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A Bollywood-style ending to UK's lost brother-sister story
Apr 21, 2007 - 10:18:25 AM
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'It wasn't until a colleague came up to me and said I think Steven's your brother. We checked parents' names and it turned out we were related. I wanted to scream and shout but we were in work so we just hugged and chatted.'
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By Prasun Sonwalkar, IANS,
[RxPG] London, April 21 - In a real life twist to the familiar Bollywood storyline of siblings separating in childhood and meeting years later, a brother and sister reunited after 18 years when they discovered they worked in the same office.
Siblings Kay Lund and her half-brother Steven Philips could not believe their luck when a chance encounter at their workplace in Bradford brought them together for the first time since 1989. The story also has an India connection.
Lund, 23, who had spent the last five years searching for her older brother, said: 'It is absolutely unbelievable to think I had been looking everywhere for Steven and we had been working in the same building for five months.
'It is like some kind of soap opera story line. It's like our own little miracle.'
Philips, 33, and Lund last saw each other almost two decades ago after their father, also called Stephen, 56, lost contact with his son, who was from a previous relationship.
Lund, who was only six at the time, moved to India with her father and mother Rose, while 16-year-old Steven lived with his mother in Wolverhampton. By the time Lund and her parents returned to Leeds, the family had lost all contact with Philips.
On turning 18 she started a campaign to track down her long-lost half-brother, even asking customers at the lingerie shop in which she worked if they knew him.
But despite checking on Internet sites such as Friends Reunited and MySpace it was not until the pair started working together at Loop Customer Management that she tracked him down in March.
She told the Yorkshire Post: 'When I started working at Loop I went through my usual routine of asking everyone if they knew a Steven Philips. I couldn't believe it when I was told someone by that name worked here.
'My colleague pointed to a man at a desk on the other side of the room. I wasn't wearing my glasses, but squinting I could see a man with grey hair and his back to me. I thought 'No, there's no way that could be him'.
'I then checked on the internal database which confirmed he wasn't my brother as he spelled his name Steven and not Stephen. It turns out that I was looking at the wrong guy and Steven - who changed the spelling himself - was stood next to him.
'It wasn't until a colleague came up to me and said I think Steven's your brother. We checked parents' names and it turned out we were related. I wanted to scream and shout but we were in work so we just hugged and chatted.'
Philips said he was delighted, and added: 'I'd resigned myself to the fact that we would probably never meet again. I can't wait to get to know my sister properly. We have so much to catch up on and I'm sure we are going to be great friends.'
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