Up Next
A woman who has two full siblings she’s never met has started the hunt for them 20 years after discovering about their existence.
Mary Arbuthnot was raised by loving parents in Liverpool and for years felt no desire to track down information about her birth family.
In 1965, she was adopted at 10 weeks old by postman Richard and his wife Joan, a supermarket worker.
The couple also adopted a boy, with Mary calling her parents ‘incredible people’.
‘We were so loved and spoiled,’ she reflected on her upbringing.
Told about her adoption when she was 7-years-old, Mary’s parents said she could ask them any questions she might have, but she decided against it.
However about 20 years ago, just before her father died, he gave her a letter that read: ‘If you want to find out any information, here are the numbers.’
One of the phone numbers led Mary to her adoption paperwork, where she eventually discovered her birth mother was an unmarried Irish woman living in London at the time of her birth.
However, when looking through the documents Mary was ‘gobsmacked’ to discover she also had two full siblings, sister Bridget born in 1960 and a brother, George, born two years later.
But it was only recently that she decided to try and track her siblings down, turning to the series Long Lost Family for help.
Before then, Mary had been concerned about potentially disrupting their lives by getting in touch.
‘I need to find them. I’m wondering what sort of life they’ve had,’ she says on tonight’s episode of the show.
‘The three of us have been scattered all of my life and I would love to bring us back together if possible.’
In an exclusive clip from the show, Mary also explains how she has no clue ‘what they look like or where they are’.
‘Although they are my full brother and sister, I’ve never ever met them. That’s mad.’
The hairdresser and mother-of-two is then told that the researchers on the programme have managed to find her siblings, a rare feat for the show as host Davina McCall explains.
Her sister, now called Andrea, lives in Gillingham in Kent.
After sharing the circumstances of her upbringing with the show’s co-host Nicky Campbell, Andrea was shocked to discover the existence of her brother, which she’d had no clue about.
‘So much time as gone I thought I would never find anything out,’ she says.
Meanwhile George had been searching for his sisters for years after finding out about them and was ecstatic to be contacted by the team behind the show.
In emotional scenes, all three are reunited on camera in tonight’s episode, which also sees another woman search for the older sister her mum had to give up for adoption as a teenager.
Hot Property Picks from Metro
-
What I Rent: I swapped London for my £1,800 a month Wiltshire home and found inner peace
-
This London borough is the best in the capital for first-time buyers
-
The newly-crowned 'best' commuter spot is a city I'll never go back to
-
You can buy a 30-acre island for less than a London three-bed
-
Get paid to live on this idyllic European island – but there's a catch
Long Lost Family now airs Sundays at 9pm on ITV1.
Got a story?
If you’ve got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the Metro.co.uk entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@metro.co.uk, calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we’d love to hear from you.
Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to the original author. Reposting this article is solely for the purpose of information dissemination and does not constitute any investment advice. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately. We will make corrections or deletions as necessary. Thank you.
