An unlikely family reunion

In 1989, I went to a social work conference in Cardiff. I travelled there from my home in Bristol. It turned out my half sister also attended this conference. We recognised each other only through the unusual surname we shared.... (she had married, but chose to hyphenate her married name.) My father left my family (in Glasgow) when I was five, moved to Kenya, met another woman, and had three children with her. He moved back, briefly, to the UK (Dorset) when I was 17, where I met up for a week with him and his new family. He left the UK shortly afterwards, telling my mother he was going “beyond the jurisdiction of the British courts” and she should expect no more alimony from him. That was in about 1966. I heard no more from him, or any of the family, until I went to this social work conference in Cardiff. There, I learned from my half sister that my (our) father had died 12 years before. The family had moved back to the UK in the 1970s, and settled in Reading. The half sister I met was the only one of his three offspring who knew of my existence. A strange and unsettling experience.