Page 8 of Days You Were Mine

Jacob is taller than I’d realised and dressed again in black, a shirt with flowing sleeves, a long scarf patterned with brown and cream feathers, flared black jeans and the snakeskin boots of last night.

The three of us walk out of the front door, down the steps and into the courtyard.

‘Thought you guys were going to stick around for a drink?’ Jacob says.

‘The bar was packed,’ Rick replies. ‘The bell for last orders had rung, we wouldn’t have got served. Not much point sticking around when you can’t get a drink.’ He laughs, and Jacob does too.

‘So. I wanted to talk to you about a potential project. A drawing project.’ He nods at our sketchbooks. ‘I’m guessing you’re pretty good at drawing?’

‘Alice is the star,’ Rick says. ‘You should see what she’s just drawn in class. What’s the project?’

‘Potentially our next album cover. Eddie and I had this idea of having a sketch of the band on stage, but very posed, a bit like a still life.’

‘Rick is who you need,’ I say, hoping Jacob doesn’t notice the tremor in my voice. ‘He’s the most talented artist we’ve got. He’s already selling his work.’

‘Sweet, you two. Like a couple of newly-weds. Buy you a coffee and we can talk about it?’

In the flesh, in the mid-afternoon light, Jacob looks older than he did on stage, around thirty, I’d say. But still hauntingly beautiful. Eyes, cheekbones, mouth. Slim neck, pronounced collarbones, the dip between them around the size of my thumb.

‘You go, Alice,’ Rick says, unexpectedly. ‘You’re the best at drawing and it’d be good for you.’

‘Wait. No. Hang on.’ I try to stop him, but Rick just smiles and walks away.

‘I’m meeting someone,’ he throws back over his shoulder, which is obviously a lie.

‘Don’t worry, Alice,’ Jacob says. ‘Strictly business.’

Though the way he says it, with eyes that are serious, a twisted mouth that isn’t, makes me wish it wasn’t just business.

‘Do you like coffee?’

‘Yes, sure, coffee, tea, Coke, anything.’

Jacob leans in, his face now only inches from mine.

‘I meant real coffee. Italian coffee. Coffee that’s more of a religious experience. Coffee to blow the mind.’

‘I’m not sure I’ve ever had one like that.’

‘Then we’re going to Bar Italia.’ He nods at the sketchbook under my arm. ‘Bring your etchings.’

Now

Luke

The psychological wound of an adoptee is internalised at the very beginning of life. There’s a prevailing sense of ‘there must be something wrong with me, I am a disappointment, I am not worth keeping’. Over time, these hidden insecurities can develop into something potent and perilous.

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

Hannah has a new title for me.

‘The man with two mothers,’ she said last night in the darkness, stretching out across the baby to place her hand on my thigh.

Today, with the arrival of my mother Christina for the weekend, it feels particularly apt.

I return home from work and see her navy-blue Golf parked up outside the house with a complicated cocktail of feelings. There is, I always feel, an undertow of resentment on both sides: mine in having to feel gratitude for my rescue, hers for me not being the child she actually wanted. Her own flesh-and-blood baby was stillborn in her last month of pregnancy and I don’t think she will ever get over it.

I find her pacing around the kitchen in tight little circles with Samuel draped across one shoulder. She is winding him maternity-nurse style, or so I imagine, having never actually come across one of these mythical creatures (I picture someone large and humourless in a starched white cap).

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