Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

jumped into my Land Rover and chased after them, but as I came up behind them at the traffic light on the hill, the lights changed rapidly, and they were gone.
    The next day Dad died.
    I drove up to Accrington to the care home. Dad was laid out in his room, beautifully shaved and groomed. Nesta, the owner, had done it herself. ‘I like to do it,’ she said. ‘It's my way. Sit with him while I get you some tea.’
    There used to be a tradition in the north of England that if you wanted to show respect you served tea in tiny cups. Nesta, who is a giantess, came back with tea in a doll's house set including sugar tongs the size of eyebrow tweezers. She sat in the one chair and I sat on the divan with Dead Dad.
    ‘You'll have to see the coroner,’ she said. ‘You might have poisoned him.’
    ‘Poisoned my dad?’
    ‘Yes. With a mince pie. The doctor told him not to travel — he comes to you alive — he comes back here and drops dead. I blame Harold Shipman.’
    Harold Shipman was the most recent in a line of macabre doctors to have killed off a large number of elderly patients. But he hadn't killed off Dad.
    ‘I mean,’ said Nesta, ‘that they look at everything now. The coroner will have to release the body before we can bury your dad. I tell you that Harold Shipman has ruined it for us all.’
    She poured more tea and smiled at Dad. ‘Look at him. He's with us. You can tell.’
    The coroner did release the body but the moments of black comedy were not over. Dad had a burial plot, but after the funeral service, and when we had arrived at the cemetery, my cheque payment to open the grave had not arrived. The grave was ready but the cemetery wanted the cash. I went into the office and asked what to do. One of the men started explaining where I could find the nearest cashpoint. I said, ‘My father is outside in his coffin. I cannot go to the cashpoint.’
    ‘Well, we normally do insist on pre—payment because once somebody is buried you can't just dig them up if the relatives do a bunk.’

    I tried to assure them that I was not going to do a bunk. Fortunately I had a copy of Oranges in my handbag — I was going to put it in Dad's coffin but I changed my mind. They were quite impressed by the book and one of them had seen it on the telly, so ... after a bit of shuffling they agreed to take another cheque on the spot, and my father in his willow coffin was lowered down into the grave he shares with his second wife. That was his wish.
    Mrs Winterson lies further off. Alone.
    It was time to go back to the court. ‘Just keep your mouth shut,’ said Susie.
    The court manager was looking a lot more cheerful. He had been authorised by the judge to confirm my mother's age, though not her date of birth. She had been seventeen. So Mrs Winterson had told the truth about that.
    I took Susie to see my house, 200 Water Street, and the Elim Church on Blackburn Road, and the library, now shamefully stripped of so many of its books, including English Literature A—Z.
    Like most libraries in the UK, books are now less important than computer terminals and CD loans.
    Then we drove back to Manchester, passing Blackley, where my mother used to liv as she there now? Was that woman at the bus stop her?
    Mrs Winterson had told me she was dead. True? Not true?
    *

    The adoption society had long since vanished, and now there was yet another mouldering file to be found. I telephoned the new authority and, half stumbling, half babbling, gave my details.
    ‘What is your name?’
    ‘Jeanette Winterson.’
    ‘No, your name at birth. That will be on our records not Winterson. Did you write that book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit?‘
    Nightmare nightmare nightmare.
    I leave them to deal with the archive and settle down to investigate the ancestry site.
    I am terminally uninterested in record—keeping. I burn my work in progress and I burn my diaries, and I destroy letters. I don't want to sell my working papers to Texas and I don't want my personal papers becoming doctoral theses. I don't understand the family tree obsession. But then I wouldn't, would I?
    My website explorations led me to believe that my mother had married after I was adopted. My father's name was not on my birth certificate so I had no idea whether the two of them began a new life together, a fresh start, or whether she was pushed into a life with someone else.
    Either way I took an instant and unjustified dislike to the man she married, praying that he is not