How a writer found himself in a missing person story

While working on a book about missing persons, Francisco Garcia received a message that turned his life upside down. Here he reflects on love, loss and the enduring promise of reunion

Despite the cold, it had been a decent day. Late March is sometimes like that in London. More winter than spring, the grass often still frozen half solid underfoot. It’s rarely a time that speaks too loudly of renewal. This year wasn’t any different, as far as I can remember. The occasion that afternoon was a friend’s 30th birthday party, if that’s what you’d call a few faintly desultory beers in a barren Peckham Rye Park.

Back at home, my partner and I had settled down to watch a florid period drama. About half an hour in, that’s when it happened: the moment my life changed. My phone lit up with an unfamiliar name on Facebook Messenger. “Hello Francisco, this might be a shock. It’s your father’s family in Spain. Twenty years may have passed, but we have always remembered you.”

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Do I need to leave my partner for the sake of my fragile son? | Ask Annalisa Barbieri

It’s all about your partner, your son, your dad, your friends. But you need to find a way to include your own needs in whatever you decide

I am 62 years old and semi-retired. I’ve worked hard all my life. In my 30s I had a son; it was just the two of us for a long time. My son had mental health issues in his teens and has autism; I am still friends with my son’s father, and they have a good relationship.

Ten years ago I met a lovely man and we moved in together. My son went to uni; the expectation was he’d move out once he’d graduated. He’s now 27 and still living with us.

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Samantha Willis was a beloved young pregnant mother. Did bad vaccine advice cost her her life?

When the UK’s jab programme began, expectant mothers were told to steer clear – so Samantha decided to wait until she had had her baby. Two weeks after giving birth, she died in hospital

It was typical of Samantha Willis that she bought the food for her baby shower herself. No fuss; she didn’t want other people to be put out. She even bought a cheese board, despite the fact that, because she was pregnant, she couldn’t eat half of it.

On 1 August, the care worker and mother of three from Derry was eight months pregnant with her third daughter. The weather was beautiful, so Samantha stood out in the sun, ironing clothes and getting everything organised for the baby.

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‘I took a DNA test and found a new family’: the drama and joy of meeting long-lost relatives

After years of searching, DNA tests, social media and old-fashioned tenacity have played crucial roles in reuniting fractured families. Here, six people tell their stories

I used to go by Larecia Whitehead, I changed my second name to Buford – my real father’s name – when a DNA test led us to each other after decades apart. For most of my childhood, Mum told me another guy was my father, a man I never knew and who left us when I could barely walk or talk. I was never convinced. Then, at 15, a girl in school recognised my then surname and introduced me to the man my mother always said was my dad. We looked nothing alike. He didn’t think I was his daughter either. Fastforward to me being 31, and I needed certainty. Once again I tracked down the man my mum said was my dad and asked him to do a DNA test. The results came back: there was a 0% chance we were related. I’d been right all along.

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Parliament to vote on bill to ban child marriage in England and Wales

Marriage of under-18s associated with risk of domestic, sexual and ‘honour’-based violence, say MPs, who will vote on Friday

A bill that would ban child marriage in England and Wales will be presented to parliament for its second reading this week and has been welcomed by campaigners as a “huge stride” forward.

Currently, marriage and civil partnerships are legal at 16 and 17 with parental consent. This is not just out of step with international legislation but also a loophole that is “more often used as a mechanism for abuse”, according to Pauline Latham, MP, who will present her bill on Friday.

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Childhood obesity in England soars during pandemic

Experts alarmed as NHS data shows one in four children in England aged 10 and 11 are obese

Thousands of children are facing “serious” and even “devastating” consequences as a result of weight gain during the pandemic, experts warn, as “alarming” figures reveal one in four 10- and 11-year-olds in England are obese.

Health leaders are calling for a “relentless drive” to boost child health as official NHS data lays bare for the first time how child obesity levels have soared during lockdowns.

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The agony of choosing termination for my baby who had foetal anomaly

There is a silence around the death of a baby, and a greater hush around the issue of termination for foetal anomaly. Laura Doward shares her life-changing experience

I’m looking at my name, handwritten in capital letters, neat as a button. Considering asking for another form to rewrite it, make it shakier.

“Foeticide,” the doctor is saying.

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Dan Savage: ‘When politicians leave sex alone, I’ll leave politics alone’

Dan Savage is the world’s most influential sex columnist, who regularly offends both conservatives and liberals with his radical views. On the 30th anniversary of his column he tells Eva Wiseman how, for all the controversy, what he’s really interested in is how to make long-term relationships work

Dan Savage is not easily shocked, but recently, well. A few weeks ago he got a letter. A 24-year-old man wanted advice – he’d taken his partner, bisexual, older, to meet his parents for what both thought would be the first time. Except, it turned out he’d met them a decade earlier, when he’d joined them for a threesome. On Zoom from Seattle, Savage chuckles darkly and adjusts his cap. “I was like, oh God,” he says. “It’s all my fault! I felt implicated. Because I helped create a world where middle-aged, married, straight couples can have threeways.” He shrugs. He’s right.

His advice column started as a joke; soon it cracked open, and revealed a map to new ways of living. When Savage Love launched 30 years ago in Seattle’s alternative weekly newspaper The Stranger, the idea was that a gay man – Savage, then 26 and working in a video shop – would give sex advice to straight people. “Hey Faggot!” each letter began. Early questions were easy. “Things like, what’s a butt plug? How do you give a good blowjob?” Straight people had always intuited that their gay friends knew more about sex than they did, “which is true, not because gay people are magic, but because we have to communicate about sex. Straight people get to consent and then… stop talking.” “Use your words!” he tells straights today, often. With the 1990s came the internet, and suddenly most of the answers were immediately Googlable. But the letters kept on coming. “Right away, it was no longer a ‘how to’ column but a ‘why?’ Why did they do that? Why did I do this? And what happens now?”

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‘Without what made me “me”, I’d be a shadow of myself’ – portraits of life on the autism spectrum

When photographer Mary Berridge’s son was diagnosed with Asperger’s, she began to see his world in a new light. She set out to capture a series of everyday – and exceptional – stories, one image at a time

I have been immersed in the world of autism since my son was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. Graham had many of the traits of autism from when he was a baby: speech and motor skill delays, sensory sensitivities, anxiety in big social gatherings and more. He had seen professionals for evaluations, but did not get a diagnosis until he was seven.

This was a kid who had meltdowns over the sound of a blowdryer one floor up, the feel of a new shirt and the sight of a slice of cherry pie. Our lowest point was when he started refusing to enter homes he hadn’t been in before, or getting so upset at entering a restaurant that he would throw up. At least now I can sort of laugh when I think of the strangers in the grocery store who would approach him, then a cherubic toddler, and ask what his name was. “Mr Stupid Nobody,” was his reply.

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One restaurant has been a part of our family. Now we mourn its passing | Jay Rayner

We measured out the landmarks of our lives at London’s Y Ming. So long, and thanks

My family has suffered a great loss. We will still have our memories, of course, each one suffused with a warm glow. But the source of those memories? After 35 years, that has gone. We have lost our family’s restaurant: the one that was so much more than somewhere to eat out. It was where my wife and I went before the kids arrived, and when those kids were young, and when a treat was needed, and when a treat wasn’t needed, and in the last days before every Christmas, when gifts would be exchanged with the lovely staff. It was our restaurant. Farewell then to Y Ming, the brilliant, eclectic Chinese on Greek Street in London’s Soho which, after 35 years, finally closed its doors at the end of last month.

Lots of families have somewhere like this, a place where generations of customers and generations of staff accompany each other down the years. Each navigates the vagaries of fashion. Because a restaurant where families grow up together is never really about what’s new. They are about what’s reliable and what’s familiar and what makes you feel cared for. They are an extra room in the extended family home.

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I’m a dad and a gig worker. I had no choice but to keep working with a newborn

As politicians argue over paternity leave, even four paid weeks off would have made a huge difference for workers like me

Nine months ago I was not yet a bleary-eyed dad juggling work and two baby boys, but I did know a second baby was imminent. What should’ve been a happy milestone was quickly blunted by a boomeranging lament – that there would be no taking any paid parental leave for me, a gig worker.

When my first was born, just before the pandemic, I was a freelance writer in the throes of an MFA program. My wife decided it was more cost-effective to stay home with our son than return to work; soon after Covid forced everyone inside, local daycare options vanished.

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‘It feels almost naughty to leave’: For returned Australians open borders bring new dilemmas

The resumption of international travel pits new lives against old dreams for Australians who returned from overseas during the Covid-19 pandemic

To live and work overseas is a rite of passage for many Australians. Life abroad, however, took on a new sense of fragility with the rise of Covid-19. More than a million Australian citizens were forced to choose between riding out the pandemic in a foreign country, or returning to the relative safety of Australia.

Since March 2020, it is estimated about half of those living abroad chose to come back, while tens of thousands wished to return but were unable to.

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I am 16 and identify as an ace lesbian – but I don’t want to ‘come out’ to my parents | Ask Annalisa Barbieri

It sounds as if your sexuality and orientation will be no surprise to them, says Annalisa Barbieri

I am 16, and identify as an ace lesbian (NMLNM, or non-men loving non-men). I have questioned my sexuality since the age of 12 or 13, thinking I was bisexual. I downloaded TikTok, which allowed me to explore my identity more and interact with other queer young people. Until this summer, I questioned my identity multiple times a day (exhausting and not affirming), but I slowly began to feel confident in labelling myself as a demi-romantic, asexual lesbian (I like to use labels). However, that feeling didn’t last long. I felt dysphoric a lot of the time, and I hated my breasts. Fortunately, after about a month, I rediscovered the term “demigirl” and it just fitted. I am also trying out she/they pronouns, but haven’t told anyone. My gender is quite fluid – some days I feel more neutral, other days ultrafeminine.

I am open about my sexuality at school and online, and would happily tell most people that I am gay, but don’t want to “come out” to my parents. I think it’s a combination of fear, not of rejection (they are supportive of the LGBTQ+ community), and the fact that I hate the idea of having to “come out” if you are queer; I don’t want to contribute to our heteronormative society. Should I tell my parents so they have time to process it, or should I wait until I have a partner to introduce to them? Also, I feel obliged to inform them of my pronoun change, but I don’t want to be the one to teach them how to use she/they pronouns. I wish they would educate themselves. If I tell them my gender and/or sexuality, I don’t want them to perceive me differently. I know how they react is not in my control, but ideally our relationship will stay the same or improve.

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Emotional infidelity: the devastating, destructive love affairs that involve no sex at all

An affair doesn’t have to be physical to be intense – or to ruin a relationship. Guardian readers open up about bonding, betrayal and what happened next

Chloe had encouraged her husband to accept the new job. “I told him: ‘Life is too short to be unhappy.’”

The effect on him was transformative – but not in the way she had imagined. “One minute, he was a family guy, the next, he was always working late and going in early.” She found out why when she visited him one day at work.

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Baby it’s you: my fight to overcome infertility

After years of trying, Martha Hayes chose to have a child using an egg donor. It raised many painful questions. But when Maggie finally arrived it turned out she’d brought all her love with her

It’s 7pm on a weeknight when my husband Chris and I open our laptops, pour two glasses of wine and start browsing through profiles of women in their 20s. Attractive, interesting, available women. It’s the spring of 2020, we’ve been living in Los Angeles for a year (having relocated from London for work) and a couple of times a week, this has become our little routine.

I get a good feeling about a pretty blonde yoga teacher, then worry that she’s only 5ft tall. I love the idea of someone who works for Nasa, but I’m put off by her distinctive nose. I am swayed by a sense of humour and spirit for adventure; snobby about hobbies, fussy about ailments and firmly rule out anyone who resembles a party-goer on spring break. It’s an uncomfortable, confronting process. Am I really this superficial or judgmental?

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How not being able to cuddle my sick baby led to a life-saving invention

Caitlin Shorricks’s design for a special vest to protect her daughter during cancer treatment is now helping families across the country

Caitlin Shorricks will never forget the agony of seeing her three-month-old baby, Theía, being treated for cancer last year. She was scared to pick up her daughter for fear of accidentally pulling out the tube running into her main jugular vein: “I was totally terrified. If I wanted to hold her, I had to call a nurse to help.”

Determined to find a safe way to cuddle her little girl, she teamed up with her aunt Eva Newberry, who used to be a dressmaker, to create a garment for the baby that would keep the line safely tucked away in a pocket. They called it a “Choob Toob’”.

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Stella Creasy on her lonely maternity cover battle: ‘Women should be able to have kids and do politics’

The Labour politician is used to fighting battles – but can she win her latest: convincing her colleagues to back proper maternity cover for fellow members?

Stella Creasy is dodging people on the pavement as we talk. She apologises for the background noise but it’s hard finding time for a conversation when you have a newborn son, a toddler daughter, and no proper maternity leave from a full-time job as Labour MP for Walthamstow; this walk to an appointment is the only window she has. Last month, she spoke in a Commons debate on childcare, baby Pip in a sling, sounding astonishingly composed for someone who had given birth four weeks earlier. I ask how she’s feeling and she laughs briefly and says: “Tired as hell, mad as anything.”

And then it all comes tumbling out: the night before that debate, she’d been in hospital with an infection she thinks was brought on by doing too much. The day after her caesarean, she was dialling into meetings with the defence secretary from hospital – she has had about 200 cases in her London constituency of people seeking help getting family members out of Afghanistan – and has barely stopped since. “There wasn’t any alternative,” she says. “These are people ringing up my staff threatening to kill themselves because they’re so worried about family members. You can hear the terror in their voices.” Meanwhile, she’s grappling with “the mum guilt” for not taking more time off, while struggling to be patient with people in parliament who ask how she is, only to back away when answered honestly. Having lost a battle with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) this summer over the maternity leave cover she wanted, Creasy refuses to draw a polite veil over the consequences. And if that means breaking the working mother taboo against admitting that everything is not in fact fine, then so be it.

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‘I’m terrified it might be my last chance’: the rise of the pre-baby ‘stag do’

‘Dad dos’, or ‘Dadchelor parties’ – one last blow out for a father-to-be – are on the up. Are they just an excuse for a bender, or a crucial celebration for the modern, hands-on father?

‘Take a moment to say goodbye to your old life.” This is what Kit Harington said earlier this year, when asked what advice he’d give to fellow new parents. The actor, best known as the angst-ridden bastard prince Jon Snow in the fantasy series Game of Thrones, regretted not having held a proper celebration before the birth of his son in January.

Harington said he would have liked to mark the occasion “with a kind of stag”. “You’re so prepped about gearing up for being a parent that you forget. And then it’s too late. It’s gone.” Yet it’s the kind of sob story that’s likely to invite eye-rolls from mothers, for whom this approach to having a baby is not a matter of negotiation.

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Mark Strong on acting, insecurity and life without a father: ‘I got angry as I got older. It took years to fix’

After three decades on the stage and screen, the star is still worrying about where his next job will come from. Meanwhile, at home, he frets about letting down his family

Mark Strong has a good face for villainy – spare and inscrutable, with thin lips and “eyes like tunnels”, as Arthur Miller might have put it. On camera, he gives a sort of fractional disclosure, expressions altering in tiny increments, so that watching him perform is often an exercise in judging how much good can reasonably be seen in the bad. He specialises in antiheroes and authority figures, from gangsters (Kick-Ass, The Long Firm) to heads of intelligence (The Imitation Game, Body of Lies, Zero Dark Thirty). His latest incarnation – as a surgeon who operates in the criminal underground in the TV drama Temple, now in its second series – melds these roles as he crosses and recrosses the line between conscientious and cruel.

Although highly regarded for his work across stage, film and TV, Strong is not a big winner of awards (though he earned an Olivier for his outstanding portrayal of Eddie Carbone in Miller’s A View from the Bridge in 2015). He comes across as somehow outside the system. He is reputable rather than starry, plays parts rather than leads and has retained the air of a jobbing actor. Surely at 58, after 30 years of nearly constant work and more than 100 screen credits, with a voice so sonorous and distinctive it draws you to the depths, he deserves a bigger breakthrough. Is he frustrated by the lack of leading parts?

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‘I’m scared I’ve left it too late to have kids’: the men haunted by their biological clocks

It’s certainly not just women who worry about ageing and procreation – and now men have begun speaking about their own deep anxieties

It was when Connor woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom that he started thinking about it. The 38-year-old civil servant from London got back into bed and couldn’t sleep: he was spiralling. “I thought: ‘Shit, I might not be able to have children. It actually might not happen,’” he says.

“It started with me thinking about how I’m looking to buy a house, and everything is happening too late in my life,” Connor says. “Then I started worrying about how long it would take me to save again to get married, after I buy the house. I was doing the maths on that – when will I be able to afford to be married, own a house and start having kids? Probably in my 40s. Then I started freaking out about what the quality of my sperm will be like by then. What if something’s wrong with the child? And then I thought, oh no, what if me and my girlfriend don’t work out? I’ll be in an even worse scenario in a few years.”

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