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both fortunate enough to be alive, healthy, housed, happy enough, and that I had a bloke who loved me. As I delved in my bag to get some money to throw into the Teenage Cancer Trust collection buckets, I noticed that there was a message on my phone. I dialled in to retrieve it, and it was Gavin.
    ‘ Yeah, Emma, listen. I’m sick of this. My bloody car got towed away and I’ve had to go and get it from the bloody pound, and it’s been a nightmare. The battery on my mobile ran down after your message so I couldn’t call you back. But you never cut me any slack, do you? I can’t always be there at your beck and call. I was looking forward to the gig too… Anyway, what with one thing and another, I’ve had enough. I think we should call it a day. I don’t need this kind of aggro. I’m sorry, babes. We had a good time but we both knew it wasn’t going to last for ever. I’ll ring you next week and we can sort out our stuff. I mean it; it’s over. Sorry. Bye.’
     
    Breathless with shock, I hailed a black cab and went straight round to his house, letting myself in with my spare key, where I found him spliffed up in front of a video of The Sweeney. Despite his socked feet resting on the coffee table in a manner indicating extreme relaxation, his resolve was even stronger than in his phone message. I made a fool of myself; crying and begging, practically, but he was unmoved.
    ‘ I can’t handle this any more,’ he said. ‘We’re a habit, babe. You can do better than me.’
    Did he mean that he could do better than me, too? My less-than-robust sense of self-worth crumbled even further as, with more than a few tears, I waited for a minicab to take me home.
    ‘ Can’t I stay? Just tonight?’
    ‘ I think it’s better this way, honestly, babes.’
    He hugged me, and his smell was still delicious: spliff, aftershave, warm skin, taking me right back to the smell of his palm at that party where we first met. I felt shocked, battered by the day’s events, devastated at the sight of Gavin’s socks and the knowledge that I might never feel his arms around me again, or the rub of stubbly skin underneath his chin. The Sweeney’s car raced down an alleyway, chasing a criminal who scrambled away over some dustbins and I watched, dully, with a fog over my eyes and my heart.
    Later, as my cab pulled away from the kerb at an only slightly more sedate speed than The Sweeney’s, I realised that I hadn’t even told Gavin what had happened with the man on the train, let alone the decision the encounter had inspired in me. A good story left untold, I thought, staring out at the slick streets of a drizzly Thursday night. I wondered if I would really go for it; if I would really ever try to trace my birthmother. I could certainly have done with a mother right then and there, next to me on the dirt-faded and torn tartan upholstery of that geriatric minicab, enveloping me in unconditional love and reassurance. Hugging me. Telling me that it was all going to be all right.

 
    Chapter 6
     
    ‘ Some adopted people believe that they have no identity, no place in the world. Did you ever feel that way? If so, can you pinpoint what prompted it?’
     
    Being adopted always gave me stabs of sadness, especially on my birthdays. The thought that the person who’d given birth to me had just moved on, and possibly even forgotten about me. But it was a self-indulgent sadness, really – I had parents who loved me.
    It was never any great secret. I had always known I was adopted, although I didn’t have any recollection of when or how Mum and Dad had first told me. It was just something I grew up with, like the dusty smell of orang-utan hair, or the omnipresent flakes of tobacco from Dad’s pipe. Mum had always let me know that my birth parents were very young, not married to each other, and simply unable to give me the kind of life they felt I deserved; and this knowledge did take some of the sting out of being given away; but only some of