Is this the story that proves blood IS thicker than water?

Kayleigh Watts and her biological mother Sarah Mowbray

Growing up in the heart of the English countryside, playing in the fields and riding horses, Kayleigh Marie Watts enjoyed what sounds like a perfect childhood — especially as she had been taken into care by social services at five years old because of the violent, dysfunctional relationship of her birth parents.

To the 90,000 British children languishing in the care system, she would have seemed one of the lucky ones.

After her difficult start in life, Kayleigh was placed with a foster family who were so smitten with the blonde, blue-eyed youngster that they adopted her. 

Instead of being raised in institutions, she moved into a cosy cottage in Worcestershire and settled into family life with Len and Monica Watts, then in their 40s, and their older adopted son Mark, 11.

The couple, unable to have children of their own, were thrilled. Their dream had been fulfilled. 

‘They’d tried for many years to have kids but in the end had to accept it just wasn’t meant to be. 

'I’m sure it was very hard for them but they didn’t really like to talk about it with us,’ says Kayleigh, now 22.

Settled at the village primary school and revelling in her parents’ undivided attention, as a youngster Kayleigh was thriving.

Little was said about the early years of her life, though she knew her surname had been Thomas. 

Any questions were quietly batted away by her parents and she soon learned not to ask questions about her birth family. 

‘When Mark and I came along I think we gave them something they were really missing,’ says Kayleigh. ‘They gave everything to us and were great fun. As a little child I couldn’t have asked for more.’

Len, a welder, supported the family, as Monica had given up her nursing job to fulfil her dream of motherhood. 

Always there for the children after school, she would help them with homework and took great pleasure in cooking for the family.

Len, though equally devoted, was the head of the household. His word was law and at the time — after experiencing the chaos of children’s homes — Kayleigh was happy just to know where she

So why, then, when the birth mother who gave Kayleigh up for adoption got in touch with her on Facebook five months ago, did she leave the adoptive family who raised her without so much as a backward glance?

Kayleigh claims that, far from being abusive or unkind, the adoptive parents who raised her simply loved her too much, smothering her with affection. 

She says that, having battled so hard to have a family of their own, they were unable to let Kayleigh go as she matured into an adult, so much so that she felt like a virtual prisoner in their home

So when her birth mother, Sarah Mowbray, got in touch in November after searching through every Kayleigh Marie on Facebook, Kayleigh wasted little time in leaving the family home and moving in with her.

Cosy nights in watching television with Len, 69, and Monica, 61, have been swapped for bingo, copious cigarettes and pints of Carling lager with 41-year-old Sarah.

It isn’t immediately clear why Kayleigh would choose to exchange her adoptive parents’ stable, comfortable home for the comparatively chaotic existence of her birth mother. 

Sarah had a series of dysfunctional relationships and a son, Daniel, 15, by a different father before settling down with Terry Mowbray, 39, an unemployed farm worker

Yet Kayleigh is adamant that life with her birth mother is far preferable to living with a couple whose desperate desire for children led their adoptive daughter to feel suffocated with love. 

Do you think Kayleigh's action makes any sense? How would you feel if you were her adopted parent?