Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

people like me could apply for our original birth certificates, and perhaps then contact our long-lost relatives. But everything has to be done visibly and formally. This seemed fraught to me.
    Ruth put me in touch with Anthony Douglas, chief of Cafcass – the UK children and family court advisory service. He is adopted himself, and after a meeting where he understood my predicament, he offered to help me to trace my mother without the risk of the whole thing leaking into the public domain before I was ready.
    I gave Anthony the names I had carried with me for forty-two years – the names of my parents -Jessica and John – and their surnames, but I can’t write those here.
    A few weeks later he called me to say that my file had been found – but only just, because the Southport Records Office – in my case the basement – had been flooded with seawater and many files had been irretrievably damaged. I looked up to heaven. Mrs Winterson had obviously heard that I was hunting and arranged a flood.
    A week later Anthony called again – my file had been opened but the names I had given him did not match the names on the file.
    So whose was that birth certificate that I had found in the drawer?
    And who am I?
    *

    The next step was to take the risk I was so afraid of taking and apply to the Home Office in the usual way, which meant visiting a social worker at the General Register Office in Southport, Lancashire.
    Susie took the day off work to come with me and we agreed that I would travel up to London and meet her on the day, because it is better to sleep in your own bed the night before such things.
    That morning the train I had intended to catch was cancelled, and the next train slowed and slowed with a faulty engine. The slower the train the faster my heart rate. And I had ended up sitting beside someone I knew vaguely, who talked more the less we moved.
    I realised that by the time I reached Paddington I would have exactly fourteen minutes to get over to King’s Cross. Impossible. This was London. It was at least twenty minutes in a taxi. There was only one hope and that was Virgin Limobikes – a motorbike taxi service I use.
    As I ran out of Paddington Station the big bike was revved up. I jumped on the back and roared and veered through the London traffic, and although I am no pussycat, I had to close my eyes.
    Eight minutes later I was on the platform with three minutes to go, and there was Susie – all five foot two of her – in her suede cowboy boots and beads, short skirt, rumpled hair and a Calvin Klein golden coat, looking kind-faced and gorgeous, but jamming her body in the doorway, and part-bossing part-flirting with the bemused guard, because she wasn’t going to let the train leave till I was on it.

    I fell through the door. The whistle blew.
    We were on our way to the General Register Office with my passport and my two creased and crossed-out bits of paper – the court order and the Baby MOT. I had weighed 6 pounds 9 ounces.
    Susie and I are sitting in a functional office of the kind recognisable anywhere in the world; fibreboard and veneer desk with metal legs, a low coffee table set round with ugly chairs semi-upholstered in Martian green and psychotic orange. Carpet tiles on the floor. A filing cabinet and a noticeboard. Big radiator. Bare window.
    Susie is among the most skilled psychoanalysts in the world. She is smiling at me as the meeting begins, saying nothing, holding me in her mind. I could feel that very clearly.
    The social worker I have come to see is a warm and spontaneous woman called Ria Hayward.
    She talks for a while about data protection, and about the various UK Adoption Acts, and about the usual routes of contact. If I wanted to go further there were formalities. There always are.
    She looks at my pieces of paper – the court order and the Baby MOT – and she notices that my mother had breastfed me.
    ‘That was the one thing she could give you. She gave you what she could. She didn’t have to do that and it would have been a lot easier for her if she hadn’t. It is such a bond – breastfeeding. When she gave you up at six weeks old you were still part of her body.’
    I do not want to cry. I am crying.

    Then Ria passes me her own piece of paper with a sticker over it.
    ‘This is the name of your birth mother, and this is your original name. I never look at it because I think the adopted person should see this first.’
    I am standing up. I can’t