Page 64 of Days You Were Mine

‘Did you need to be there?’

‘Not for nine months. I was depressed not dangerous. But the doctors didn’t care. They kept me pumped so full of drugs I just lay around in a ball of apathy. Those pills stopped me from feeling, from living. All I did was exist.’

He pauses.

‘Eddie saved me. He visited me every week. And he kept telling me “you don’t need to be in here.” He was only sixteen himself, but if he was scared he never showed it.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me this? Why didn’t Eddie?’

‘Because mostly I can pretend it didn’t happen. But then my grandmother died and it came rushing back, and the feelings I had, the memories, were too much …’

At last he stands up and holds out a hand and pulls me to my feet. And I am in his arms, my face buried against his neck, my tears wetting his skin.

‘Promise me you’ll never let me go back to a place like that.’

I understand so much about Jake on the strength of this one conversation. I know now why being with him has always felt so potent. He inhabits every moment of his day, from the morning cappuccino to the songs he listens to and the food he cooks at night. Jake’s terror, I realise, is blankness.

‘I lost you,’ I say when I am able to speak. ‘You left me.’

‘I’m sorry.’

His mouth against my hair, his arms holding my waist. We’ll go to bed and we’ll make love until the light begins to press against the windows and we will fall asleep, wrapped up so tightly that our faces touch and our breath becomes one.

‘Don’t ever leave me again,’ I say.

‘I won’t,’ Jake says. ‘I promise I won’t.’

And I believe him. Because I must.

Now

Luke

Self-sabotage or acts of destruction are a common response in adoptees. They will put themselves in a situation and push and push until the thing they fear most happens. We call it self-fulfilling prophecy.

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

On the outside it must look as if my life has never been better. Reborn have rejected Universal’s offer and their manager, Steve Harris, has told me Spirit is back in the race. I should be ecstatic with relief and excitement at the prospect of potentially working with one of the hottest unsigned bands in Britain.

And yet I am clenched with a feeling of doom from the moment I wake.

Ever since I came home drunk, Alice has barely spoken a word to me. I’m convinced I have offended her, but I can’t remember anything about that night other than me storming off to bed when she wouldn’t let me hold the baby. Even Hannah, my glass-half-full, twenty-four-seven optimist, thinks she is being distant.

‘Is everything OK, Alice?’ she asked one evening while Alice was packing up her things to leave.

‘Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t it be?’

‘You’ve seemed a bit quiet the last few days.’

‘Oh no, you’re imagining it.’

What I noticed was the way Alice managed to avoid eye contact with both Hannah and me; I saw how she rushed from the room the moment her bag was packed.

But as soon as she had gone, Hannah said, ‘There you are. Nothing to worry about.’

I keep up my lunch-hour surveillance, sandwiches on park benches, a little light shopping on the high street. Sometimes I see Alice and Samuel, sometimes I don’t. Even on the days when she doesn’t appear, there’s a tantalising cloud of Acqua di Parma in the air around me; I hear snatches of a lullaby she often sings to Samuel with her sweet, clear voice.

Moonlight so sweet and pale from heaven falling,

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