I place everything I need on the bed: the original birth certificate, the A4 envelope that lives in the chest of drawers and the Good Knight. I start with the A4 envelope. I slide out two pieces of paper.
The first is a little smaller than a standard birth certificate. It has my name on it. My new name. Eva McNeil. This is a short-form birth certificate, almost like a souvenir for Sugar and Cherry to proclaim they were now my parents.
The other paper is bigger. It’s a new birth certificate produced after my adoption was complete. It’s really a certificate of adoption:
Carlton MCNEIL
Cherry MCNEIL
Eva MCNEIL
And now I’m about to find out what’s on my third certificate, my real birth certificate. Gathering courage, I pick it up. The echoes of the past shift and come alive as I open it. Slowly, I tug it out as if it’s the most fragile object in the world. Greedily, I devour the contents. What? I’m confused. This can’t be right. The paper trembles. An agonised moan of dismay escapes me when I again read what is recorded.
Name and surname: Jane Doe.
I don’t understand! How can the name recorded for me be the same as the names given to the bodies of unidentified dead women? Jane Doe means nobody knows their name. The shock and horror of it hits me. I had no name. Where a father’s and mother’s name should be recorded it states ‘unknown’。
Place of birth: abandoned as a newborn, 268 Saint Brigid Road, London.
No! This cannot be true. Someone has recorded the wrong information. They have somehow mixed up baby Eva with another poor mite. My birth mother left me with social services. Didn’t she? Someone told me that when I was in the children’s home. Didn’t they? My mind zooms back and back to the day of my seventh birthday. Mrs Williams had just finished combing my curls into four big cornrows at the back and two going sideways at the front, all neatly tied with a shiny, purple ribbon. I remember that day because the sun was so brilliant-bright coming through the window. Mrs Williams then proceeded to present the Good Knight to me and told me that my mother had left it with me when I was a baby. No doubt that tyrant, Mrs Warden, who managed the care home and hated the children, gave Mrs Williams the task of giving it to me. Mrs Williams didn’t know why it was broken but she told me, her face lifting up into a wonderful smile, that my mother must have loved me very much to give it to me.
She hugged me and whispered, ‘And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart.’ At the time I didn’t realise it was a quote from the Bible about a mother’s love. Now, looking back, Mrs Williams never mentioned my mother leaving me with social services.
I read my birth certificate again. And again.
Abandoned.
And again.
So many tears wash down my face I can barely see any more. I fold forward, the pain ripping me up inside. It’s true, isn’t it? My mother abandoned me. Dumped me. Like a bag of trash. Like I was nothing. A nothing.
Trash baby.
No. Thing.
Abandoned.
Abandoned.
Abandoned.
Stumbling and swaying, I rush out of the room and am violently sick in the toilet. I slide down on to the floor and curl into a tight ball. My fingers twist into my hair. Always straight, never curly. I feel so small. So broken. Just like when they used to shave my head. My fingers grip my hair with a ferocity and pull. And then I howl out to the world at the injustice of it.
I feel Joe’s arms rescue me as they always do. I clutch on to him not able to stop my ugly sobs.
Hate.
Loathe.
Despise.
Detest.
Abhor.
Scorn.
Poisonous words that are a bull’s-eye description of how I feel about the woman who nourished me in her womb for nine months. That kernel of raw resentment I’ve carried towards her has grown full-blown back into life. Whoever said there was a thin line between love and hate, give that person a round of applause. Since finding out about the women, seeing the Good Knight in the photo, leaving me to think one of them was my mother, all I’ve had in my heart for this woman is love and pity. Now that love has flipped to hate.
I’m lying on the bed cloaked in a numbing exhaustion that I’ve never experienced in my life. It’s the worst kind of weariness because it’s in my head. It claws and burrows with flesh-eating intent into my brain.
The Good Knight is beside me. That’s the other thing my birth certificate told me. Written on the back was a scrawled message: ‘Found in the bag with baby was a broken ornament.’ Was the Good Knight a good-luck gift from my birth mother? Something precious and important she left with me? Maybe the Good Knight is a sign that my mother loved me after all as Mrs Williams claimed on my seventh birthday?