I’ve been waiting such a long time to meet you, Mum... all my life actually

The Mail’s ANDREW PIERCE finally comes face to face with his birth mother -- and to his dismay it’s nothing like those tear-jerking TV reunions...

IN YESTERDAY’S Daily Mail, political columnist Andrew Pierce told of the extraordinary moment he first laid eyes on his birth mother after 45 years. In the second installment of his searing memoir he comes to realise that Margaret, originally from Co. Mayo, is a frustrating woman living in denial...

WHAT do you say to the mother you haven’t seen for almost 50 years? My plan was to reassure her that I was happy and to offer her any help she needed if she had health or financial problems. As I sat on the fast train from London to Birmingham, on my way to our first meeting, I also hoped, but wasn’t entirely convinced, that the prospect of meeting me would bring her some closure.

Unfortunately, I had a nagging doubt that might not be the case.

So, I resolved to tell my birth mother that I wasn’t looking for a deep and meaningful relationship, because I already had that with my lovely mum Betty who had adopted me. And of course, I wanted to reassure her that I was not planning to interfere in her life, in any way.

With me on the train was my dear friend and Daily Mail colleague Amanda Platell. It was Amanda who had first knocked on my Irish born mother Margaret Connolly’s door, while I waited down the road in a taxi.

She’d refused to acknowledge even my existence – but when Amanda went back an hour or so later, Margaret, now an elderly lady of 83, acknowledged that I was indeed her son and that she wanted to meet me.

Even though I was waiting down the street, she’d refused to see me straight away. Instead, at her suggestion, we’d corresponded a couple of times and finally, during a disappointingly prosaic first phone call, made arrangements to meet

– again, at her suggestion – at a department store café in the centre of Birmingham.

Thanks to the investigative talents of my old colleague Jane Moore – now a regular presenter on ITV’s Loose Women – at the age of 48, I’d finally located my birth mother just a few months before.

At that point, the sum total of what I knew about my origins, mostly from my adoption file, was slight. For whatever reason, Margaret had been extremely economical with even the very smallest of details about herself, providing no permanent address, no middle name and no date of birth.

I felt sure this was out of fear that someone in her Irish Catholic family might discover she’d had an illegitimate child, rather than a deliberate ploy to stop her son – me – ever searching for her.

In any case, the law enabling children to trace their birth parents hadn’t even been thought of in 1964, the year I was adopted.

The few facts I knew about Margaret were puzzling. She’d emigrated from Ireland to Birmingham in the 1950s, and she’d been working there as a state-registered nurse when she gave birth to me 100 miles away in Bristol – for reasons never explained.

She’d then had me baptised as Patrick James, and placed me in a Catholic orphanage, Nazareth House, in Cheltenham, telling the nuns that she’d withdraw me four months later when she got married.

She never did ask to have me back yet she’d continued to visit me at the orphanage for two and a half years before finally giving me up for adoption. As for my birth father, all I knew about him was that his name was James Coffey and he’d been an engineer.

I also knew that Margaret had subsequently married a man called Patrick Lennon, now no longer alive, and had grown-up children and grandchildren.

So I was positively bursting with questions! For instance, what kind of relationship had she had with James Coffey? Had he left her in the lurch? Why had she left me so long in an orphanage before putting me up for adoption? I was wary, however, of bombarding an elderly lady, so I decided to ask only one or two general questions at our first meeting. I certainly didn’t want to overwhelm her; there’d be other chances to talk. Or so I fervently hoped.

When the train arrived, we walked to a department store cafe, where I was relieved to spot Margaret immediately, easily identifiable because of her distinctive shock of white hair which I had seen when she walked past the taxi the day we found her.

She was wearing a colourful scarf, sensible shoes and a warm coat that ended below her knees – and she was smiling broadly as we approached. I suddenly wondered what I was supposed to do. Kiss her? Shake her hand? Or maybe kiss her on both cheeks?

What on earth was the correct protocol for meeting your birth mother at the advanced age of 48?

Amanda did the formalities, saying simply: ‘Margaret, this is your Patrick James. He’s now known as Andrew Pierce.’

What was I supposed to do? Kiss her? Shake her hand? Kiss her on both cheeks

I gazed at her, feeling uncharacteristically shy and reticent. ‘Margaret, it’s so lovely to see you and to meet you,’ I said after a pause. ‘Thank you for agreeing to see me because I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time. Well… a lifetime, in fact!’

I gave myself a swift, mental kick, because this was neither the time nor the place for the slightly ironic tone of my last remark.

Quickly, I added: ‘I hope my sudden appearance in your life hasn’t been too much of a shock? Because I want you to know that I’m OK, that I’m happy and have had a wonderful life.

‘I do hope you have, too?’ She quietly replied, ‘Thank you for coming’ and extended her arms towards me. As I hugged her, it dawned on me she had a bird-like frame.

Downstairs in the cafe, we ordered cups of tea and Amanda made a strategic exit.

I asked Margaret about her fam