Page 79 of Days You Were Mine

‘Then he won’t have to go. Why are you looking at me like that? I don’t know what you’re saying.’

‘I think you do. Tomorrow they’ll probably section him. You have to be prepared for that. Tomorrow they will take him away.’

Now

Luke

The adult adoptee longs to experience the absolute love a mother has for her child at birth. But this is never going to happen. You cannot replicate the newborn experience.

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

By the time I arrive at Alice’s studio (I haven’t called because she never answers her phone on a Saturday but works without fail in her studio), I am in a frenzy to get the deal done. I intend to burst in, surprising her at work, delivering my missive as I walk through the door, short, sharp, brutal, a rebuttal to match my own.

Leaving the taxi, I stand for a moment outside the red-brick ground-floor flat. The studio is an open-plan space, I’d imagine, four rooms knocked into one, although this is conjecture, because last time I was here she wouldn’t allow me through the door. I hover. I ponder. My hand reaches up to press the bell and pauses just a centimetre or two away, frozen with indecision. My heart rate, now that I’m attuned to it, has definitely speeded up. I feel breathless with anger but also fearat the confrontation that comes next. The man who has carved a career out of maintaining the equilibrium, about to implode it with a few hostile words: ‘Alice, we don’t want you to look after Samuel any more.’

I try the door handle, for it is easier this way. Just walk in, I tell myself, and say what you need to say. The door opens easily, which is a surprise. Nothing could have prepared me for what I find inside.

How can I describe to you these first seconds of shock as I take in the images of Samuel on every inch of wall space, every surface, a vast half-finished canvas in the middle of the room. Like a hall of mirrors, or a nightmare, my boy laughing, sleeping, crying, one whole wall dedicated to Polaroid snaps with their eerie, ghostly light.

My eyes swivel from one canvas to the next, so many, such likeness, such accuracy; the skill and depth of artistry is astonishing. Here is Samuel propped up against a tower of cushions on an unfamiliar blue and white blanket, his bear beside him with eyes of glass. Now he wears a top of mustard yellow and brown stripes, a pair of orange shorts. In another he sleeps in his bouncy chair, dressed in the tiny dungarees of before. To me he seems a little sheepish in his seventies garb, as if he understands the equation, the alchemy that takes place here in Alice’s studio, the transformation of Samuel into me.

‘Luke!’

Alice enters the room with a small, half-pleased cry of surprise. But then I turn around and she sees my face.

‘I can explain,’ she says, but she has no words, no defence.

I am having the strangest experience, out of body almost; I look at Alice and feel all connection to her dissolving away. In front of my eyes she becomes the thing that deep down she has always been: a stranger. Who was I trying to kid in thiswretched attempt to turn her into my mother? I have a mother, one I’ve treated pretty badly of late.

‘What the hell, Alice? This place is a shrine. It’s weird, devotional shit. Like, I don’t know …’ I wave my arms around, ‘kind of psycho stuff.’

Our worst fears are realised is what I’m thinking, but as always, Alice’s face remains impassive, her voice quiet.

‘Can you really stand there and say that to me?’

‘As a matter of fact, I can. Shall I tell you what happened today?’ My voice is bitter, cruel, loathsome. ‘Hannah and I went to the North St Deli for a coffee. Ring any bells?’

I watch the shame flooding into her face; I’m glad of it.

‘I see that it does. So what happens when Hannah …’ my voice falters a little on her name, ‘andSamuel’ – arch overemphasis – ‘and I walk into the deli is that a friend of yours, I believe he’s called Stefano, rushes over to say hello to Charlie. He asks where Alice is, Charlie’s mother. He says the two of you go there all the time. Can you even begin to imagine how that made Hannah feel?’

I am full of indignant rage and yet I’m crying. I feel as I speak with such contempt to my mother as though my heart is immolating. I am angry and ashamed.

Alice says, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry? For stealing our son and pretending he’s yours? Sorry for wanting him to be me?’

‘Look, I can see how upset you are and I can explain.’

‘Explain what?’ I gesture to the studio with its wall-to-wall Samuel. ‘The evidence is all here. You want Samuel to be me. You want my baby to replace the one who was taken away from you.’

‘No, Luke, it’s not like that, I promise you.’

But I don’t want to listen to her. I know she is not to be trusted.

‘You can’t look after him any more, that’s what I came to say. This whole thing has been such a big mistake.’

Alice gasps. ‘You don’t mean that. Who else will look after him? You know how Samuel adores me.’

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