Apparently I had lashed out at my mum. It was only Dad pulling her back from me that prevented me from hurting her.
So then I had launched myself at them both, knocking them to the ground.
And then I had run. Away from them, into the woods.
They called my name and searched for me for over an hour. While they were looking for their lost child, I was killing someone else’s child. And her dog.
The same thing. Same as before. Re-living the same moment. Stifling my cry as she forced the broken bottle into my leg. Slamming a rock against the side of her face and kicking out at her fucking dog.
And then dragging the bodies. Hers lifeless, the dog’s, still whimpering with life.
Neither of them talked of calling the police. Or an ambulance. Their only thought was for me.
They didn’t leave until they found me.
Eventually they did. They said I had been building a makeshift shelter from fallen branches and foliage.
They both came to me, despite my earlier attack, and stood by me as I worked. I heard and saw nothing. They said I appeared feverish and determined. Concentrating only on my work.
I didn’t remember building any kind of shelter in my “dream”. There was a gap between dragging the bodies, and ending up back in the gorse hiding place. I had no idea what I had done with the bodies.
Perhaps I had built some sort of shelter and hidden them in it. I had no idea.
There was an even larger mind gap between being in the gorse and waking up to reality, so that when I eventually “woke up” I wasn’t at first aware of where I had been inside my mind.
I heard Mum’s voice first. She wasn’t talking to me. She was speaking to Dad. Then I heard his mumble.
I turned to them both. I held a broken branch in my right hand. The scar on my forehead stung. I wiped the sweat from it, dabbed it with my sleeve. I brushed some of the leaves off my hair.
They stopped talking and looked at me, probably not sure whether I was back or not.
‘You didn’t hold onto me,’ I said. ‘I screamed for you to hold onto me.’
Mum came to me and stroked my hair, brushing a few more leaves from it.
‘Shall we go home?’ she said.
I dropped the branch I had been holding and nodded. I wasn’t sure what time it was, or even what day it was. And I couldn’t remember how we had all come to be in the woods. Home sounded like an excellent idea.
They walked either side of me on the way home. I felt as though I was being marched somewhere. Protected on either side. At one point, Dad took my hand. It was warm and rough. Firm. It felt like a dad’s hand should feel.
By the time we reached home I had recalled the details of the nightmare that had come upon me in the woods, and Mum and Dad had told me everything that had happened in the real world.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘For lashing out at you. And for pushing you both over. I wasn’t aware of any of it.’
They looked at each other.
‘It wasn’t you, Chris,’ Mum said. ‘We knew that. You wouldn’t do anything like that.’
A chill hit the back of my neck.
Mum pushed open the front door and I felt the warm air on my cheeks as it escaped from the house. The chill stayed with me.
I couldn’t explain the blackout. The last one had occurred when the police officer had been asking me stressful questions in my own living-room. I could understand that. Stress can have a tremendous impact on the body.
But this time? My heart had been warm. I had been feeling nothing but tremendous love for my mum. I had wanted to hold her and thank her over and over again. To tell her I understood, as a woman and as a daughter. I had wanted to lift her up into the light and make her know how special she was. Stress was nowhere to be seen.
But still it came. The nightmare and the killing came. It was as much a part of me as the pebble now lodged inside me. And it was letting me know that it was still there. It didn’t matter what emotion I was feeling, whether flying through blue, summer skies or fighting through dark, poisoned brambles, it was still there — lying inside me.
‘I need help, don’t I?’ I said.
Dad sat in his armchair, I lay on the sofa. Mum, in the kitchen, filled the kettle and no doubt went on the hunt for a packet of biscuits.
‘I think you do, love,’ he said. ‘They can’t let you be like this. It’s not right. It’s not fair on you.’
I told him where I had gone during the blackout. What I had done.
‘And I get them more often now,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I don’t even blackout and it still plays in my head.’
Mum walked in with coffees and biscuits. She must have had an endless supply somewhere because it was yet another new packet.
I wanted to talk to them. I had so many questions. But I didn’t know the right language to use. Whatever I said would hurt. Real parents; proper family; genuine relations; actual grandparents.
None of it sounded right. None of it gave Mum and Dad the regard they deserved. They all sounded like words designed to sting.
‘There probably is madness, isn’t there?’ I said.
‘Chris, there are things you can do nowadays,’ Dad said. ‘It used to be that adopted children and their natural parents would never expect to find each other.’
Natural parents. Less sting.
‘But now,’ he said, ‘you can access original birth certificates, look up history and so on. I think there are even services that talk things through with you. Help you to find out about your natural family.’
And now I wanted to protect him. I wanted to tell them both that they were my proper parents. That they were my real and genuine family. And those same words that had sounded so spiteful in my mind just a few seconds earlier, now sounded beautiful and restorative.
‘Can I ask you something?’ I said.
I didn’t look at either of them. Left the question in the air for whoever got to it first. Or whoever felt they could avoid answering the least.
I know that they knew what the question was going to be. It was the elephant in the room. The one question that had been there from the start, but that we had all avoided.
‘Ask whatever you like,’ Dad said. ‘We’ll answer everything we can.’
And so it was Dad I turned to. I held my eyes to his and steeled myself.
‘What was the reason behind you not telling me that I was adopted?’
I expected him to stand up and start pacing. All he did was sit forward in his chair. He looked over at Mum, the merest glance. She returned his look with a flick of her eyes. Permission granted.
‘Back then,’ he said. ‘Parents who adopted were told that there was never any possibility of the adopted child being approached by their natural parents. All ties were completely cut and there would never be any communication. It was the same for the adopted child. Unless the adopted parents decided to tell the child that they were adopted, that child would never find out by any other means. And even if the child was told, they would never be able to find out about their natural parents.
‘For some parents, who were giving up their child, this was almost like a guarantee that there would never be any comeback. They could move on with their lives and allow the child to move on with theirs. It was felt important for both natural parents and the adopted child that the split should be absolute and irreversible.’
He sat back in his chair. He looked like he needed to sleep for a week. I had forgotten that less than an hour ago I had attacked him and Mum. He swallowed and leaned forward again.
‘They changed the law a few years ago,’ he said. ‘It opened up the way for adopted children to find out more about their natural parents. Gave them the right to find out about them. Goodness knows what effect that must have had on some of the parents who had tried to get on with their lives, tried to build a new life.
‘You see, some parents who gave their children up for adoption wouldn’t have spoken about it to anyone else. After giving up thei
r child they may have moved somewhere new. May have tried to forget about it all. They may have got married, may have changed partners, may even have had more children.
‘Some parents had no choice. They were encouraged, perhaps even coerced into giving up their child. Single mothers would have been told that giving up their child for adoption was the best thing they could do for their baby. Especially if they came from a poor home or a broken family.’
He sat back again, swallowed some more. He took a sip of coffee. And shut his eyes. When he opened them again they were watery.
‘Your mother and me had decided, even before we had you, that we would tell you that you were adopted, right from the word go. We had read about how to do it: Tell you when you’re in your cot; talk to you about it as we push you in your pram. We felt that the best way was just to be open. Having you come to us felt like the most natural thing in the world.
‘When we told the adoption people that we planned to tell you about the adoption they didn’t seem at all surprised by that. The told us that usually they don’t advise either way, they just leave it up to the new parents. But then we had a visit from a care-worker. She had been heavily involved in your case. She gave us no details at all, but she insisted that it might be better not to tell you about your adoption.
‘Obviously me and your mum kicked up a bit about it, but we didn’t want to rock the boat. We’d already set our hearts on you and we were terrified that someone might take you away from us. She seemed so insistent, that we agreed not to tell you. And we kept our word. There were so many times we wanted to tell you. It was almost as though opportunities would pop up. But we had promised.’
He coughed. Mum and I hadn’t said a word while Dad spoke. We had barely moved. Now we both reached for our coffee.
I wondered what on earth had compelled a care-worker to insist that I be kept in the dark. Had my circumstances been so awful that they had to be hidden from me?
‘I think you really need to try to find out about them,’ Dad said. ‘Your natural parents. I think it’s important. For all sorts of reasons.’
‘I wouldn’t know where to start,’ I said. ‘How do I go about it? Do you know what my original name was?’
‘All we know is that it was Christine,’ Dad said. ‘They never told us your original family name. I think that’s all part of the separation thing. No one knows. Just like your natural parents wouldn’t have known you were coming to us. The only name that was ever mentioned was your name. And we wanted to keep that name for you. It had been given to you at birth and we felt it was yours to keep. We had no right to change it.’
My mum cleared her throat. Like a gentle little cough. Her hands were shaking a little as she put her coffee mug down.
‘I think I might know,’ she said. ‘I think I know what your family name was.’
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