Woman discovers mum had a secret daughter during evacuation from occupied Guernsey

• ITV Channel's Hannah Ludlow met Jag to hear her extraordinary story....

An email changed the course of a woman's life as she discovered a half-sister she never knew existed.

In 2009, Jag Sherbourne received an email that revealed she had close family members she had never known about.

"It wasn’t a message that I was expecting at all, it came totally out of the blue, and yet it almost seemed to contain something that I was expecting to hear," she said.

It was from a woman called Charley, who had found her grandmother's birth certificate and wanted to know more about her childhood.

The birth certificate showed that Charley's grandmother, Michele, had been born in 1945 to a woman called Kathleen Le Bargy - the same name as Jag's mother.

At first, Jag could not believe that this was her story.

Not only had she been raised as an only child, but the birth certificate stated that Michele had been born in Bournemouth when Jag knew her mother and father had lived most of their lives in Guernsey.

"We couldn’t really make sense of the story, Charley’s nan and Sharon’s mum, she’d been born in 1945 in January, and my parents weren’t together then, so at that point to start with I thought it couldn’t be my story," she recalled.

"I hoped it was, then I thought it couldn’t be, but they knew too many details.

"We had this exchange by email where they knew that Mum ran a guest house called Romo, they knew about me, they knew about my children, and finally, they said that Michele used to work in that guest house, and at that point, I started to remember things from the past and I realised that it probably was my story."

After months of research, with the help of Charley and her mum Sharon, Jag was able to put the pieces of her story together.

Timeline of events:

• 1938: Kathleen and Charles get married in Guernsey.

• January 1940: The couple have a baby, Michael, who sadly dies six weeks later.

• June 1940: The Nazis occupy Guernsey and Kathleen is evacuated to England. Charles is forced to stay in Guernsey due to his role as a key worker at the island's power station.

• January 1945: Kathleen gives birth to Michele in Bournemouth.

• July 1945: Kathleen returns to Charles in Guernsey after the liberation of the Channel Islands. She confides in him about the birth of her daughter with another man.

• May 1956: Kathleen and Charles welcome Jag into the world.

Jag discovered that her mother had given birth to Michele while she was living away from Charles in England.

While Kathleen did disclose her secret to her husband upon her return to Guernsey after the war, the couple felt unable to bring Michele to live with them due to the shame of having an illegitimate child.

Jag said: "He obviously welcomed her back over here which wouldn’t have been easy."

She believes that rejection letters she has since found from various companies in England and Australia to Charles show that the couple wanted to move away from Guernsey, perhaps to start a new life with Michele.

Instead, they placed her in a children's home in England, making visits during the summer to see her.

When Jag was born in 1956, Kathleen and Charles decided to raise her as an only child.

Looking back, Jag remembers a teenage girl coming to work in the family's guesthouse during the summer.

She said: "I was never told she was my sister, but I do remember it being a bit like having a sister because we did share a room together, and I remember there were arguments and I remember that she ran away, and I don’t remember anything after that.

"I don’t think without my memory being jogged I would ever have thought of that."

Kathleen passed away in 1988, and Charles in 1995, both believing that they were taking their secrets to the grave.

After discovering that her parents had hidden the existence of a half-sister from her, Jag decided to go through her father's personal letters and photographs.

She unearthed a photograph taken in 1962 at St Saviour's Reservoir, which solidified her memories of spending time with Michele in Guernsey.

She said: "Knowing the history behind it and the story that has now emerged, it’s an incredible photograph, it reinforces the fact that she did live with us, that my memories are correct."

Five decades later, Jag finally made the trip to London to reunite with Michele, now knowing the truth of their relationship.

"It was surreal really, it was quite soon after the initial emails, and I hadn’t had a lot of contact with her, my husband and I decided to go over and meet them," she said.

"I was so scared beforehand that I got a hairbrush tangled in my hair and I couldn’t get it out, Pete had to cut it out, I was so nervous.

"I think she was nervous too, she was a little bit reserved when we first met, but we all got on really well, and Sharon and Charley were so delighted for the reunion that that kind of swept us along really."

Following the initial reunion, Michele and Jag struck up a bond, with Michele making multiple visits to Guernsey.

Jag added: "She did very much assume the role of big sister and she did come over to stay, she was a very enigmatic character, she was a very private character in many ways, so we moved forwards at her pace really.

"What struck me was how like mum she was, and mum had died years before so that took my breath away."

Sadly, Michele passed away in 2017. Jag recalls how her half-sister found it hard to forgive her mother and Charles for her unsettled childhood.

She said: "I think she had a difficult life, my view is that my parents intended to go for her, but I think from her perspective she was brought up in a home, and that’s not where she wanted to be brought up which is very sad actually.

"So she did have feelings of regret about what happened in the past."

When reflecting on her feelings towards her parents, Jag says she makes no judgement on their decision to keep Michele a secret.

"It’s not a case of forgiveness for me. I think the issue is that we live in different times now and that the story is a really sad one for lots of people," she said.

"I just feel incredibly sad that it was such a tragic time for them, and that she would have lived with that tragedy her whole life, and didn’t feel able to share it with anybody."

For the past 10 years, Jag has been turning her story into a novel called Clouds in my Guernsey Sky.

Writing did not come naturally for the maths teacher, but Jag says she is proud of the result.

"I've thought long and hard about the responsibility of writing the book, because it’s not just my story, it’s a story that belongs to lots of people," she said.

"The responsibility of telling it and telling it sensitively, and telling it as truthfully as I can has been overwhelming at times.

"I think the whole book in a way is a love story really, to think in those times that were so difficult, and they managed 5 years apart, managed what mum went through, and they were still together at the end of it.

"They stood by each other actually, which I think is a wonderful testimony to the enduring power of love."

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