Page 52 of Days You Were Mine

‘I don’t know. Sometimes I forget to take the pill. It’s my fault, I’m sorry.’

‘You’re sorry?’

I’m in shock, I’m confused, I cannot comprehend the expression of utter joy that transforms his face.

‘Why on earth would you be sorry?’

He’s grinning wildly and holding my hands, now kissing them, and I’m smiling too; in fact, all of a sudden I’m laughing.

‘You think it’s a good thing?’

‘Not good, no. Fantastic. Incredible. Amazing. You’re having a baby.We’rehaving a baby. Alice Garland, this is the best news I’ve ever had in my life.’

Now

Luke

The separated adoptee and birth parent are, by definition, strangers to one another. How can you understand who someone is and what they might be capable of when you have missed all the nuances, behavioural complexities and fundamental background that has formed their persona?

Who Am I? The Adoptee’s Hidden Traumaby Joel Harris

On Saturdays, Hannah gives me a lie-in. Sundays are her turn, though she rarely takes it.

‘I can’t bear to miss out on any time with Samuel,’ she will say, appearing downstairs in the kitchen while the two of us eat our unvarying breakfast: milk and baby porridge for him, toast and Marmite for me.

I sleep late on this particular Saturday, exhausted perhaps by the combined stress of my job – will they, won’t they close down my record label? – and my ongoing disillusionment with Alice.

I find my girlfriend and son sitting together in our small paved garden, Samuel leaning against Hannah’s stomach, cradled between her thighs.

He laughs in recognition as soon as he sees me, and Hannahsays, ‘Yes, he’s pretty funny, your daddy, isn’t he? Do you realise you’ve slept for almost twelve hours? You must have been shattered.’

She stands up, passing the baby to me.

‘I was going to make bacon sandwiches, and then we can go to the park.’

‘Sounds good. I’m starving.’

It’s only once she’s gone that I take in the retractable washing line, hung with a neat row of sleepsuits, all white, the colour Hannah likes Samuel in best. Eight babygros stretched out by pegs, drying in the midday sunshine, and at the end of them a teddy bear. There is a threatening tightness in my chest as I walk towards the line and unclip the bear, a sodden toy that now smells not of Alice’s perfume and old times but of Persil.

I walk into the kitchen where Hannah is frying bacon, Samuel under one arm, the wet bear in the other.

‘You washed the bear.’

She turns around from the cooker, smiling.

‘Yes, and I cut off its eyes. They’re lethal, those glass ones. I’m going to embroider some black ones on instead.’

‘You cut off its eyes?’

I put Samuel down on his sheepskin rug as carefully as I can. And then I stand in the middle of the room, damp bear clutched to my chest, while the years drop away. This bear was mine. This ruined, disfigured bear belonged to me back in the days when I belonged to Alice. The days when Alice cared about me the way she now cares about Samuel.

I am struggling to breathe and there’s a pain in my chest, sharp and insistent. I collapse onto my knees, arms wrapped around myself.

‘Luke?’ Hannah says, but she sounds distant, as if I’m underwater.

Her voice becomes shrill, frightened.

‘What’s happening? What’s going on?’

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