A woman has found her long-lost brother after guessing what her late mother Ann would have called him.

Jess Basey-Fisher, 53, was told in 2019 that Ann had given birth years before meeting her father Nicholas.

She gave the baby boy up for adoption, but Ms Fisher was “determined” to find her brother.

The only information Ms Fisher, a nurse who lives in Carleton St Peter, Norfolk, had was that her mother had met the father of her older brother at a ball at a US airbase in Sculthorpe. She was then sent away to London to give birth.

“I was determined to find my older brother,” she told the BBC.

Ms Fisher tracked down her brother’s birth record from 1962 on the Ancestry website by guessing what his first name would have been.

“I knew the surname, and I just had a hunch that she would have called him something like James, and it turned out to be correct,” she said.

After finding his birth record, she reached out to a social worker who then tracked James down on Facebook in 2021. He had been renamed Alistair Dalgliesh and was now 62.

The social worker contacted Mr Dalgliesh but heard nothing back. Ms Fisher assumed her brother did not want any contact from his biological family.

Ms Fisher tried to contact Mr Dalgliesh herself in October through social workers, and a conversation started.

“That was an incredible moment for me. And I found out my brother lives in Australia,” she said.

‘I was really happy to be found’

Over a two-hour chat on FaceTime, the siblings laughed at how similar they looked and how Mr Dalgliesh’s mannerisms resembled those of Ann. Ms Fisher said they also shared the same interest in history and music.

“I was really happy to be found,” he said from his home in Queensland. 

“I had such a great upbringing with amazing parents, and I feel very lucky.

Ms Fisher told her brother that Ann had died, but he wished he had met her.

“My only regret is that I didn’t get to tell her I had a great life,” Mr Dalgliesh said.

He called his sister a month after they first spoke to tell her he had been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. Ms Fisher then stayed in Australia for five weeks to help her brother through chemotherapy.

Mr Dalgliesh is set to stay with Ms Fisher in Norfolk this October. 

She said she wished her mother could have shared her secret before she passed away, adding: “I feel devastated for her and I feel cheated out of knowing Alistair for longer. But we are going to make the most of the time we have left.”