Caroline Harris-Grey smiles proudly with the brother and sister she never knew she had after they were tracked down by TV’s Long Lost Family.
The quest to find them was sparked by a shocking revelation more than 30 years ago that changed Caroline’s life.
The 54-year-old can vividly recall the moment when, as a schoolgirl, her loving adoptive parents sat her down and said it was time to tell her a secret.
She had just hit her teenage years after a happy childhood with mum Jean and dad Adrian.
The couple, who also had two sons, had never hidden the fact Caroline was adopted – but until then, they had never revealed the sad circumstances.
Yet her world was turned upside down after the couple told how she was abandoned as a baby by her unknown real mum and left naked in a fruit box in a hospital matron’s office when she was just 10 days old.
Therapist Caroline says: “Like any teenager, I was having an identity crisis at that time. I was loved and never treated differently to my brothers but at times, I’d look in the mirror and think, ‘I don’t know who I am’. So finding out I was a foundling added to that. I felt lost and abandoned.”
It was only when she had her own son years later that Caroline realised the state her birth mum have been in to have abandoned her.
“I know the love you feel for your baby, so she must have been desperate, poor woman,” she says.
It made her determined to one day find out what had happened – and that led to her TV meeting with her half-brother and sister, actor Paul, 55 and 53-year-old artist Tina.
“There was an instant bond… like I’d found my people,” Caroline recalls. “We had the same humour. It felt like I’d known them for ever.” She waited so long to start her search because of her adoptive family.
“I didn’t want my parents to think I wasn’t grateful for the loving upbringing they gave me,” she says.
“I didn’t want to hurt them. And though I was curious, I thought the chance of finding anything out was slim. I came to live with that.”
Caroline says PA Jean and Adrian, a surveyor, had also shown her both her birth certificates on that shocking day – one with them as her parents and the other naming her as Caroline Wales. The nurse who found her in the matron’s office had chosen her first name while her surname came from the Prince of Wales Hospital in Tottenham, North London, where she was left.
Baby Caroline had been taken to a children’s home before going to live in Potters Bar, Herts with her new parents and their boys Paul, now 62, and Duncan, 60.
Caroline left home at 17 and married car salesman Dean when she was 23. She had her son Luke, now 29, three years later, which triggered thoughts of her own birth.
“It hit home,” she admits. “Luke was premature and I recall sitting by the incubator, willing him to pull through.
“It made me think my birth mum must have been absolutely desperate to fight those maternal feelings.”
When her dad Adrian died seven years ago, Caroline – whose adoptive mum Jean is now 87 – decided it was time to start searching for her birth parents.
After fruitless efforts, she contacted Long Lost Family, hosted by Nicky Campbell and Davina McCall, in 2021.
The ITV show reunites adopted children with their families, as well as trying to establish foundlings’ identities for spin-off, Born Without Trace.
Investigations unearthed a 1968 newspaper report headlined “Baby girl abandoned in hospital” – but it turned out to be heartwarming for Caroline. “I thought I’d been left naked in a box, but it said I was in a white petticoat, dress, shawl and cardigan with green knitted booties,” she says.
“I burst into tears. I wasn’t just thrown away like rubbish. My mother dressed me with love and the fact I was two weeks old showed she had tried. She must have loved me.”
The show’s team went on to trace her birth father Ray, who had died of cancer in 2009 at 64. But further digging revealed she had a half-brother and sister through him – and they wanted to meet her.
“It would have been lovely to meet Ray but to find out he had children who wanted to see me was amazing,” Caroline recalls. This year, Long Lost Family arranged a meeting with her siblings, Paul and Tina, in Brighton along with her paternal aunt Gloria.
Caroline was nervous but as soon as she saw them, everything changed and there were hugs all round.
“I remember looking at them and thinking, ‘I look like someone’, as I’d never had that before,” Caroline says.
She learned Ray was a fireman from Haringey, North London. After his dad died, he split from his girlfriend. It is believed he then got Caroline’s mum pregnant but went back to his girlfriend and had Paul and Tina, unaware of Caroline’s birth.
Now living in Cambridgeshire with partner Trevor, Caroline initially hid her search from her mum Jean for fear of upsetting her. But the two watched a preview of her episode together.
At one point, Ray’s sister Gloria says that if they’d known Caroline existed, they would have taken her in.
But Caroline says: “My mum said to me, ‘I’m so glad they didn’t, otherwise we wouldn’t have had you’. It made me cry.” Caroline is now in regular touch with Paul and Tina, and plans a big party in September so Jean can meet her newfound relatives.
“They say I look like family, which means a lot,” Caroline says.
As for finding her birth mum, she clings to hope. “She might see the programme but if she doesn’t want to come forward, I understand,” she says.
“Meeting her would be the icing on the cake but I’ve met my siblings and found out about my birth father and I’m really happy with that.”
features@reachplc.com
- Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace starts Monday, 9pm, on ITV1 and ITVX
