A day later – and only five days after Tony got his DNA results – Claire travelled the short distance between her home and Joan’s.
For years, she had been driving through Joan’s village on her way to and from work, never knowing that this was where her biological mother lived.
Tony was waiting for her in the driveway. “Hi Sis,” he said. “Come and meet Mum.”
Claire says that from the moment she saw Joan, it felt like they had always known each other: “I looked at her, and I said, ’Oh my God, I’ve got your eyes! We have the same eyes. Oh my God, I look like someone!’”
“It just felt right,” Joan says. “I thought, she looked just like I did in my younger days.”
They spent the afternoon poring over family photographs. Claire told Tony and Joan about her partner, her children and grandchildren. They told her all about the biological father she would never get to meet.
But when it came to questions about whether she had had a happy childhood, Claire was evasive.
“I couldn’t tell the truth then,” she says. “My parents separated when I was very young. I don’t remember them being together. I was raised in absolute poverty, homelessness, often went hungry, and all that entails. It was a very difficult childhood.”
Claire says that breaking the news to the mother who raised her was the hardest thing she’s ever had to do.
She says she did her best to reassure both the parents she had grown up with, that nothing would change in their relationship. Her mother died earlier this year.
As well as coming to terms with a new genetic identity, there were practical implications for Claire, too. Because she had been born before midnight, she discovered she was a day older than she previously thought: “My birth certificate is wrong, my passport, my driving licence – everything is wrong.”
