Page 40 of The Pieces of Us

‘Sweetheart, I know you have so much to deal with right now. But I have something I need to tell you.’

Her eyes open wider. ‘Are you pregnant as well?’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Ruby. Of course I’m not pregnant.’

I only have one chance to get this conversation right, to provide my teenage daughter with the reassurance and stability she needs more than anything right now, and I’ve not put a great deal of thought into how I’m going to do that. So I just rip off the plaster.

‘I’m adopted.’ I’m not entirely sure I’ve said the words out loud until Ruby’s face creases with confusion.

‘You’re adopted ? Are you kidding me? Is this a joke?’ Her eyes beg me to tell her that yes, this is my ludicrous attempt at humour.

I shake my head slowly. ‘It’s no joke, pet.’

‘How do you know? What … Gran adopted you? Gran’s not your birth mum?’

‘No, she’s not.’

‘I can’t believe it. Why didn’t she tell you?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘How do you even know this? What are you going to do? Do you know who your mother is? Have you spoken to Gran about it? Wait … should I still call her “Gran”?’

‘Of course. She’s still your gran,’ I say firmly. ‘She’s been there your entire life, doing everything grandparents do. A lot more than most.’

‘But … another woman is my actual gran?’

‘Yes.’ I take another sip of coffee. ‘Another woman gave birth to me. But I was with Minnie when I was a newborn. She has photographs of us together when I was a tiny baby.’

Ruby’s mouth forms a large ‘O’. ‘Wow, Mum. Wow .’

‘Hold on,’ I tell her. I go to my bedroom, open my underwear drawer, take out my new birth certificate and the baby bangle.

She stares at them. ‘Elizabeth. E. S. M. Elizabeth was your mother.’

‘Yes. The Beth Minnie’s been talking about. Her full name is Elizabeth Sarah Muir.’

‘Have you googled her?’ She grabs her phone. ‘ Everyone is online these days. Surely she can’t be that hard to find.’

‘I’ve started looking, but I don’t think finding her is going to be as easy as that.

’ I lean in and kiss her forehead. ‘I’ll keep going.

But right now … I’m going to bed. And so are you.

’ I look pointedly at her phone until she turns it off.

‘Whatever I do about all this, I’m here for you.

You’re my priority. You and the baby. You know that, right? ’

‘You can be here for me and do what you need to do for yourself,’ she tells me.

Lengthy online searches for the right Elizabeth Sarah Muir get me nowhere.

I go round in circles, scrolling past the same profiles, hoping that my mother will suddenly have decided to join Facebook.

I say her name to myself over and over, but it’s nothing without a face, a body, a history.

It’s only one piece and I can’t make the other pieces connect no matter how many ways I arrange them in my mind or in front of me on the kitchen table.

I know I was with Minnie and Hugh from birth or very soon after.

I know they were registered on my birth certificate as my biological parents, that my birth certificate was later corrected, and that an adoption assessment was carried out later still.

Yet another online search takes me to an article about the history of adoption laws, where I learn that many people are unaware that it was perfectly lawful for anyone to arrange an adoption right up until new regulations were implemented in 1984.

Although many of the people who arranged private adoptions were people in professional positions (doctors, lawyers, clergy), the reality was that anyone could do it.

Another link takes me to a website where I read accounts of door-to-door tradespeople like bakers or milkmen who were instrumental in adoption arrangements.

Behind one door on their rounds, they learned of a baby whose parent or grandparent wanted it to be adopted.

Behind another, of a couple who wanted to adopt.

Is this what happened to me? Did my adoption come about because two families on the same street had their milk delivered?

Against my better instincts, I keep reading.

A welfare assessment was carried out by the local council, but this was only after the baby had been placed with its adoptive parents.

When Alex the social worker calls back, it’s only to deliver another blow.

‘I’m sorry,’ he tells me. ‘Just as I suspected, no paperwork from the late seventies was computerized. We can’t find anything relating to your adoption assessment.’

‘Nothing at all? No paper copies?’ My eyes jump between Minnie’s Post-it note prompts which are spread across the kitchen. We’re up to seventeen.

‘More bad news, I’m afraid. There was a fire in the office in the mid-eighties and a lot of the paperwork was destroyed. Have you heard back from National Records of Scotland?’

‘I’m still waiting,’ I say, putting all my energy into keeping my voice measured. None of this is Alex’s fault.

‘Ah,’ he says. ‘It can take a while. Well, good luck with it all.’

In lieu of any other plan, I resolve to keep our lives as normal as possible.

I find a slim wooden cigar box in the last of Minnie’s boxes.

It still bears a faint smell of tobacco, and it’s the only thing I have that belonged to the man I grew up believing was my father.

It’s been empty for decades until recently.

Every night, before I go to bed, I open it carefully and take out the silver baby bangle and hold it in my hand.

Ruby’s baby reaches the length of a corn on the cob and she has an unmistakable bump.

‘Twenty-four weeks,’ she says, staring at the scan photos on the front of the fridge.

‘It’s so surreal.’ I watch her veer between adolescence and adulthood on a daily basis.

Giggle with her friends on the phone before bed, then spend the morning moaning about restless leg syndrome.

‘It’s common during pregnancy,’ she informs me.

Sean comes and goes, fussing over her until she tells him to stop being a pest. The next thing, she’s moaning that he’s been playing Call of Duty all night instead of checking in with her.

One night, I overhear Ruby chatting in the kitchen to Minnie.

‘It’s like there are two of me,’ she says.

‘The old Ruby, who twerked with her friends in her bedroom and still kinda wanted to be Katniss Everdeen when she grew up, and the new Ruby, who’s going to be a mother, and I can’t work out how to connect them together.

How to make both of them me . I’m scared, Gran. ’

‘Who’s Katherine Evergreen?’ Minnie asks.

Ruby’s peal of laughter is music to my ears. ‘She’s a badass archer, Gran.’

‘What’s a twerk?’

‘Oh, it’s not something pregnant women should be doing, Gran. Do you want a cup of tea?’ I hear my daughter moving around the kitchen, opening a drawer, closing a cupboard.

‘Yes, OK. But I want to know what a twerk is.’

The noise of running water muffles Ruby’s reply, but I hear more laughter and I picture my pregnant teenage daughter twerking.

‘That’s clever,’ Minnie says.

‘Thanks, Gran.’

‘What are you scared of?’

‘Getting it wrong, I guess. Sometimes I wonder if I’m even doing the right thing. I worry that I’ll mess it up, Gran. Being a mum.’

‘Of course you will,’ Minnie tells her matter-of-factly. ‘We all do. But you’ll get it right as well. That’s life.’

Finally a very polite email arrives from Janine at the National Records of Scotland, who thanks me for requesting an extract of entry from a register of adopted children then states: I regret to inform you that we have no adoption record in your name .

‘It didn’t come as a surprise,’ I tell Lisa, who’s sitting opposite me at my kitchen table, a tub of Ben & Jerry’s between us.

‘I’d already figured out that having the wrong parent names on my birth certificate probably meant there wasn’t going to be an official record of my adoption.

But I’m still gutted, Lis. I don’t know where to go from here. ’

She pushes the Cookie Dough towards me. ‘Here. This is where you go.’

We eat in silence for a few minutes. ‘OK. This is good,’ I tell her. ‘Talking to you and ice cream. This I can handle.’

‘What can’t you handle?’

‘Not knowing. Who Beth is. Who she was . Where she is now. She’s on my mind constantly.’

Lisa nods, understanding.

‘I need to be there for Ruby. And for Minnie. They need the very best of me, Lis. And it’s like I can’t give them that until I figure this thing out.

It’s not just about finding Beth. I feel like there’s more to this than just an adoption.

What would you do? If you were in my position?

With everything else I’ve got going on.’

She doesn’t hesitate. ‘I’d want to know the truth. Minnie definitely can’t tell you what you need to know?’

I shake my head. ‘I think it goes beyond the Alzheimer’s.

We were always so honest with each other, Lisa.

My biggest question is why she never told me when she had so many chances to.

Before she got ill.’ I take another mouthful of ice cream.

‘Alzheimer’s controls so much of how we live our lives, and it’s dictating how I’m coming to terms with this.

I don’t see Minnie as someone who can fill in the blanks for me, because that’s beyond her capabilities now. ’

‘Is that helping?’ she asks. ‘That switch in your thinking?’

‘I think so. I was already thinking of Minnie in pre- and post-Alzheimer’s terms. Like she’s two different people, you know? And this is just another aspect of that. Am I making sense?’

‘Totally,’ she assures me. ‘Remind yourself of that when it all gets too much. Minnie loves you, Cat. Pre- and post-Alzheimer’s Minnie. That comes before anything else.’