Patricia Clark always kept a wooden box under her bed, concealed by a pillow. Inside were two black and white photographs of a baby boy, and she spent her whole life thinking about him.
She would frequently fall into bouts of sadness, becoming especially inconsolable in March; the month he was born.
Patricia gave birth to Andy in the 1970s when she was 15 years old.
Her parents forced her to give him up or face life in a mother and baby home.
The scared teenager fought against the adoption, but with no money or job, he was rehomed.
“She really struggled,” explains 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, often wondered about their older sibling; whether he was OK, and where he was.
“I thought about my brother Andy a great deal,” says Barry. “As life went by, the more profound these feelings became and the more the desire for contact grew.” The family tried different avenues to locate him but to no avail.
Then, in 2014, Patricia contacted the ITV show Long Lost Family for help.
Its team found him living under the name Andrew Barlow in Melbourne.
They sent him two letters by recorded delivery, but he didn’t respond.
Patricia was devastated. “She always said she’d be OK just as long as she knew he’s alive,” says Lisa. “And it wasn’t enough for her. She was heartbroken.”
For Andy, now 52, it was complicated.
He had received the letters at a time when his adoptive father was suffering from dementia and dying. Out of loyalty he hadn’t wanted to respond to Patricia, believing it could hurt his adoptive parents during such a fraught time.
The letters sat on his desk for six years, until one day in 2020 he decided to respond. Soon after, 10,000 miles away, Patricia’s phone began to buzz with a call from an unknown number – it was Long Lost Family calling to say Andy was finally ready to meet.
But it was too late.
His mother had died 11 months earlier in October 2019, aged 65.
Lisa had kept her phone to hear her mum speaking on her voicemail message. When she answered and heard the news 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 host Davina McCall and the team, the three siblings met for the first time at a hotel in Newcastle, where the family are 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 said their meeting helped him let go of his guilt for not contacting Patricia and calls it a fairytale ending.
Lisa and Barry are 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 tomorrow at 9pm on ITV.
