Essex woman reunites with long-lost brother after decade-long search

An Essex woman who spent more than a decade trying to fulfill her mother's dying wish to locate her long-lost son finally met him on ITV's Long Lost Family. Jayne Hadlow, 60, learned that Kathleen had given birth to a son named Jeffery in 1962 and that the child was adopted out by the grandparents, a secret that kept the siblings apart for decades.

Kathleen died of cancer in 2011, leaving behind the hope that her daughter and two sons would one day be reunited with their brother. In Jayne's account, the pain of the secret stretched across years, with the memory of bonfire night—an event she and her siblings associated with their father taking them out while Kathleen stayed home, quiet and tearful—standing out as a painful clue to the past. It was only when Jayne was 19 that Kathleen finally told her the truth about the brother she had never met, and the name Jeffery resurfaced in her family history.

With the help of ITV's Long Lost Family team, including intermediaries, Jayne's search moved from memory to a location trail. The show's researchers traced Jeffery, now known as Andrew, to a couple who raised him in the Lake District and later learned he had established a life in Bristol. The team contacted Andrew and told him that he had a younger sister who was seeking him. Host Nicky Campbell traveled to Bristol to break the news, while co-host Davina McCall visited Jayne to deliver the discovery to the family.

Andrew spoke of a strong sense of belonging with his adoptive family and said he never sought his birth relatives out of loyalty, but he was moved to learn he had siblings who wanted him in their lives. On screen, he welcomed the chance to meet Jayne and their brothers Stephen and Jamie, and Jayne expressed how seeing him had begun to close a chapter her mother had carried for years. The first face-to-face meeting was emotional and instant, with the siblings recognizing a shared history and familiar traits.

As the episode concluded, Jayne said she felt she had fulfilled Kathleen's dying wish and that her mother would be proud to see the family together at last. Andrew offered his own sense of belonging, saying that the reunion felt natural and that the siblings could now work to catch up on three decades apart. Long Lost Family airs on ITV1 on Thursday at 9 p.m., continuing to tell stories of families separated by secret pasts, reunited by persistence and an established team of investigators.