Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

of the yellowing and faded Baby MOT.
    I wanted to see those records. Who was this judge, this unknown male in authority? I was angry, but I knew enough to know that I was reaching into a very old radioactive anger.
    Susie had gone to NewYork City and been marooned by the ash cloud that grounded all the aeroplanes across Europe and the Atlantic.
    I was alone when another letter came from the court. The judge had spoken. ‘Applicant should fill in the usual form and refer back.’
    Get a solicitor, advised the letter.
    I sat on the back step looking at it over and over again like someone who can’t read. My body was slight-shaking all over in the way that you do if you get caught in an electric fence.
    I went into the kitchen, picked up a plate, and threw it at the wall . . . ‘Applicant . . . usual form . . . refer back . . .’ It’s not a fucking credit-card referral, you asshole.
    And what happened next makes me ashamed but I will force myself to write it: I wet myself.
    I don’t know why or how. I know that I lost bladder control and that I sat down on the step soiled and wet and I couldn’t get up to clean myself and I cried in the way that you do when there is nothing but crying.
    There was nothing to hold on to. I wasn’t Jeanette Winterson in her own home with books on the shelves and money in the bank; I was a baby and I was cold and wet and a judge had taken my mummy away.
    Later, I’m dry and in clean clothes. I’ve had a drink. I ring Ria. She says, ‘There is no usual form. You don’t need a solicitor. This is mad. Leave it to me, Jeanette. I will help you.’
    That night I lay on the bed thinking about what had happened.
    This family court judge who was so experienced, did he have no idea of what it is like to stand on the rim of your life and look down into the crater?
    How hard was it to send me the ‘usual’ form or to tell me where to download it, or have a court official talk me through the legalese?
    I started shaking again.
    *

    ‘Lost loss’ is unpredictable and not civilised. I was thrown back into a place of helplessness, powerlessness and despair. My body responded before my head. Normally, a pompous obfuscating letter from the legal world would make me laugh and I would just deal with it. I am not scared of lawyers and I know that the law is grandiose and designed to intimidate, even when there is no reason for it to do so. It is designed to make ordinary people feel inadequate. I do not feel inadequate – but I did not expect to be six weeks old again either.
    Ria began to make enquiries and found that after the helpful simplicity of the opening meeting with her, the subsequent reality of dealing with the courts often proved too much. People gave up.
    We decided that whatever else came of my search, we would try and formulate some guidelines for the courts and a road map for the clients, to make the process less awful.
    An officer at the General Register Office who wanted to help me wrote directly to the court saying that I had already been identified by the Home Office, that she could verify me and my case, and that she would personally receive the file from the court.
    No, said the judge. Not procedure.
    I wondered what would have been expected of me if I had lived abroad? Would I have had to buy an air ticket and come and do this in a foreign place, unsupported, unless I bought two air tickets? What about all the post-war children who went to Australia?
    People’s lives are less important than procedure . . .
    *

    Susie and I made an appointment at Accrington court.
    In the waiting room were a row of miserable young men in badly fitting suits hoping to get off drink—driving offences. The girls were in full make—up looking defiant and scared over some shoplifting offence or public nuisance.
    We were called into an interview room where lawyers can talk to their clients, and after a while, the court manager arrived, looking harassed and unhappy. I felt sorry for him.
    He had an old file in one hand and a big fat book of procedure in the other. He knew I was going to be trouble.
    In fact, I was so distressed at seeing the papers across the desk — the papers with all the details of my beginnings — that I could hardly speak at all. One of the saliencies of this retro adoption experience, these alienating legalities, is that I stumble on my words, hesitate, slow down and finally fall silent. The lost loss I experience as physical pain is pre—language hat loss happened