Under one roof | Foundling Ep 2

Foundling | Tortoise Investigates

The Observer

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture

4.5 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2026

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jess does a DNA test. And she and Lucy travel to visit a house where Jess’s birth mother once lived, and try and work out how nobody noticed a thing.

Foundling is a 6 part original series from Tortoise Investigates and The Observer

To binge listen to all episodes today, ad-free, subscribe to The Observer and use the code AUDIO50 to get 50% off your annual subscription.

You'll get access to:

This series and all our podcasts before anyone else
Ad-free listening
Premium newsletters
Puzzles from the inventors of the cryptic crossword
Exclusive offers from our partners including Mubi and iescape
Tickets to join Observer events in our newsroom or online

Or subscribe to Observer+ on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to listen to all our podcasts, including this one, without any ads.

Reporter - Lucy Greenwell

Producer - Katie Gunning

Original theme music - Tom Kinsella

Sound design and additional music - Rowan Bishop

Podcast artwork - Blythe Walker Sibthorp

Narrative editor - Gary Marshall

Editor - Jasper Corbett

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Tautus Investigates.
0:09.5	It's half past 10 on a December night in 2010.
0:13.9	Jess, who was found abandoned as a newborn baby 22 years earlier, is sitting on her sofa, having a conversation she's waited half a
0:22.5	lifetime to have. She's on Facebook, messaging the person who found her, the woman who spotted a
0:31.4	Sainsbury's plastic bag on a lonely verge and looked inside. Just to thank her because she'd obviously saved my life and just, yeah, just to say hi,
0:42.6	thanks for finding me.
0:44.4	Except that's not all that Jess wants from this conversation.
0:48.8	Six months earlier, an elderly lady called Jean, who lived near that verge, had mentioned something.
0:55.9	Rumours, she said, that some people in the village may have known more about the baby than they let on.
1:04.0	Well, there was a couple of nannies in the village, she said, and they weren't from around here.
1:09.7	She said, I'm sure one of them has something to do with it.
1:12.9	The woman Jess is messaging was a nanny who worked nearby at the time.
1:18.6	So once Jess has thanked her, she takes the plunge.
1:23.3	She types.
1:24.9	A lot of people in the village still think you have something to do with it for some reason.
1:30.1	And that's when the messages turned from being quite pleasant, I suppose, to a little bit more defensive and sour.
1:39.7	I'm not sure why anyone would think I had anything to do with it.
1:42.6	I'm a bit confused. I lived within a large family who saw me every day. It's a bit hurtful to think that people are so cruel. I didn't really know anyone in the village. I don't even know if the family I nannied for is still in the area. I also mixed with other nannies in the area, but God knows where they are now. Sorry, I'm not much help.
2:04.1	But I can assure you, if I knew more, I would tell you.
2:10.0	I can assure you, if I knew more, I would tell you.
2:12.9	But Jess isn't convinced.
2:31.6	Yeah, I was kind of a bit taken back because it was just, I was trying to put myself in her shoes and think, well, if someone had said that about me, I would just be like, oh no, I'm not sure, I'm unsure about why they'd think that, but I certainly wouldn't have been defensive. I think she was perhaps hoping I would take that as gospel
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Observer, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Observer and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.