Patricia Clark always kept a wooden box tucked away under her bed, carefully concealed by a pillow. Inside there were two black and white photographs of a baby boy, and she is said to have spent her whole life thinking of him.
She would reportedly often fall into bouts of deep sadness, becoming especially inconsolable each March - the month he was born.
Patricia gave birth to Andy in the 1970s when she was aged just 15-years-old. Her parents forced her to give up her son, or face life in a mother and baby home.
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The Mirror reports that the scared teenager fought against the adoption, but with no money or job, baby Andrew was rehomed. “She really struggled,” explained her daughter Lisa.
“It impacted her mental health her whole life. She punished herself from the minute she gave him up. If anything was ever really good in her life she would sabotage it because she felt so much regret and guilt.”
Lisa, 47, and brother Barry, 46, frequently wondered about their older sibling - what he was doing with his life, if he was okay, and which corner of the world he was. “I thought about my brother Andy a great deal,” said Barry.
“As life went by, the more profound these feelings became and the more the desire for contact grew.”
The family tried on multiple occasions to locate Andrew, through a number of different avenues - but came up trumps each time. But then in 2014, Patricia contacted the ITV show Long Lost Family for help.
Its team found him living under the name of Andrew Barlow in Melbourne, Australia - and subsequently send him two letters by recorded delivery in a bid to get in touch. He didn't respond.
Patricia was understandably gutted. Lisa added: “She always said she’d be OK just as long as she knew he’s alive. And it wasn’t enough for her. She was heartbroken.”
However, for now 52-year-old Andy, things were complicated. He received the letters during a time that his adoptive father was struggling with dementia and dying, so out of loyalty, he hadn't wanted to respond to his biological mother. He believed that it could hurt his adoptive parents during such a fragile period.
The letters simply sat collecting dust on his desk for six years - but in 2020 he decided to respond. Soon after, 10,000 miles away, Patricia's phone began to buzz with an incoming call from a blocked number. It was the Long Lost Family crew calling to say that Andy was finally ready to meet.
Unfortunately, it was too late - as his mother had died 11 months earlier in October 2019, aged 65.
Lisa had kept a hold of her phone to hear her mum speaking through voicemail messages, and when she received the call and picked it up, she burst into tears. “I couldn’t believe it was coming 11 months after,” she explains. “I was just sobbing and sobbing because it was all my mother wanted.”
With the help of ITV host Davina McCall and the LLF team, the three siblings met for the first time at a Newcastle -based hotel - where the family are originally from. “It was the most magical moment in my life,” says Lisa, who cried as she hugged Andy.
Barry adds: “It was like watching mum hug him and it filled me with all the good stuff. He’s a great person and clearly cut from the same cloth. It was such a joy to share company and spooky how much we look alike.”
Andy spoke of how meeting his brother and sister allowed him to let go of his guilt he held onto for not contacting Patricia, and calls it a fairytale ending. Lisa and Barry are also planning to visit Australia soon with their families.
Lisa adds: “Mum will be looking down and you know she’s got the champagne up there. She’ll just be loving this. This really is what she would have wanted.”
Long Lost Family airs on Monday at 9pm on ITV
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