Unknown Cousins

Summer 2007 I received a handwritten letter at work (I work at the Conquest Hospital in Hastings). The letter was from someone called Aly who was researching their family tree and mentioned my Dads name and his eldest Sisters name (my Aunt). I telephoned the contact number in the letter and arranged to meet Aly the following weekend in a local pub. It turns out that my Aunt had twins when she was 16 - a dark family secret that I knew nothing of. Aly was one of the twins, She had moved to St Leonards-on-Sea (East Sussex) the same year I did (1991) and had been living about 3 miles from where I lived. The really miraculous thing was how she found me - After her adoptive parents died, Aly decided to try and trace her birth mother. with the help of her best friend Patricia she managed to find two names she thought may be relatives but then became stuck, a bit of a dead end and made no further progress. Back in 1995 I had a trainee working with me called Kate, I got on well with Kate and kept in touch after she left to live and work in Cornwall. After a few years Kate got a Job at the Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead. While in the process of moving she popped back to her parents home in Hastings to collect some belongings. Patricia (Aly's best friend) was Kate's Mum. As Kate was saying goodbye to her mother she knocked some paperwork of the computer desk, as she picked it up she noticed my dads name and asked her mum "why have you got Nicky's (that's me) dad's name" - That was the connection Aly and Patricia needed. Although Patricia knew me she never knew my surname and without Kate recognising it I am unlikely to have known about or met Aly.