Relationships
Josie Ferguson, a Scottish-Swedish author living in Singapore, tells how a chance DNA test was the start of an unexpected journey
The email came on a Tuesday. I heard my phone ping but I was too busy watching my children, Mia and Benji, playing with their cousin, Nico, to bother about it. It was February 2022, and while I’d been living in Singapore for 12 years, the last two had been so difficult because Covid meant the country’s borders had shut and none of my family had been able to visit from the UK.
Now, having my brother over with his son Nico, who, at almost two, was the same age as my Benji, felt amazing. Finally, I checked the text. ‘That’s weird,’ I said. ‘What is?’ Michael asked.
‘I just got the results of a heritage DNA test that I did.’ ‘Why did you do a DNA test?’
I didn’t know how to answer. Why had I done it? I’d received a testing kit as a birthday gift from a friend a year earlier. It was a strange present and for months it had sat unopened on the window ledge. But then my friend had begun to hassle me and not wanting to be rude about her present, I swabbed my cheek, popped the sample in the vial and dropped the packet in the postbox at the end of our road, forgetting about it the moment it left my hand.
‘It says I’ve matched with someone,’ I said. ‘A Norwegian woman called Merete – we share 25% of our DNA.’
CAUGHT OFF-GUARD
‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ my brother said. The boys were fighting now, both trying to climb on to the swing. Benji’s lip was quivering; a wail was coming – I could hear it in the tremble of his voice.
‘That would mean she was our aunt or our…’
I turned to face him. ‘Sister.’ The moment I spoke the word, I wanted to swallow it back down. I wanted to unopen the email, unsend the test kit, unswab my mouth. Because if she was my sister, then what did that mean? Was I adopted? Or had my mother cheated? Had my father? Was my dad not my dad?
My parents had been together for more than 40 years. They’d always seemed so happy. I couldn’t imagine one of them betraying the other. And was I going to be the one to reveal it? Would our whole family foundation crumble because I took a stupid test? If you discover this kind of secret, is it better to let it sit burning in your chest, a small fire you must contain because otherwise it will burn the whole house down? While I floundered, my brother took control.
‘It’s okay,’ he said, scrolling through the DNA report on my phone. ‘You’ve matched with Dad’s cousin, too. That means you definitely don’t have a different father. And it says this woman is in her mid-50s. She would have been born long before all of us – long before our parents even met.’
Relief wa
