'I always thought I was an only child, but my sister lived just 15 minutes away': A chance encounter, and an extraordinary reunion after 67 years apart

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

One morning idly scrolling through Facebook Jean Barrow stumbled across a post that made her stop in her tracks.

It could have been written by her.

The poster grew up a couple of streets away in Salford, and had a father who was a bus driver - she even had the same name.

And it confirmed something the 67-year-old had been told on a family holiday nearly four decades earlier.

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She had a half-sister - and they'd lived barely 15 minutes apart in Seedley without ever having met.

.Joan Constantine, 77, had posted on a group called “We grew up in Salford” asking if anybody knew of her father. Jim Harris, whom she had never met.

Jean recognised the name and details, and quickly realised that Joan was her long lost half-sister that her father had in a previous marriage.

The pair only knew rumours of each other’s existence.

Mother-of-two, Jean only found out she might have another sister on a family holiday when she was 19-years-old.

Up until that point, Jean thought she was an only child after her older brother David, died when she was 17.

Her dad, Jim Harris, was drove tanks during WW2, and eventually became a bus driver in Salford until he passed away in 2014 aged 101.

He told Jean that he had been married before and had a daughter who was ten years older than her.

Jean says that was all his father or mother Annie ever said about the situation, and she was hesitant to ask more after realising it was a contentious topic.

Jean said: “He just came out with it one day and that was basically it, he wouldn’t really talk about it much, and I got more information off my mum that he wasn’t allowed to see his daughter.

“I just