"I always felt 'different'. A DNA test exposed a massive secret about me"

Luke Davies was at work when an email popped up on his phone. The results from his DNA test were back.

He was going to read them when he got home but he couldn’t wait any longer. Standing in a toilet cubicle, he tapped the notification and held his breath.

A video of a globe appeared on the screen. It spun to Portugal and some text appeared. ‘Iberian,’ it read.

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“Iberian?” Luke remembers thinking to himself. “I don’t even know what that is.”

The globe kept spinning and another region lit up. This time, it was West Africa. Luke felt paralysed. He knew he had uncovered something huge.

Growing up in a white, working-class family in Rochdale, the 31-year-old always felt like an outsider. Now, he finally knew why.

“I was baffled,” he told the Manchester Evening News. “I was completely dumbfounded. From that moment on, I was on autopilot. It was too massive.”

Though he had been raised in a loving household, Luke remembers feeling different from a very young age.

He thought it was because of his sexuality. But when he came out to his supportive parents at the age of 18, that feeling of uncertainty didn’t go away.

“Within my own family, I've always been loved and supported,” Luke, who lives in Hulme, added. “Like I belonged with them.

“It was more the feeling of difference that I couldn’t put my finger on.”

In his late 20s, Luke tried to distract himself by traveling the world. It was a desperate attempt to find somewhere that felt more like home.

But the more he explored, the more questions he had. “People would ask me where I was from on a weekly basis,” he added.

“I’d say Manchester, then they’d ask where I was