By late afternoon most weekdays, the living room of Linda Buchwald’s comfortable Oxford home becomes a riot of noisy activity when her twin grandsons pay an after-school visit with their mother, Evelyn. It is the sort of chaotic happy family scene that many will recognise — although this is the most unusual of families, and one for which 65-year-old Linda has paid an unduly heavy price. Eight years ago she and husband Peter Blackwell rescued Evelyn, then 21, and her baby sons, Peter and Simon, from a life of grinding poverty in their native Gambia.
They had met the young mother while they holidayed in West Africa, and moved her into their family home in Britain after pledging to help her raise her boys. It was an act of apparently heart-warming selflessness, reported in the Daily Mail at the time. But within months of Evelyn’s arrival in Britain, Peter, 67, had repeatedly tried to seduce his bewildered African ‘daughter’, all the while playing the part of loving husband and doting grandfather. It was the ultimate betrayal and one which split this unorthodox family apart. Distraught, Evelyn fled back to Gambia, preferring life as an impoverished single mother to the trauma of Peter’s unwanted advances. Meanwhile a humiliated and heartbroken Linda was left to contemplate the wreckage of her once-happy relationship.
Under the circumstances, you might expect Linda would want nothing more to do with the young African woman who unwittingly brought with her such sorrow — but far from it. Shattered by her husband’s treachery, but determined some good might come from their time together, Linda persuaded her to return to the UK — finally achieving her wish in December 2007 when Evelyn and her sons got a five-year visa. But Linda wanted permanent security for the family unit to which she is as devoted as if they were her own flesh and blood, and now that dream has been fulfilled. Last month, Evelyn, now 29, and her sons were granted permanent UK residence, bringing to an end years of anxiety about the long-term future. Little wonder that both women now enjoy an unbreakable bond, one that is all too clear from just a few moments in their company. For Linda, Evelyn has clearly been the balm for her heartbreak — or as she puts it, though she’s lost a husband, she has gained a daughter and two grandsons. ‘Despite everything I feel very lucky,’ she says. ‘Evelyn and the boys are my pride and joy. Peter is the one who has lost so much.’ Evelyn adds: ‘I feel so blessed. I could never have imagined my life could turn out this way.’ Eight years ago, Linda, who runs a dog-grooming business, was anticipating a rather different kind of future: that of a contented but quiet middle-aged romance.
A divorcee and mother of three grown-up children, Linda was 56 and had been divorced for eight years when she met Peter, then 59, through a dating website in early 2003.
‘I was looking for companionship rather than romance,’ she recalls. ‘But we hit it off straight away. He was easy-going, generous and he made me laugh’.
Widower and father-of-four Peter, who ran a taxi firm, proved to be a determined suitor and, within weeks of meeting Linda, he had proposed.
‘He kept saying marriage would make him feel more secure, so we got engaged, and I felt lucky to have found love a second time,’ she says. The couple bought a small house together in Oxford from where, during a wet January in 2005, they booked a last-minute trip to Gambia. It was there they met Evelyn Mendy, a dancer at their hotel. ‘She was tall and one of the most stunning girls I have ever seen,’ Linda says. ‘But it wasn’t her beauty or her small pregnancy bump which struck me — it was her huge, sad eyes. She looked pitiful.’
The following day, when Linda overheard a guest saying a hotel dancer had been fired because she was pregnant, she realised it was the same girl and went over to speak to her.
‘I sat down and asked her to tell me her story,’ says Linda. ‘And within minutes we were both in tears.’ Evelyn’s mother had left home when she was five. Her cruel father had died when she was ten. She had lived rough and been sexually abused. At 14, she embarked on a relationship with an 18-year-old man and worked as a dancer, performing in shows to tourists at the hotel where Linda and Peter were staying.
When Evelyn later discovered she was pregnant, her boyfriend left her. Linda and Peter vowed to help, opening a bank account for Evelyn with a £100 deposit and buying her a mobile phone so she could stay in touch. Nonetheless, Evelyn admits that she was sceptical. ‘So many tourists make promises then disappear,’ she recalls. But Linda and Peter were different.
‘We couldn’t sleep for worrying about what would happen to Evelyn and her baby after we’d flown home,’ Linda recalls. So they called her every day from the UK and paid her medical bills. It was Peter and Linda to whom Evelyn broke the news that she was expecting twin boys, and within two weeks of their birth in April 2005, the couple returned to the Gambia to help.
‘The moment I cradled the boys I fell in love with them and vowed we wouldn’t abandon them,’ recalls Linda. ‘I knew I wanted to bring them home.’ It may have been an ambitious endeavour, but to the altruistic Linda it seemed entirely natural. ‘My children were supportive, and Peter never once tried to talk me out of it. He was such a generous man, I had no reason to doubt his motives. We’d all formed a close bond.’
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