Daily Mirror

Mum got pregn when she was a It took 19 years her to tell me D was a guitarist a mariachi band

- BY EMMA PIETRAS

MIRIAM Aragon-Hay’s stomach lurched when her mother asked her to go for a walk because she “had something to tell her”. She immediatel­y feared the worst.

She says: “I assumed Mum had an illness or someone in the family had died. I thought, ‘Oh my God, what’s coming?’”

As they strolled along the beach near their homes on the Pembrokesh­ire coast, Veronica took a deep breath and finally told Miriam the news she’d waited 19 years to hear – who her father was.

With tears in her eyes, Veronica explained that she had been a nun and, during a mission to El Salvador in 1976, had fallen in love with a local mariachi band guitarist called Victor Aragon.

When she got pregnant, to avoid embarrassm­ent and shame, she was taken out of the mission and returned to the UK to have the baby – never again to see the man she loved.

Miriam, 39, says: “Whenever I’d asked about my dad when I was younger, she’d say she didn’t want to talk about it or she’d get upset.

“It was obviously still emotionall­y raw for her. I threw my arms around her and told her how proud I was of her.”

After that, Miriam desperatel­y searched for her long-lost father, to no avail. But now, 20 years on from her mother’s bombshell, they have finally met after Victor, now 63, was tracked down in Washington in the US by the ITV reunion show Long Lost Family, presented by Davina McCall. When Davina broke the news that Miriam had been waiting to hear for almost 40 years, she couldn’t hold back her tears. She says: “I knew in my heart we’d find each other. Last year, I made the decision to contact Long Lost Family because I didn’t want to get to 80 having not tried to find him. I knew Dad was getting older and might not even be alive. “To hear he had been found after so long was amazing.” Victor was flown by the TV show to South Wales where daughter and father were reunited in emotional scenes which are aired tonight. Miriam says: “As soon as I met him, I gave him a hug and felt overjoyed. It was a special moment. It didn’t feel awkward. Nearly 40 years just melted away in an instant.” Miriam, a full-time mum to Max, 12, Theo, four, and two-year-old Beau, had a happy childhood growing up with her single mother but as she reached school age, she grew curious about why her dad wasn’t around. “I was about seven when I started asking questions,” she says. “Mum would get out the world globe and just say, ‘Your dad is from El Salvador.’ Bu showing me somewhere on the other sid of the world put him out of reach.

“Over the years Mum would give m snippets of informatio­n but she obvious didn’t want to tell me the whole stor until she felt I was ready.”

Too upset to tell her any more detail Veronica later wrote her an emotion eight-page letter. Miriam says: “As soo as it came through the letterbox, I ra upstairs and locked myself away to rea it. She told me what my father was lik and how they fell in love.

“It was a lovely piece to read. It wa something I had been wanting an waiting for for years.”

Along with the letter, Veronica als gave her daughter a grainy photograp of her father as well as an audio clip him playing the guitar.

“I cried for two hours,” she says. “Whe I was younger, I was very musical and didn’t know where it came from and Mum would say, ‘You get it from your dad.’

“To hear him playing and singing, I fe like I had a bond with him.”

A few years later, her mum gave her DVD of a documentar­y on El Salvado which featured a clip of a young Victo playing guitar at church. “I don’t kno how many times I’ve watched it,” she say “I’d rewind and pause it to study it to se if I looked like him.”

When she was 25, with her mum blessing she added Aragon to he surname in honour of her dad.

Despite the incredible job her mothe did in bringing her up, she says her da has never been far from her thought especially when she married Richard, 4 a manager for a pharmaceut­ical compan five years ago and there was no one t

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GUITAR MAN Victor played in a mariachi band

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