Brother and sister plan Malta summer reunion after 32 years

For Nick Holmes and his long lost sister Sarah a massive family reunion in Malta this summer will bring them back to the place they remember of their happy childhood days together and bring an end to the 32-year wait they endured when their parents split up.

“We want to come back this summer and be together,” Mr Holmes said, pointing out the long lost family wanted to meet up with their previously unknown nephews and nieces.

The long and winding road leading the brother and sister to finding each other started when their parents had a bitter break up when Sarah was only three and her brother was just 16.

At the time, he was a boarder at De La Salle College, studying for his A-levels. His father, who worked in the oil industry, was in Libya and later moved to Nigeria, and Sarah and her mum left the island. However, their destination was unknown to the brother.

“I felt awful when the breakup happened. I was left alone in Malta, with no family apart from the De La Salle Brothers and my girlfriend at the time,” he said, pointing out he had barely any contact with his father.

He had gone to the UK looking for his sister in the years that followed, thinking she and her mum would go back to the place they all once lived in. However, he had not known they had moved to Southern Ireland and all his searching in Wales reaped no results.

Mr Holmes then hired a private detective but, again, made the mistake of not searching for his sister in Ireland.

He completed his University degree and returned to Malta every year for four years but still never found Sarah.

Then, some 15 years ago, one of his aunts called up to say Sarah had written into the missing persons’ column of the Daily Mirror, looking for him. He responded but, for some reason, she never received his letter and the two were destined to another 15 years away from each other.

“I have a family of my own and after 20 years of being apart you begin to think that nothing is going to happen,” he said, seeming to have resigned himself to the idea that was the way it was going to be.

Numerous internet searches proved useless for Mr Holmes as his sister had changed her surname twice, when her mother remarried and again when she got married herself.

As life went on for the two siblings, Mr Holmes, in Manchester, uploaded a video on his Facebook page to promote his band’s new album Fundanatural.

As chance would have it, just an hour later, Sarah, in Ireland, was thinking of her brother and thought to Google the name of the band she had heard on her father’s cassette during their short encounter when she was 13-years-old. When the Nick Holmes Band search led her to his Facebook post, she left him a comment, congratulating him on the video.

At the time, Mr Holmes had thought it strange to get a comment from someone he did not know. He was too busy to think about clicking on her picture.

Four days later, the now 36-year-old Sarah Kavanagh sent him an e-mail saying: “I think we’re related.” When he clicked on her profile picture, he knew it was his sister instantly, as she was a reflection of him in many ways.

“I think she knew in her heart that it was me,” he said, pointing out that, after many years of turmoil, it was hard to instantly accept something so big in fear of disappointment.

The brother and sister met up just before Christmas, when one big hug dissolved the decades they had spent apart.

“It’s so unlikely, isn’t it? I mean 32 years apart, you think it’s never going to happen and then it’s just a click of a mouse away,” Mr Holmes said. The brother and sister are now planning to spend their summer holidays in Malta, hoping to combine the trip with a performance at the Jazz Festival.

Together with both their children, they plan to spend their summer on Maltese sand, making up for lost memories in the place they remember together.