A guy who realised he had two siblings only after his mother died has revealed he struggled to accept the fact that she kept their existence hidden from him.
In the upcoming episode of Long Lost Family, which airs tonight, 57-year-old Paul MacFarlane searches for the brother and sister he’s never met.
Paul grew up in the north of England, in Barrow-in-Furness, in a loving family with his father Alan and mother Ada.
But tragedy hit the family when Paul was nine years old, when his loving mother died of a heart attack.
A few years later, Paul, who was then a teenager, read his birth certificate for the first time.
While his father’s surname was Alan MacFarlane, his mother’s surname was Hewitt, which did not match her maiden name.
When Alan asked his father why this was the case, he couldn’t explain it, telling his son that all he knew was that his late wife had previously been married.
Paul’s inquiries would eventually lead to the discovery that he was not an only child, as he had been encouraged to believe, and that his mother had two other children before he was born.
‘I had no idea whatsoever that my mother had secrets. She took this to her grave; she told nobody, not even my father,’ he shares on the show.
In this exclusive episode clip, Paul discusses how he chose to conduct his own investigation after learning about his siblings, and how locating birth certificates helped him prove the relationship.
‘Beverly Ann was my half-sister, and she was adopted, so I had confirmation that she did exist, my half-sister,’ he said while showing a copy of her document.
‘Well, I guessed London was where he or she was born and I got a match with a Steven, who was born in 1957, and suddenly I had a sister and a brother, so that was a lot to take in as well,’ he explained of his subsequent search.
After his discoveries, Paul said he walked around with his birth certificate ‘for about a week’.
‘Every time I looked at it, it was just disbelief,’ he continued.
‘After 53 and a half years of thinking I was the only child and then finding out I’ve got two siblings…it was a lot to take in.’
Speaking to the camera, Paul admitted that he was first ‘a little bit upset’ at his mother for her cover-up.
‘I thought “why did you not say anything or tell anyone”,’ he explained.
‘I couldn’t explain why she wouldn’t tell anyone about the children, because she was a great mother to me.
‘I will never get my head around that.’
In the episode, Paul goes on to discuss how a DNA test he took a few years ago enabled him to contact with a relative, who assisted in shedding insight on why Ada would have kept her history hidden.
However, once his hunt for his siblings stalled following the discovery of this cousin, Paul turned to the programme for assistance, with the end results proving to be heartening.
Long Lost Family airs Mondays at 9pm on ITV.
