LOST AND FOUND

It was a bright but cold day in January. The sun shone but gave no warmth. An icy chill tore through my bones. I wrapped my coat more tightly around me. I could not wait to get home.

The street was empty save for a middle-aged, short, stout woman in front of me. She was wearing a duffel coat and ankle-length boots. On her legs were black leggings, looking almost like tights. She was walking slowly, as if immune to the biting wind.

She removed her handbag from her shoulder and opened up a wallet. Some coins fell out and a small, black-and-white photo, which blew in my direction. I gathered the coins but there was something intriguing about the photo: it was of a young man who looked exactly like my late father and I did not know this woman from Adam.

"Excuse me, madam,"I said, as I handed over the coins, but hung on to the photo. "This photo. It looks just like my late father."

She looked at me closely. I saw a muscle move in her cheek. She grabbed the photo from me and turned it around. On the back was a date in black ink: "Michael. October1965."

My father had died in September 1980. It was now January 1985. I was born in May 1966. The woman glared and snatched the photo back. She did not even thank me for returning her coins.

I began following her, my footsteps hardly making a noise. Her reaction showed that she had something to hide. Anyone else would have thanked me for having returned them their money and would not have been annoyed at me having accidentally picked up a photo.

At one stage, she turned around.

"Are you following me?"

I crossed the road and looked ahead, pretending to be interested in the view of the tower block ahead of me, but I kept looking at her out of the corner of her eye. She turned right into another street and I crossed the road, careful to leave a respectable distance between us. I did not want to frighten her but there was something strange about this. Had I not seen her in the street that day and picked up the coins that she had accidentally dropped from her wallet, I would never have seen that photo of that man resembling my late father and all would have been fine in my world.

I stood on the opposite pavement and watched her enter a terraced house. I waited for five minutes, then walked up to it. Heart thumping in my chest, I rang the bell. Some hasty footsteps followed and the door was opened by that same woman.

"You again!" she said and began closing the door. "Leave me alone."

"I have something to ask you," I persevered. "That photo. The person in that photo looks just like my late dad and I have never met you before. I want to talk to you."

She hesitated then sighed.

"All right," she said. "Come in."

She led me into a small, old fashioned room. The sparse furniture that she owned looked like something out of the late nineteenth century and there was a musty smell in the room. She beckoned me to sit down and then sat down next to me.

£What do you want?" she asked in a cold voice.

"How come that the person in your photo looks just like my late dad and, more importantly, what is it doing in your wallet? Who are you?"

She turned her gaze away from me and looked at a blank wall. I could tell that this would become an uncomfortable conversation.

"Years ago, he and I had a relationship. You are the result of that relationship."

Her last sentence felt like a brick falling on my head. A heavy silence fell in the room. A mantlepiece clock ticked, my heart thumping along with it. She turned and looked at me.

"So you are my mother."

She nodded.

"So the woman who raised me since I was a baby is not my mother."

She nodded again.

"How old were you both when I was born?"

"He was nineteen and I was eighteen."

I looked closely at her. Outside in the street, she had looked considerably older. Here, in the comfort of her own home, she looked younger and frailer. Part of me wanted to hug her, but I did not dare. There was too much to sort out first.

"So how come that I am not in your care? What was I doing raised in the home of a woman who was not my mother?"

"He always said that he would be there for me, but then he left me for someone else."

"So that someone else was the person whom I believed was my mother?"

She did not reply, but I could see that she meant "yes."

"He was married to her when you were born."

What a rat! For the first time I felt furious with my father. He had been perfect when I was little, always lifting me up in his arms and calling me his little pet. As I grew older, he would take me and my mother for exotic holidays and we would all go out for long walks in the evenings. Now, in the light of what this woman was telling me, all that was paling into insignificance. He was not trustworthy.

"But how did I end up in her care? Why would she have wanted me if I reminded her of her rotten, two-timing husband?"

"I put you in care when I had you. I could not look after you myself. His wife could not have children."

So that explained something, although I wondered whether his wife knew I was the daughter of a man who had cheated on her with another woman. Most women would not want the offspring of their cheating husbands foisted on them.

"Why did you keep his photo? Did you never try to forget him and remarry?"

She shook her head.

"He was always telling me that he would leave his wife for me, but he never did. I always hoped that he would, so I kept his photo."

She fell silent.

"I arranged for you to be put into care as a newborn and as the time passed, they tried to have children but could not, so I phoned him at work one day and told him about you and suggested that he adopt you and he did."

"Thank you," I said, drained with this information. "I'll go now."

*****

That evening, I confronted my father=s wife. She greeted me with her usual hug and kiss but I moved away.

"I have something to tell you."

She waited.

"This morning, while out for a walk, a woman dropped her wallet and a picture of my dad fell out. I could not stop looking at it."

She became very still. She did not move.

"And?" she finally said.

"This woman turned out to be my mother. I am the result of an affair that she had with Dad while he was married to you. She said that she put me into care when I was born because she was unable to look after me. I am no ordinary child that you took under your wing and raised - I am the daughter of your husband and his mistress."

She turned round and stared at me. I wish that I could take these words back.

There was a colour photograph of my late father and myself as a smiling child on the mantlepiece. I must have been about three or four. I picked it up and took it to my mother.

"Look," I said. "I have the same eye colour and light brown hair. See the resemblance?"

She looked at the photo and then back again at me. I swallowed nervously. I waited for her to say something - anything - even "Get out," but she did not. Instead, she gathered me into her arms and this time I did not try to move away, but responded warmly.

"Your dad and I were married for twenty years," she finally said. "We tried to have children but could not. When we signed up for adoption, he never told me that he already had a daughter. You look like him. You remind me of him. You are the only memory that I have of him."

I nodded. I was too shaken to speak.

"Come on," she said. "We have a lot to catch up on."