Page 208 of Murder in the Family

LAILA FURNESS

More to the point, he or she would have been 18 in 1997 and entitled to see their records at that stage, but there’s no suggestion they made contact with Caroline then. Why leave it till 2003?

JJ NORTON

Not all adopted kids want to. Some never do. And 18 is just the earliest you can do it – lots of people leave it a lot later than that. Just saying.

MITCHELL CLARKE

But if they did track Caroline down it might have been a pretty difficult encounter. What if the kid had quite a disadvantaged upbringing – it has to be possible if it was inner-city Birmingham, right?

Then all those years later they suddenly find out their real mother and her other kids have been sitting pretty on a pile like Dorney Place, while they were unceremoniously dumped and left out in the cold—

JJ NORTON

Quite.

CUT TO: Studio.

ALAN CANNING

Sounds even more personal now, JJ.

It’s you, isn’t it? The long-lost kid? So how did it go down? You found out Caroline was your mother and came looking for her—

(gesturing round at the room)

—only to find out that all this time she’d been living in a house like this? Because I’m sure now that you also said something pretty bitter to that vicar in New Brunswick about being brought up on the poverty line.

JJ NORTON

You’re delusional, the lot of you – Nick’s got us all completely paranoid.I had nothing to do with it.

ALAN CANNING

That’s not what I asked, though, is it?

Where were you on the night of October third, 2003?

JJ NORTON

(sarcastic)

No bloody idea, ask me another.

HUGO FRASER

You were born in 1979, though – that part’s correct?

JJ NORTON

(turning to him)

Yes. Like hundreds of thousands of other people.

BILL SERAFINI

And adopted?

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