhaps hoping I would take that as gospel and leave it there. Because she knew nothing else. There was nothing else to say. Nothing else we need to talk about. There's nothing else to discover. No more digging. Did you stop digging then? No, because I think because I just didn't believe her and I felt like there was more to it. And I thought, well, there has to be someone that knows something.
I'm Lucy Greenwell, and from Tortoise Investigates and The Observer, you're listening to Foundling. Episode 2, Under One Roof.
Under One Roof
Jess tells me she has a strong hunch that Jennifer knows more. But once the Facebook conversation is over, she's at a loss.
I classed it as an incredible story, like of, wow, I was found by a lady who's a bit weird, who's a bit suspicious. And I just kind of left it at that.
What does Jess discover about her birth mother during the Facebook conversation?
Jess tries to put it behind her, get on with her life. But she's forgotten about something else that's still in play. Weeks before that Facebook conversation, her sister Laura had posted a message on a family reunion site asking if anyone remembers the nanny who found the Suffolk baby in 1987. That post is still out there, languishing in some quiet corner of the internet. Three years pass and it's only when Jess is leaving hospital, having just given birth to her first baby in 2013, that a sense of being abandoned comes roaring back.
It was 2013 and it was snowing and I had to take him home in the snow and I couldn't walk. And I remember sitting there waiting for his dad to bring the car around with no one around, just looking at him in his car seat, this tiny, tiny little bundle and thinking... Could I leave him right now?
I can really imagine this, that these anxieties could surface at this moment, in those very vulnerable hours after you've given birth.
I convinced myself I'm as bad as her, even though I've got the baby there, I'm breastfeeding the baby. Did she feel like this? Did she have this disconnect right from word go?
Jess says she's worrying that she's inherited an instinct to abandon, that she's a bad mother, a bad person.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:04–1:30
2
What significant event prompts Jess to take a DNA test?
1:30–3:53
3
What does Jess discover about her birth mother during the Facebook conversation?
3:53–21:14
4
How does Jess's past influence her feelings after giving birth?
21:14–28:17
5
What historical context is provided about abandoned babies in the UK?
28:17–33:54
6
How has DNA testing changed the landscape for foundlings?
33:54–44:12