Under one roof | Foundling Ep 2

Summary

Foundling | Tortoise Investigates

Episode 2: Under One Roof

Host: The Observer (Lucy Greenwell)
Date: March 31, 2026

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Overview

This deeply personal investigative episode follows Jess, who was abandoned as a baby in 1987, and reporter Lucy Greenwell as they try to unravel the truth behind Jess’s origins. The episode centers on Jess’s growing conviction that the woman who “found” her as a newborn—Jennifer, a nanny in rural Suffolk—was in fact her birth mother. Lucy and Jess track down witnesses, revisit the house where Jennifer worked, and explore how such a secret could have been kept for decades. The episode delves into feelings of abandonment, the impact of DNA technology, and the tangled consequences of long-held secrets.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Search for Truth: Revisiting Old Suspicions

• Jess’s Facebook Message to the Nanny (Jennifer)

  • After decades, Jess messages Jennifer to thank her for finding her—and quietly probes deeper due to rumors circulating in the village.
  • “A lot of people in the village still think you have something to do with it for some reason. And that's when the messages turned from being quite pleasant... to a little bit more defensive and sour.” (Jess, 03:30)
  • Jennifer is defensive and insists, “I can assure you, if I knew more, I would tell you.” Jess, however, remains unconvinced.

• Impact of the Conversation

  • Jess is unsettled by Jennifer’s defensiveness, feeling there is still something to uncover. Despite the discouraging exchange, she doesn’t stop searching.
  • “No, because I just didn't believe her... there has to be someone that knows something.” (Jess, 04:50)

The Weight of Abandonment

• Motherhood Reawakens Old Wounds

  • The birth of Jess’s own child stirs up unresolved trauma.
  • Jess wonders if she’s "inherited an instinct to abandon," battling postnatal depression and intense self-doubt.
  • “I convinced myself I'm as bad as her… Did she feel like this? Did she have this disconnect right from word go?” (Jess, 07:11)

• Prevalence and History of Abandoned Babies

  • Lucy provides historical context, noting that abandonment was once common, but is now rare in the UK (now typically zero or one a year).
  • The “foundling” mythos is tied into classic stories (Moses, Mowgli, Oliver Twist), but real-world foundlings are often unsolvable mysteries—until the advent of DNA testing.

Modern Tools, Old Mysteries: DNA and Breakthroughs

• DNA Testing Changes the Game

  • With companies like 23andMe (launching DNA Relative matching in 2010), the barriers to identifying family members drastically shift.
  • Jess is initially hesitant but is eventually persuaded by her sister Laura, after a breakthrough message.

• A Game-Changing Message

  • Laura receives a message from Sam, who is the brother of Jennifer. He reveals his long-held suspicion:
  • “He says he's always suspected that his sister didn't just find the baby. All along, he's had a hunch that it was her baby.” (Lucy, 12:25)

• Jess’s Revelation

  • Jess’s DNA results return; she instantly spots a relative with Jennifer’s uncommon surname. Coupled with rumors and Sam’s message, it leaves Jess in little doubt.
  • “Someone with the same surname as the nanny that had found me. Well, there is the same surname. So come on, this can't just be a coincidence.” (Jess, 14:42)
  • Lucy confirms the genealogical match independently.

• The Emotional Fallout

  • Jess is devastated by Jennifer’s previous denial:
  • “She's bareface lied. What was this? Nine years later… she had nothing to do with it.” (Jess, 16:14)
  • Lucy reflects:
  • “I've thought a lot about Jennifer and to me this lie was just the latest in what must have been countless untruths woven together in order to secure this secret over decades.” (Lucy, 16:35)

Reconstructing the Past: Revisiting Jennifer’s Life

• Visiting the House in Suffolk

  • Jess, Lucy, and the production team visit the house where Jennifer worked as a nanny. Jess meets Selena (the mother of the family Jennifer nannied for) and her daughter Gussie.
  • The episode paints a vivid scene of the lived-in, slightly shabby but beautiful house.

• How Could the Secret Remain Hidden?

  • Detailed exploration of Jennifer’s living quarters, routines, and relationships in 1987.
  • The birth may have occurred while Jennifer was alone with the younger children; household routines and Jennifer’s reserved nature helped her conceal the pregnancy.

• No One Suspected a Thing

  • Selena insists she saw no signs of pregnancy, partly because she was convinced it “couldn’t have been hers.”
  • “No, because I knew nothing about it. I didn't sort of even analyze it.” (Selena, 33:26)
  • “Unless she had somebody with her, how could she have cleared up all the mess and been so together?” (Selena, 34:51)

Memories, Misgivings, and Unanswered Questions

• Other Witnesses: Catherine’s Perspective

  • Catherine, a fellow nanny, describes Jennifer as thoughtful and kind, but also recalls moments that, in retrospect, seem strange—like Jennifer wearing baggy dungarees and avoiding conversation about her changing body.
  • “She had these dungarees that she wore almost all the time.” (Catherine, 39:10)
  • Years later, Catherine learns Jennifer confided to a boyfriend about giving up a baby for adoption.

• Jess’s Reluctance to Meet Jennifer

  • Despite knowing the truth, Jess feels too raw to confront Jennifer directly. Trust is broken.
  • “And if I met her, it would make it too real and I think that would break my heart.” (Jess, 43:26)
  • Lucy writes to Jennifer instead, explaining the investigation, and waits for a response.

Final Twist: DNA, TV, and Another Secret

• A New DNA Match and a Shocking Phone Call
  • Jess’s DNA results reveal another, unnamed close family connection.
  • She is contacted by a researcher from ITV’s Long Lost Family, who reveals Jess has matched with one of their clients—hinting at yet another layer to her story.
  • “No words can express when you think that someone has dumped you on the side of a road, that they'd then go and do it again.” (Jess, 46:58, preview for next episode)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the realisation and hurt:
  • “She's bareface lied.” – Jess (16:14)
  • “For Jess, it's simple. Her birth mother is the villain in this story. She's a woman who abandoned a baby and then lied about it.” – Lucy (16:35)
• On the concealment of the pregnancy:
  • “She had these dungarees that she wore almost all the time.” – Catherine (39:10)
  • “No, because I knew nothing about it. I didn't sort of even analyze it.” – Selena (33:26)
• On the difficulty of searching for origins:
  • “And if I met her, it would make it too real and I think that would break my heart.” – Jess (43:26)
• On the enduring impact of abandonment:
  • “If you're a foundling, you've suffered the ultimate rejection right at the start of your life. Jess says that this just keeps on reverberating, this sense of being unwanted.” – Lucy (42:48)

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Important Timestamps

• [02:09] Jess messages Jennifer, the nanny who found her
• [06:39] Jess’s own motherhood stirs up feelings about her abandonment
• [11:02] Laura urges Jess to do a DNA test
• [12:25] Sam (the nanny’s brother) suspects his sister is actually Jess's birth mother
• [14:42] DNA results confirm a familial link to Jennifer
• [18:48-23:22] Jess and Lucy visit the Suffolk house; meet Selena and Gussie
• [26:38-30:15] Reconstructing the events and Jennifer’s possible hiding place for the pregnancy and birth
• [33:26] Selena denies noticing any signs of Jennifer’s pregnancy
• [36:21] Catherine describes Jennifer, their friendship, and her habits
• [41:02] Catherine recalls Jennifer possibly arriving in Suffolk already pregnant
• [43:26] Jess explains why she can’t bring herself to meet Jennifer
• [45:31] Jess’s DNA leads to a mysterious close match and contact from Long Lost Family

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Flow & Tone

The tone is deeply empathetic, investigative, and often raw—balancing journalistic rigor with personal stakes. Lucy’s narration alternates between fact-finding and sensitive, emotional inquiry. Jess is open, sometimes wounded, sometimes wryly humorous, exposing the complexity of confronting her past. The episode reflects both the seeming ordinariness and incredible oddity of the central mystery, always foregrounding Jess’s lived reality.

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For Next Time

The episode closes with the revelation that another DNA match—connected to an ITV show—hints that Jess might not have been the only child Jennifer abandoned. “No words can express when you think that someone has dumped you on the side of a road, that they'd then go and do it again.” (Jess, 46:58)

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This episode combines poignant personal testimony with methodical investigative reporting, unspooling the human consequences of secrets kept—sometimes for a lifetime—and the powerful role of technology in uncovering hidden pasts.

Transcript

[Hayden]

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Stephen]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Hayden]

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Selena]

Hey.

[Kareem]

Hey.

[Stephen]

So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler Al he'll be wrong.

[Stephen]

News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday and you can find Fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.

[Lucy Greenwell]

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[Lucy Greenwell]

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[Lucy Greenwell]

Tortoise investigates. It's half past 10 on a December night in 2010. Jess, who was found abandoned as a newborn baby 22 years earlier, is sitting on her sofa having a conversation she's waited half a lifetime to have. She's on Facebook, messaging the person who found her, the woman who spotted a Sainsbury's plastic bag on a lonely verge and looked inside just to thank her,

[Jess]

because she'd obviously saved my life and just, yeah, just to say, hi, thanks for finding me.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Except that's not all that Jess wants from this conversation. Six months earlier, an elderly lady called Jean, who lived near that verge, had mentioned something, rumors, she said, that some people in the village may have known more about the baby than they let on.

[Jess]

Well, there was a couple of nannies in the village, she said, and they weren't from around here. She said, no, I'm sure one of them has something to do with it.

[Lucy Greenwell]

The woman Jess is messaging was a nanny who worked nearby at the time. So once Jess has thanked her, she takes the plunge. SHE TYPES A lot of people in

[Jess]

the village still think you have something to do with it for some reason. And that's when the messages turned from being quite pleasant, I suppose, to a little bit more defensive and sour.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Not sure why anyone would think I had anything to do with it. I'm a bit confused. I lived within a large family who saw me every day. It's a bit hurtful to think that people are so cruel. I didn't really know anyone in the village. I don't even know if the family I nannied for is still in the area. I also mixed with other nannies in the area, but God knows where they are now. Sorry, I'm not much help, but I can assure you, if I knew more, I would tell you. I can assure you, if I knew more, I would tell you. But Jess isn't convinced.

[Jess]

Yeah, I was kind of bit taken back because it was just. I was trying to put myself in her shoes and think, well, if someone had said that about me, I would just be like, oh, no, I'm not sure. I'm unsure about why they think that, but I certainly wouldn't have been defensive. I think she was perhaps hoping I would take that as gospel and leave it there. Because she knew nothing else. There was nothing else to say, nothing else we need to talk about. There's nothing else to discover. No more digging.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Did you stop digging then?

[Jess]

No, because I think. Because I just didn't believe her and I didn't. I felt like there was more to it and I thought, well, there has to be someone that knows something.

[Lucy Greenwell]

I'm Lucy Greenwell and from Tortoise Investigates and the observer, you're listening to Foundling, episode two, Under One Roof. Jess tells me she has a strong hunch that Jennifer knows more. But once the Facebook conversation is over, she's at a loss.

[Jess]

I classed it as an incredible story, like of, wow. I was found by a lady who's a bit weird, who's a bit suspicious, and I just kind of left it at that.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Jess tries to put it behind her, get on with her life, but she's forgotten about something else that's still in play. Weeks before that Facebook conversation, her sister Laura had posted a message on a family reunion site asking if anyone remembers the nanny who found the suffolk baby in 1987. That post is still out there, languishing in some quiet corner of the Internet. Three years pass, and it's only when Jess is leaving hospital, having just given birth to her first baby in 2013, that a sense of being abandoned comes roaring back.

[Jess]

And it was snowing and I had to take him home in the snow and I couldn't walk. And I remember sitting there waiting for his dad to bring the car around with no one around, just looking at him in his car seat, this tiny, tiny little bundle, and thinking, could I leave him right now?

[Lucy Greenwell]

I can really imagine this, that these anxieties could surface at this moment, in those very vulnerable hours after you've given birth.

[Jess]

I convinced myself I'm as bad as her. Even though I've got the baby there, I'm breastfeeding the baby. Did she feel like this? Did she have this disconnect right from

[Lucy Greenwell]

word go, Jess says she's worrying that she's inherited an instinct to abandon, that she's a bad mother, a bad person. And then postnatal depression sets in and when Jess gets home, midwives drop in on her every day for two straight months. For anyone who's had a baby in the uk, you know that that's a sign that they're seriously concerned about you.

[Jess]

So it dragged up these feelings that I was not expecting. So that's when it started again for me, because I banked it and I really put it away. I really thought I'd handled it, but it dragged it up.

[Lucy Greenwell]

We know that babies have always been abandoned. Quite. How many? Well, that varies across time and place. In 18th century London, around 1000 babies a year were left outside churches or hospitals, placed on doorsteps or hidden in parks. Since the 1970s, a register has been kept of the number of newborns abandoned each year in the UK for the 1980s, it shows an average of around 10 babies a year. But it's far from definitive. The figures don't include babies who are found dead or those who are later reunited with a parent, so the actual number is likely to be higher. These days, the numbers are vanishingly small. Over the last decade, the official figure has never been more than one per year. But foundlings fascinate us. Think of Moses in the bulrushes, Mowgli, Thumbelina, Oliver Twist and Oliver Twist's locket. The token that in the novel finally connects him with his family. It captivated readers for a reason. Because in the real world, well, there was no locket. For most of history, there's been no way to prove who the parents of a baby are. A foundling was an absolute and unsolvable mystery until DNA testing came along. So a quick spot of history, because it's going to be important. DNA testing in paternity cases has existed since the 1980s. Then, at the turn of the millennium, a handful of tech startups began offering something new. In 2006, a company called 23andMe launched in California. They offered genetic testing with a consumer friendly design. Spit in a tube, send it back and get information about your ancestry, your inherited traits, your health. They made it seem fun. That was pretty revolutionary. But four years on, in 2010, they launched something DNA relatives. This was a feature that matched you with anyone else in the database with whom you shared significant amounts of DNA. That was the moment. For foundlings the world over, it was game on. And for the mothers who didn't want to be found, well, the clock was ticking. By 2020, DNA testing is widespread and Jess's sister Laura thinks Jess should give it a go to see what she can find out.

[Jess]

So she's oh, we need to do your DNA. And I said, oh, I don't want to, I don't want to know.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Jess isn't at all sure. Almost a decade has passed now since she last went looking for answers about her birth mother. From that moment on her sofa and the Facebook conversation. Now she has two children of her own. Maybe she's better off not knowing. But while she's thinking about it, Laura gets a message out of the blue. It's from someone we're calling Sam. He says he's just come across Laura's post, the one Laura had written on that family reunion site nearly 10 years earlier in 2010, asking if anyone remembered a nanny who had found a baby in the 1980s. Laura had included the nanny's unusual surname. And it was when Sam Googled himself. Hey, we've all done it. That a link to the post popped up. It popped up because they share a surname and they share a surname because the nanny is Sam's sister. And he says something incredible. He says he's always suspected that his sister didn't just find the baby. All along, he's had a hunch that it was her baby.

[Jess]

One message can just explode everything. It was too much. It was so much to take on. Like, just that message alone is sort of shattering because I've. I absolutely convinced myself all my life. That is too extravagant. It's too ridiculous to pretend to find a baby when you've actually given birth.

[Lucy Greenwell]

After talking to Sam, Jess's sister Laura goes into overdrive.

[Jess]

I remember her going, you've got to do your DNA now. You have to do it. Like, it's gotta be her, it has to be her.

[Lucy Greenwell]

When Jess finally does the test, it feels quite mundane, really.

[Jess]

It was just spitting into a tube.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Standing in her kitchen, she spits into a tiny plastic pot, twists the lid tight, drops it into an envelope at the end of her lane. She posts it. She tells me she was excited to find out where her DNA was from. Will she find something surprising, like Laura, who discovered that she was half American?

[Jess]

My mum was like, oh, she's just an English rose. Like, there's nothing to it. Like there won't be anything exciting. I'm sure it's just Suffolk bumpkins. And, yeah, that's. That's the sort of route we was going.

[Lucy Greenwell]

DNA matches. She's not thinking about those. Because if you've abandoned a baby and then kept quiet about it for decades, you're hardly going to go and share your DNA with a commercial database, right?

[Jess]

No one's going to put their DNA out there. No one will want to be found.

[Lucy Greenwell]

It's 35 years since Jess was discovered on that verge. But it's at this moment, Jess's saliva sealed in that plastic vial, that something unstoppable begins. Six weeks go by, an email arrives. Your DNA has been processed and it's ready to view. She logs in and there's something she notices straight away. It's a surname. The surname of someone who's also sent their saliva to the site and who shares enough DNA with Jess to make them distant cousins.

[Jess]

Someone with the same surname as the nanny that had found me. Well, there is the Same surname. So come on, this can't just be a coincidence. It's not. A massively common surname. Can't just be a coincidence.

[Lucy Greenwell]

This is a pretty strong indication that she's somehow related to the nanny. DNA doesn't lie after all. A serious genealogist would probably want to rule out some other relatives with the same name before jumping to conclusions. But it seals it for Jess. Three pieces of evidence now. The nanny rumours from back in the 80s, the brother from across the country with his suspicions, and now this. An identical surname in her DNA results. She's sure now. And after researching this story for a year and getting a genealogist to talk me through Jess DNA results, I am too.

[Jess]

It was gurgling, smiling.

[Lucy Greenwell]

The nanny who said she'd found Jess is in fact her birth mother. Jess thinks back to that Facebook conversation years ago. Not sure why anyone would think I had anything to do with it. I'm a bit confused. Sorry, I'm not much help, I can assure you. If I knew more, I would tell you. The one where the nanny denied knowing anything.

[Jess]

We all as a family then sat there and went, surely not, surely not. She's bareface lied. What was this? Nine years later, after I'd first spoken to her, to Jennifer and said that she had nothing to do with it.

[Lucy Greenwell]

It's an understatement to say that Jess feels hurt by that lie over Facebook. She sees it as a second rock hard rejection, an echo of the first. For Jess, it's simple. Her birth mother is the villain in this story. She's a woman who abandoned a baby and then lied about it. I've thought a lot about Jennifer and to me this lie was just the latest in what must have been countless untruths woven together in order to secure this secret over decades. If you've spent a lifetime protecting that secret, then dismantling that lie and everything you've built around it, just as soon as your secret daughter lands unexpectedly in your DMs. It would take immense courage. And yet, if you don't want to be found and you don't want to tell the truth, why respond to Jess at all? Why not stay silent? Is anyone close in your life called Jenny? Because if there is, let's not do that.

[Jess]

I've got an aunt Jenny, but I don't see her very much.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Okay, okay, well, let's go with Jennifer. It's quite a popular name in those of people born in 69 or whatever. So I looked up. It's almost 40 years since Jess was found. On that verge, her birth mother now lives hundreds of miles from the place in Suffolk where Jess was abandoned. She has a husband and children and a career in the nhs. So Jennifer isn't her real name. We've changed that and any other details that might identify her. After receiving her DNA results, Jess thinks about contacting Jennifer again, about sending a message, but she doesn't. She isn't ready to speak to her.

[Jess]

Is that their house?

[Lucy Greenwell]

Yeah, that's her house. It's a bright autumn morning and I'm in the car with Jess, her husband Jamie and my producer Katie. We're heading to the Suffolk house where Jennifer lived and worked back in 1987. For the first time, Jess's years of digging and my fresh investigation are coming together before trying to answer questions about why Jess was left. We both want to understand how any of it was possible. How did she hide her pregnancy, hide the birth and apparently evade any suspicion at all? So we want to get a sense of Jennifer's life back in 1980s Suffolk.

[Jess]

It's absolutely.

[Lucy Greenwell]

And on a day like today.

[Jess]

Yeah, I mean, yeah, look at that. That's sunny Suffolk at his best.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Jess is convinced that someone must have known that Jennifer was pregnant, maybe even helped her at the birth. And for Jess, the most likely person is Selena, the mother of the family Jennifer worked for. After all, Jennifer lived right there under her roof. So I'm taking Jess to meet Selena and her daughter Gussie. It's a huge moment for Jess. She's got such scant details about her origins, so this family and this house are really important. She's thought about them for years.

[Jess]

Oh, let's look at the fluff.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Let's not run the Pekingese.

[Jess]

No, let's not do that.

[Lucy Greenwell]

We pull up on the wide gravel drive. The big front door is propped open and a small Pekingese runs out to greet us. Shall we go in?

[Jess]

Yeah, let's do it.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Picture an archetypal English setting, a red brick Georgian house set in lush green lawns. Step inside and it's very lived in. There's a kitchen with an aga, sagging sofas. The walls are full of pictures. Every surface is covered with ornaments. Think faded maximalism. It's beautiful and a bit shabby. Hi, Selena. Our visit is a big deal for Selena and Gussie too, who have often wondered what happened to the baby who their nanny found.

[Jess]

Hello. Hi, I'm Kiss. I'm a hugger. Nice to meet you. Yeah, it's crazy.

[Selena]

Maybe where you were born.

[Jess]

Yeah, I know.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Selena is the five foot Tall matriarch of this house and I really need to describe her for you. So black hair, layers of ancient clothes to cope with the slightly chilly house and a lit cigarette on the go at all times. Now, if you're picturing a 19th century fortune teller, you're not far off.

[Jess]

It's a beautiful house you have, though.

[Lucy Greenwell]

It is stunning.

[Selena]

So you're born in a nice house. That's quite good.

[Jess]

Yeah, I know, that's it. It's a good start. But then, like instantly, we all. We always.

[Selena]

We might have been born in the garden or something.

[Jess]

Well, this is it. We don't know, do we?

[Lucy Greenwell]

With five children, Selena oversaw a succession of nannies and au pairs in the 80s.

[Selena]

We sometimes advertise in the Natural World magazine and the lady. We got a few people from that.

[Lucy Greenwell]

What kind of thing might you have said?

[Selena]

Well, I would have said Mother's Help. Probably living in Mother's Help Childcare in

[Lucy Greenwell]

Suffolk in the late 80s was a far cry from the professionalised world of nannies you might find today. Which does slightly help explain how an 18 year old with no experience of looking after children might still have landed the job.

[Selena]

She was young, she was quite reserved. She came for an interview with her parents and they were absolutely charming and then came, then started work about a month later. She was just a very nice, simple girl. She seemed to be.

[Lucy Greenwell]

When I think back to my own job interviews, age 18, I'm struck by the fact that her parents drove her to Selena's house for this interview. Selena says Jennifer was a good nanny, reliable and loving towards the children. Gussie remembers Jennifer giving her a little fluffy rabbit as a present. There's definitely a picture somewhere. She was definitely one of our favourite nannies as well. Is she the only one that made it into the family album? Oh, no, I've just seen some. Loads of others. We had quite a few. How many nannies did you have?

[Jess]

We reckon about 50.

[Lucy Greenwell]

50? She's joking, I think. But there were a lot of nannies over the years, Gussie's number four of the five children in the 1980s. Our two families were good friends and we'd often come here after school or at weekends. Gussie and her siblings were brilliantly badly behaved and the whole place crackled with mischief and fun. I imagine it might have been quite challenging for any nannies with a delicate disposition. Literally, her standing in that bedroom in her dungarees, which. Her famous dungarees. Well, that's Margaret. She was the horrid one. She must have been the one before. We can't find the photo of Jennifer, but I see glimpses of other nannies frozen in various scenes in this 1980s World school sports day, kids birthday parties. A world that Jennifer would have stepped straight into upon arrival that summer of 1987.

[Hayden]

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Stephen]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Hayden]

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Hey.

[Stephen]

Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

[Stephen]

News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy Fan Fellas wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kareem]

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Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports right now. The NBA is heating up, March Madness is here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with

[Hayden]

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[Stephen]

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[Lucy Greenwell]

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[Stephen]

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[Selena]

She must be quite responsible. That one left her on for the whole night.

[Lucy Greenwell]

If Selena and her husband went away, 18 year old Jennifer would be left in sole charge of the children overnight. And that's what happened on the night of Monday 5th October 1987. So in this large house, there was just Jennifer and the family's two youngest children. this point, Jennifer's been working as a nanny here for four months. Selena arrives back late the next morning on the Tuesday and instantly she notices that something unusual is going on.

[Selena]

When I got back, the policemen and police cars, well, I thought there'd been

[Lucy Greenwell]

a burglary or something immediately, but it wasn't a burglary. There was something far stranger unfolding inside.

[Selena]

She was on a sort of high in a way, but she, she'd just been interviewed and she was rather enjoying it, as far as one could work out. So the whole thing was mostly on and we were all just rather elated by the whole thing. All seemed most peculiar. I mean, it didn't end in my head. It could have been her baby.

[Lucy Greenwell]

We all took it at face value that she'd found this baby. She was on the news. That was all very exciting and we all watched the news together with her and we were all laughing away at

[Jess]

her on the news.

[Lucy Greenwell]

You remember her being excited. That's the thing. She. She was. It was all excitement for her and us.

[Jess]

Okay, what's a steep set?

[Lucy Greenwell]

I know, yeah.

[Jess]

Not ideal when you're pregnant.

[Lucy Greenwell]

In Selena's house, the family nanny always used to sleep in a room that's reached via a small door in the corner of the kitchen and up a narrow set of wooden stairs.

[Jess]

This is her bedroom.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Oh.

[Jess]

So she would have had a really easy route out of the house.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Really. We would have been in there, Letty

[Jess]

and I. Oh, you were literally that close.

[Catherine]

Wow.

[Lucy Greenwell]

I just think there are three rooms off a small landing. The nanny's bedroom, a bathroom, and the children's bedroom where Gussie and her little sister slept that night. Nothing has changed. This whole section has not changed at all.

[Jess]

So, same armchair?

[Lucy Greenwell]

I would have thought so, yeah. Same curtains because they match the armchair. It's atmospheric and for me it's nostalgic. I haven't been up here since I was a child. There's an earthy smell of damp books or boxes and something else. Soap maybe. The carpet is light green, just like it always was.

[Jess]

So the all seeing God almighty God that thy piercing.

[Lucy Greenwell]

And on the wall there's a tapestry with a prayer.

[Jess]

There's not a sin that we commit, nor wicked word we say, but in thy dreadful book. Tis right against the judgment day. And reading that after giving birth.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Shall we have a look at the bathroom?

[Jess]

Yeah, it's just here, right next door. Okay. So this would have been just hers or did you use. Gosh. Is it different to what you pictured? Yeah, I just. I just thought the kids would be a lot further away. It's a decent sized bathroom, isn't it? With your toilet, you think? And your bath. But you've. You've have got room potentially to be on the floor, haven't you?

[Lucy Greenwell]

The bathroom has two entrances. A door from the landing and another door into Jennifer's bedroom. There's no window and there's a cupboard in the corner where towels are kept. There's a lock on the door too.

[Jess]

So this is the perfect place to do it then, isn't it? I think it was in here. I just. I don't know why. I just think it is because she's got everything to hand that she needs, hasn't she?

[Lucy Greenwell]

Trying to piece it all together is important for Jess. It's important for me too, because there's a glaring practical question here. How on earth did Jennifer hide the birth from everyone around her? So we tried to work out the timings. No one was in the house. Right. Although there was a housekeeper, cleaning lady. But she wouldn't have necessarily been here. She shouldn't live here. So if she'd left you at 8:00'. Clock. She's deaf. She's deaf. Anyone who's given birth or has attended one knows that it's not a quiet affair. The deaf housekeeper, she wouldn't have heard anything. But the two girls Jennifer was looking after, Gussie and her sister, they might have. We know that Jennifer takes Gussie to school each morning, her younger sister in tow. A 45 minute round trip. She's usually out of the house between about 7.45and 8.30. So if Jess was born before the school run, where is she during that drive? Left at home, hidden in the car. If she's born after. Does Jennifer drive the girls to school whilst in late stage labour? Childbirth doesn't keep to a schedule. First babies, especially Labour can last 12 hours 24, sometimes longer to give birth while caring for two children, one of whom's 10 and so old enough to ask questions. And with a tight school drop off to manage. How did nobody see or hear anything. Standing here in the bathroom, we tried to picture it. How frightening and overwhelming it must have been for her. A teenager alone and giving birth in secret. I wonder, could Jennifer have been one of those rare cases you hear about a cryptic pregnancy where a woman doesn't know she's pregnant until labour kicks in? It's possible. But for most cryptic pregnancies, labor is so unexpected and so downright terrifying that these women tend to end up in hospitals. They don't stay hidden. For Jennifer to have managed this, so many things had to go right for her. If just one person, a friend, Selena, her family, had noticed her growing belly and spoken out, if one of the children had come in and found her, her cover would have been blown. And I know what you're thinking, that it's impossible that Selena wouldn't have noticed a nanny living under her roof heading towards full term pregnancy. I mean, here's a woman who's given birth to five children. If anyone knows how to spot the signs of pregnancy, she does. I asked Selena again, surely you notice something? Does she seem to be getting bigger? Did you notice her getting bigger?

[Selena]

No, because I knew nothing about it. I didn't sort of even analyze it.

[Lucy Greenwell]

No. You weren't looking for anything?

[Selena]

No.

[Lucy Greenwell]

In the weeks afterwards, is there anything that you noticed that was her mistake? Mood changing or her size changing? A sense of anything about her?

[Selena]

Nothing at all. Partly because I made up my mind it wasn't hers. I think I'd so much decided it couldn't have been possible, that I didn't look for anything.

[Lucy Greenwell]

And you know what? I believe her. I was there too, and I didn't notice. While reporting this story, I learned something about my own mother, who's no longer around. A memory I'd never heard before. That my mum and Selena actually had a bit of a disagreement about it. With my mother insisting that it must have been Jennifer's baby. Selena adamant that it can't have been. The fact is, back then Selena had a sprawling family. She was at capacity. I can see how she might have missed things. And there's something else about Selena. She's open hearted, unsuspicious by nature. So while the village was alive with rumours in the house, they were sure it wasn't hers. Even as the police began to ask questions. If they'd rung you up and said, we think it's hers, you would have said, it's not hers?

[Selena]

Yes, I would have.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Why were you so sure?

[Selena]

Well, for one thing, unless she had somebody with her, how could she have Cleared up all the mess of for her. I've been so controlled and together. She was completely together.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Unless she had somebody with her. How could she have cleared up all the mess and been so together? Childbirth is a messy job and the person giving birth isn't normally in much of a state to tidy up afterwards. But I suppose we don't know for sure that Jennifer gave birth in the house. Perhaps it happened outside somewhere. Though it was October, so not very warm. Jess has always imagined that her mother had a helper. But if she did, it wasn't Selena. Did you ever talk to her about the rumours? To Jennifer?

[Selena]

No.

[Lucy Greenwell]

You never asked her?

[Selena]

No. I mean, she very much was adamant that she'd found this baby and I went along with it.

[Lucy Greenwell]

They still struggle to wrap their heads around it.

[Selena]

Well, she must have had somebody helping

[Lucy Greenwell]

her who might have helped her. Did you ever wonder who it could have been?

[Selena]

Well, I assumed it might have been Catherine.

[Lucy Greenwell]

I know Catherine. She arrived to help look after me and my siblings that same year, in 1987, just as my mother, a photographer, started showing symptoms of the Ms. That she had been diagnosed with. Catherine fitted in with the other local nannies, au pairs and mother's helps. They were all young, unmarried and they hung out together. Catherine remembers Jennifer as someone who laughed easily, who was fun.

[Catherine]

She was quite. She was quite thoughtful.

[Lucy Greenwell]

In what way?

[Catherine]

In that she would notice if I was sort of on my own and nobody was talking. Then she would come and talk and say, are you okay?

[Lucy Greenwell]

At the weekends, there were evenings spent in village pubs, the odd night out at a disco in town. Nanny's Christmas dinner.

[Catherine]

There we are.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Catherine's showing me a photo from Christmas 1987, two months after the baby appeared. What do you remember of that, that Christmas dinner?

[Catherine]

Not much, no, just. Just that obviously everyone's very happy and we are having a good time.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Rosie cheeked.

[Catherine]

Yep. There's wine happening there.

[Lucy Greenwell]

There's wine, yeah. And looking at her smile, not a care in the world.

[Catherine]

See, I don't understand how someone can do that and then behave like nothing's happened.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Looking back, she finds it hard to square her friendship with Jennifer.

[Catherine]

She was probably my closest friend at that time.

[Lucy Greenwell]

With the realization that there was this whole other story going on, one that she knew nothing about. They talked, of course, about the morning Jennifer found the baby.

[Catherine]

She said. She said, yeah, I've. I've. I found a baby. She said it was a. Just on the side of the road. I said, what made you stop? If it was just a bag on the Side of the road, what made you stop? She said. She said, I don't know. She said, I just stopped.

[Lucy Greenwell]

But Catherine never properly questioned Jennifer's version of events. The police did, though. While the investigation was underway, we know officers continued to probe Jennifer for more details. They were clearly unconvinced by her story. And Catherine remembers this. She recalls offering Jennifer advice.

[Catherine]

I remember distinctly saying to her, well, if they keep asking you whether it's your baby, I said, all you need to do is let them give you an examination. Then they can see that you haven't had a baby. And she didn't reply.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Jennifer doesn't take up Catherine's suggestion to have a medical examination, and she lets it go. I feel sure that there must have been other signs, clues, things that didn't feel quite right. I keep wondering if it was my best friend, how far would I push it?

[Catherine]

No, I never asked her outright. I didn't really feel that I could because she would then think that I didn't believe her.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Did you believe her at the time?

[Catherine]

Yes, I did. But looking back, too many things were not quite right. She had these dungarees that she wore almost all the time.

[Lucy Greenwell]

I remember those dungarees when I picture Jennifer. She's always wearing them.

[Jess]

It was gurgling, smiling.

[Lucy Greenwell]

And when I rewatched the clip of her on the TV news, there they are. Pale denim, big and baggy with white buckles. But it was perfectly happy. It was her signature outfit. Years afterwards, I remember talking to Gussie and my siblings about how those dungarees would have been absolutely perfect to conceal a changing body shape. And Catherine thinks she spotted that change one night in Jennifer's bedroom.

[Catherine]

Yeah, I just sort of gently poked her and I said. I said, what's that? I said, it's good eating. Is it something, you know, something like that. But yes, there was no response to that whatsoever. Her face just didn't change at all. She didn't laugh. She just looked at me. And then she looked away and changed the subject again. And we started talking about something else.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Catherine thinks at the time that maybe she's overstepped the mark, that she's offended Jennifer, but she thinks no more of it. Catherine and Jennifer, they eventually fall out over a boy and they lose touch. And after I tell Catherine that Jess is Jennifer's baby, that she'd been pregnant all along, she spent a long time since then trying to work out how it was possible.

[Catherine]

I think she arrived in Suffolk pregnant and came to Suffolk so that nobody at home would know she'd had a baby.

[Lucy Greenwell]

This stacks up. Jennifer grew up in a town hundreds of miles away. She arrived in Suffolk to start her new job in June 1987, four or five months pregnant. And Catherine recalls something else. Remember that boy I mentioned? The one she and Jennifer fell out over? Jennifer started going out with him in 1988. So just a few months after baby Jess was abandoned in October 87, Catherine dates him next. And during their relationship, he tells Catherine that Jennifer had confided in him and

[Catherine]

she had told him that she had had a baby and had it adopted.

[Lucy Greenwell]

At the time, Catherine assumes that Jennifer was heavily embellishing her role as the savior of an abandoned baby. And she forgets about it. I'm really intrigued by this story. Was this the first and for decades the only time she acknowledges that she's had a baby, one that was later adopted? Jess is fixated on details like this. They're shards of information that she collects trying to get her head around it. There is one person who has all the answers. Why doesn't Jess just ask?

[Jess]

It's just strange, isn't it? I think it is frustrating because obviously there's no definite answer still. And I know the answer to that is just to meet her and talk to her, but I just can't.

[Lucy Greenwell]

When Jess talks about this, and we've discussed it a lot, she says that it's about trust. Ever since the Facebook conversation back in 2010 when Jennifer denies knowing any more about her birth, Jess doesn't believe that she'll get the straight answers that she wants. If you're a foundling, you've suffered the ultimate rejection right at the start of your life. Jess says that this just keeps on reverberating, this sense of being unwanted. And when I look at it through this lens, Jess keeping her distance looks more like self preservation.

[Jess]

And if I met her, it would make it too real and I think that would break my heart.

[Lucy Greenwell]

So I put pen to paper and I write to her. I say I knew her as an 8 year old kid. I explain that we're telling Jess story and I ask her if she wants to talk about the events of 1987. I post it and then I wait. I'll do a snap.

[Selena]

Right?

[Lucy Greenwell]

Everyone in. Squeeze in. I take a picture. Jess wants one for her album. She's heading home now to her children. There's a comfort in sticking with the family she knows. She tells me it's small and cosy, is where she belongs. So we've spoken to witnesses and started collecting fragments to build a picture. Of Jennifer's Life back in 1987. We know that somehow she managed to be full time pregnant and give birth and then pretend to find the baby without anyone really noticing. But there's so much we don't know. What brought her to the verge that October morning, What was happening in Jennifer's life to make this feel like the only way out? There's another thing too. A reason why it feels so important to understand Jess birth mother better. Because Jess's DNA results reveal something else. There's another match right there at the top on the first page of results. But this match is harder to understand. It's not clear who it is. This person who apparently shares some of Jess DNA is labeled only as close family.

[Jess]

It had a code name, so it didn't have an actual name.

[Lucy Greenwell]

There's just this series of random letters in place of a name.

[Jess]

It was just frustrating because I couldn't see anything. There was no profile picture, there was no details.

[Lucy Greenwell]

And Jess is sitting there staring at it when her phone rings. It's not a number she recognizes when she picks up the call. It's from someone who says she's a DNA researcher. They're calling from a long running ITV show called Long Lost Family.

[Jess]

And she said, oh, you've put your DNA on the DNA ancestry site and we just wondered what your story was. And I went, oh, God. I was like, my story? I said, what is this about? She said, it's because you've matched with one of our clients.

[Lucy Greenwell]

She called her, she explains that it's a bit complicated. She's hoping that Jess can help fill in some of the gaps.

[Jess]

You say you're adopted. She said, tell me a bit about that. And I said, well, I was abandoned as a baby. And then there was this instant gasp at the end of the phone of what?

[Lucy Greenwell]

The researcher is silent for a moment. She wasn't expecting this. And she carefully shares a few fragments of what she knows with Jess.

[Jess]

And then I remember hanging up. And although it was like a 20 minute conversation, it was just. I couldn't get my head around it. My head just exploded.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Next time on Foundling.

[Jess]

No words can express when you think that someone has dumped you on the side of a road, that they'd then go and do it again.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Never.

[Jess]

Every scenario I came up with, never did that one scenario come up like that. She'd done it again.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Foundling was reported by me, Lucy Greenwell. It was written by me and by Katie Gunning, who was also the series producer. The theme music was composed by Tom Kinsella. Sound design and additional music was by Rowan Bishop. Podcast artwork was by Blythe Walker Sibthorpe. The development producer was Jess Swinburn. The narrative editor was Gary Marshall. The editor is Jasper Corbett. Thank you for listening to Foundling. We hope you're enjoying the podcast so far. You can listen to all six episodes today by subscribing to the Observer. By subscribing, not only do you get all our podcasts before anyone else, you also get access to our premium newsletters, exclusive offers from our partners Mubi and I, escape tickets to our events, and much, much more. Subscribe [e-mail] subscribe or via the link in the Show Notes. Subscribe today for £1 for your first month. Tortoise Investigates. Are you really buying a car online

[Jess]

on Autotrader right now?

[Lucy Greenwell]

Really? At a playground? Yeah, really. Look at these listings from dealers. Wow, your search can really get that specific. Really?

[Jess]

And you just put in your info and boom.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Car's in your budget. Mom needs a second. Honey. You can really have it delivered. Really? Or I can pick it up at the dealership. One sec, sweetie. Mommy's buying a car. Mommy, look. I think your kid is walking up the slide. Kyle. Again? Really? Autotrader? Buy your car online? Really?

[Hayden]

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things sand.

[Stephen]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Hayden]

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen]

That's right.

[Lucy Greenwell]

Hey.

[Stephen]

Hey. So each week, you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden]

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

[Stephen]

Newsflash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy Fan Fellas wherever you get your podcast.

[Lucy Greenwell]

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[Hayden]

Okay, caller one wins courtside seats to tonight's game. What?

[Lucy Greenwell]

I won floor seats.

[Hayden]

You did? I've been calling for 13 months. Wait.

[Stephen]

Chris.

[Catherine]

Yes.

[Hayden]

I finally did it.

[Stephen]

What are you gonna wear?

[Hayden]

Men's Wearhouse. They've got today's looks for any occasion. And I need to look like a celebrity. Don't wanna stick out. Exactly. They've got Chill Flex by Kenneth Cole, Joseph Abboud, and a tailor at every store for the perfect fit. Congrats. You can stop calling now. Not a chance. Hit any look for every occasion at Men's Wearhouse. Love the way you look.