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When Laraine Oliphant visited an orphanage as a schoolgirl she had no idea one of the children there was her baby brother.

When Laraine Oliphant visited an orphanage as a schoolgirl she had no idea one of the children there was her baby brother. After searching for him for years, Laraine’s dream to reunite her family has finally come true

It’s a familiar scene in many homes – the family gathered around a dinner table,  laughing and joking with one another. But for siblings Nick and Laraine it is the start of a new era.

After 39 years of searching for her long-lost brother, Laraine Oliphant has finally found him again.

Laraine, 52, a care worker, and her brother Nick Sewell now meet up for a family lunch regularly at his home in Leigh, Lancs.

Laraine says: “Getting together like this is wonderful, like a dream come true. Nick and I both have a lifetime to catch up on.”

Amazingly Laraine, from Stockport, only became aware of Nick’s existence when she was 14. But even at that young age Laraine vowed she would find her brother.

She says: “I have vague memories of living with mum in a home for unmarried mothers and I knew she gave birth to a boy in 1968, but children were seen and not heard in those days and I was told not to ask questions.”

A year later Laraine, then 14, went on a school trip to an orphanage in Liverpool.

She says: “That night I told Mum how upset I was at seeing all those children who had no parents, and that’s when she told me – as cool as a cucumber – that the baby boy she’d named Michael was living there and he was going to be adopted!

“I begged Mum to tell me more about Michael but she point-blank refused.

“I was so angry and confused. I wanted to march back to that orphanage to bring my brother home. But I was only a teenager, what power did I have?”

Laraine adds: “After Mum told me about Michael, I thought back to my visit to the orphanage. The faces of the little boys swam round and round in my head. What if one of them had been him?

“What if I’d walked past my own baby brother? The thought broke my heart.

“I tried to remember if I’d seen any little boys with dark hair and dark eyes, like my uncle and granddad.

“That was how I imagined Michael might look. Knowing I had been so close to him just made me more determined to find him one day.”

Laraine admits she never had a close relationship with her mum and finding out  about a baby brother she’d never met didn’t help.

“Mum struggled to bring me up as a single parent, I never knew my father, so we moved in with my grandparents Patricia and Harry, and my auntie Brenda.

“They disapproved of Mum’s lifestyle. In those days unmarried mothers were really frowned upon.”

So Laraine grew up without her brother and never knew who or where her dad was.

“I was a loner and felt incomplete,” she says.

“I think the feeling among my family was that they could forgive Mum once for becoming an unmarried mother – but not twice,” recalls Laraine.

“So the decision was made by the family to have Michael adopted.”

Laraine never stopped thinking about her little brother, and when she married Les Oliphant at 20, her wedding day was tinged with sadness.

“I wondered what it would have been like to have Michael walk me down the aisle. But the truth was I didn’t even know if my little brother was still alive.”

Les and Laraine now have three children, Paul, 32, Jonathan, 30 and Jennifer 28.

“I hated to think my brother thought he was forgotten by his family, and that he would never meet my children.”

But no matter how many calls Laraine made, or countless emails and letters she sent, there was still no sign of Michael, until last November.

“I’d broken my wrist and had been signed off work for two weeks. Idling away the time, I decided to build my family tree,” says Laraine.

“Trawling through the internet I wondered if Michael had ever tried to find his biological family.

“I kept thinking of my  brother – he must have been one of the haunted faces I’d seen at the children’s home. I had to find him.”

Deciding to have one last go at tracing Michael she joined family tree website Genes Reunited. But with little information, Laraine feared she’d never find her brother.

However, Michael, who was re-named Nick by his adoptive parents, had also registered with Genes Reunited.

He’d also tried unsuccessfully to search for his family through the adoption register

Nick, 40, tells of his amazement at the first contact from his family: “I couldn’t believe it when I got an email from Laraine saying we might be related. I didn’t even know I had a sister.

“I quickly replied, writing that I knew my mother was called Margaret Turner and she was from Stockport.”

Everything fell into place quickly and the brother and sister arranged to meet.

Nick, a restaurant manager, says that, like Laraine, while he was growing up he had a strange sense that something was missing from his life.

“When I was three I was adopted by a couple who had three girls. As far as I knew I’d been an only child.

“I was 10 when Dad told me I was adopted and suddenly it all made sense. I still felt lost, and struggled to come to terms with my past.

“I promised myself I’d find my blood relatives when I was older.”

Nick, who married Caroline in February 2005, says: “I had finally found my place in the world, and when our daughter, Olivia, was born, I felt overwhelmed by a need to find my biological family, if only to show them my beautiful wife and daughter.”

And Nick got that chance last year when, after 39 years apart, he came face to face with Laraine for the very first time.

Laraine instantly knew Nick was her brother when they met as he was the spitting image of her granddad.

Nick recalls how nervous he felt before the meeting: “It was surreal, I thought we both looked so much alike. We were like strangers at first but then our bond kicked in and we hugged for ages.”

“Undoubtedly our paths must have crossed as Nick worked as a chef near our home in Stockport, and a close friend of mine lived on the same street as Nick’s adoptive parents.”

Despite the happy reunion with his sister, Nick says he isn’t yet ready to meet his biological mum, Margaret, 78, who lives in a nursing home.

“I’ve got to take everything one step at a time,’ he says.

“Laraine and I have talked long and hard about Mum and decided that nothing that happened was our fault. Laraine was worried I’d resent her because Mum kept her and rejected me.

“But that’s all in the past. I’m just so happy to spend time with Olivia, Caroline and my blood relatives.

“My adoptive parents died when I was 26 so I don’t have much family. I know that’s all going to change now.”

Laraine says: “I’ve told Mum I’ve found Nick and she does want to meet him but I know he needs some time. I never thought I’d find my brother, now I feel the missing piece of the jigsaw has finally slotted into place.

“Nick suffered but knows he was never forgotten or rejected by me, and I never gave up hope of finding him.

“Our first Christmas as a family was truly magical. Now is the time to forget the pain from the past and look to the future – I don’t want to waste another moment.”

Source: mirror.co.uk