Scottish mum’s shock as ‘dead’ son turns up alive in hospital in France

The last thing Joyce Curtis knew of her son Nicholas was that he was hitchhiking around France and Spain. Photo / 123rf

A mum who presumed her son was dead after he went missing over a decade ago has shared her shock at discovering he is alive and well.

Joyce Curtis believed that her son Nicholas had passed away as she hadn’t seen or heard from him since 2010.

The last thing she knew was that he was hitchhiking around France and Spain but when she didn’t hear from him she thought he had died and even “grieved for him”.

But on December 19 she received a phone call informing her that her son was alive and in hospital in the South of France.

“When I got the call to say he was alive I just went into shock. All I did was cry all day,” she said.

“This has just made Christmas for me, especially since my husband died back in June.

“It’s like that film Miracle on 34th Street. It’s like a miracle.

“I’d resigned myself to the fact that he had died. I really thought that and I think everybody thought the same.”

Nicholas left his home town of Glasgow, Lanarkshire, in the mid 2000s to travel Europe after losing his job as a joiner.

He told his mum he had been hitchhiking and Curtis believed he spent some time living rough on the streets of Paris.

She reported him as missing in 2009 as she hadn’t heard from her son “for ages”.

A year later, Curtis was contacted by the British Consulate in Paris to notify her that Nicholas had been admitted to hospital in France.

She and her husband then flew to visit him – but that was the last time she would see or hear from him in over a decade.

“I got a letter in 2010 to say that Nicholas was in hospital in France,” Joyce said. “He’d been missing for a while by then.

“I’d already reported him missing here in Glasgow the previous year after not hearing from him in ages and ages.”

She and her husband organised transport to get Nicholas home but he didn’t board his flight back to Glasgow and disappeared again.

“I was waiting on him coming home and there was no sign,” she said.

“When I was over visiting him in France I bought him some shoes and stuff like that so he could have clothes to travel home with.

“I was waiting in work. But he never got home.

“I remember it was pouring rain that day. I phoned every airport to see if he’d gotten on a flight but nothing.

“We never heard anything again.”

Joyce Curtis assumed her son had died when she hadn't heard from him in 12 years. Photo / 123rf

But this month, Curtis was shocked to discover he was alive when the British Consulate contacted her to alert her that he had been admitted to a French hospital for a second time.

“I spoke to him on the phone. He looks healthy.

“I asked him, ‘Are you coming home Nikky?’ And he said, ‘Aye’.

“I can’t imagine what he’s been through. I just need to get him home.”

Nicholas is now planning to return home, but Curtis wants to travel to France to see him.

“I’m not building my hopes up yet until I get him home,” she said.

“Hopefully though, I might even get over to France with my daughter before then so I can see him.”

A spokesperson from the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office said: “We are supporting a British man in France and are providing assistance to his family.

“We are in contact with the local authorities.”