Are You My Mother? (20 page)

I was simultaneously irritated and proud of him. It was great news for him – but why was he talking about his work now?

‘
Wow, Mack, that’s great. No, you didn’t.’

‘
Well, I have been. They liked my short film last year on teenagers and the internet, and approached me with a view to doing something similar for this new series. But when I told them that I was adopted, and that I’d like to make a film about how adopted people find their place in the world, they were even more enthusiastic. So, you see, this is perfect timing. I’d been feeling that my own story wasn’t interesting enough for a full hour, and I was thinking about asking this other guy I know from football, who’s also adopted, but now, here you are, with your own story. The idea of filming someone who’s actually searching is much more appealing to me.’

I was flabbergasted. ‘What – me? Be in a documentary?’

‘
Why not? I could film everything we do to try and track down your birthmother, and then if you meet up with her, you could let me film that, too –‘

‘
Not bloody likely - you must be joking! I can see it now
: “Hello, I’m your daughter, and this is the film crew
!” This is personal, Mack, I can’t believe you’re even suggesting it.’

Mack stayed calm in the face of my increasing agitation, although I saw him look longingly over at his video camera again.

‘
Don’t even think about it,’ I said, ominously.

He spun around on his chair even faster. ‘Oh, Emma, please? It’s the most brilliant subject - such human interest. I promise I’d do it sensitively. And if you didn’t want me to film you all the time, I’d let you borrow the camera and set it up so you can talk directly into it; you know, like a video diary. If we find your mother, of course I wouldn’t have to film the
actual
reunion. We could set it up so that you could pretend you were meeting for the first time, after you already had.’

I could have hit him. A faked reunion had to be one of the tackiest, most horrible things I’d ever heard. There was no way I’d be involved in something like that. Besides, the whole prospect of being on camera was anathema to me – I couldn’t even bear to have my photograph taken. But, I thought immediately afterwards, it would be kind of nice to have someone really pulling out the stops to help me look….

‘
So are you saying you won’t help me unless I let you film it?’

Mack tutted. ‘No, of course not. I’m not that callous. I just think it would be fantastic. And the fact that you’ve approached me for help, before you even knew about what I was doing – well, it just seems like such a ‘meant to be.’ Plus, I genuinely think it would be good for you, too. Feeling that you’re not alone in it. Confronting your fears and doubts; getting them out in the open. And don’t forget, if for whatever reason we end up drawing a blank, then who knows? Maybe your birthmother will see it and get in touch.’

‘
We-ll,’ I said, wavering slightly. ‘Can I have some time to think about it?’

‘
Sure. And in the meantime, let’s have a quick preliminary look online.’ He swivelled around and switched on his computer.

‘
We’ll check out some online phone directories, and do a general search first, to see if we get anywhere. She might just have registered on some on-line reunion site for adopted kids and birthparents. And I want to print out some info for you, as well. I know you said you had counselling, but that was a long time ago - I think it would be a good idea for you to have a little refresher course.’

Pompous arse, I thought, feeling a momentary flash of irritation. I wondered if he was hoping we’d draw a blank, so that he’d have more material for his documentary.

‘
Do they have special sites for adopted people, then?’

‘
Oh yeah. Mostly based in America, but she could still have posted a message on those, asking about you, and that means her name would show up in a general search. We mustn’t overlook the obvious.’

I finished my beer and, standing on unsteady legs, tottered across the room, taking the first steps towards my birthmother in eight years. As I stood next to Mack’s chair, I felt as if we were posing for an Edwardian family photograph: the husband seated, mutton-chopped and suited up, the obedient wife in crinolines behind him, resting her hand on the patriarchal shoulder, staring into a 5”X4” box camera – exactly the same as the ones Dad used to make. The photographer would have taken off his top hat to bend down behind the camera’s squat body, throwing a black sheet over him to keep out the light, and clicking the shutter remotely via a long lead protruding from underneath the sheet…..

‘
Emma?’

I jumped. The camera once more became Mack’s grape iMac, and Mack was shaking his head in mock-exasperation. ‘Anybody in there?’ He passed a hand to and fro in front of my eyes.

‘
Sorry, I was miles away. Oh God, I don’t know. Perhaps I am being too hasty. Knowing that I’m only going to give this one shot – it’s like, I don’t know – maybe I’m rushing into it. It was so easy, really, last time, finding out her name. What if it’s that easy this time?’

Mack swivelled again. ‘Well, I doubt that it will be. It’s a huge help that you know her name and an old address, and you’re lucky that it’s quite an unusual surname. But anything could have happened in eight years. She might have moved abroad, or died, or remarried…. It’s a shame you don’t have a street number – if you did, you could go back to the Electoral Register for that year and look up the names of her neighbours and contact them, too.’

‘
I did think of that. I suppose I could go to Teffont and ask around,’ I said doubtfully. ‘What are you doing now?’

Mack had been tapping away at his keyboard, and now a document entitled “Preparation Before Contact” filled the screen. His printer rattled into action, churning out onto several sheets of A4.

‘
I just keyed in “adoptees + preparation” and this came up.’

I reached over and pulled the paper off the printer. Glancing over the piece, I laughed when I read the first point:

1. THE FANTASY. Let go of any lifelong image, any fantasy of your birthmother. No-one can live up to a fantasy….Be sure you are ready to accept her as she is because she’s probably not what you wanted, expected, or fantasised her to be.

‘
That’s a relief, then,’ I said out loud.

‘
What is?’

I read out the paragraph to Mack, and then told him about the babydoll nightie, and the compulsive praying.

Mack laughed too. He sounded like his printer when he laughed – brisk and staccato. ‘It’s so
important to be prepared. Even if you only have a negative image of her, it’s still a preconception, and you’re going to have to try and get rid of all of those, otherwise whoever you find will be a shock, one way or another.’

He sounded as if he was already rehearsing for what he’d say on camera, and then he more or less confirmed it. ‘If you do let me go ahead and film this, we’ll have to do all this again. I wouldn’t want to miss out any of the stages.’

‘
If
I let you go ahead,’ I said darkly.

Mack scrolled down a list of sites, and clicked to enter another one. I noticed, for the first time, that his mousemat was a reproduction of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”, and I felt warmer towards him again.

‘
Oh, here, this one looks good. Most of these are American sites, so the legal stipulations might not be quite the same. The advice will still be sound, though. I’ll just run off a few more articles, and that should be enough for you to take home and get stuck into. In the meantime, let’s do a couple of quick searches now. If nothing comes up, I’ll have a think about what else we can do, and get back to you in a few days, and you give me a ring when you’ve thought about the documentary idea. Is that OK?’

I was overcome with a sudden affection for him: silly hair, pomposity, “Scream” mousemat, and all. ‘Of course, that’s fine – although I’m not making any promises. Thank you, though, Mack. Really. I’d never have done this on my own – probably not even if I
could
figure out the internet.’

I squeezed his shoulder and he blushed, flapping his arm at me in a self-deprecatory manner. ‘It’s nothing. Glad to help. I just want to make you aware that you have to be prepared, that’s all.’

‘
Be prepared
. Did you know that’s the motto of the Brownies?’

The graphics on the computer screen changed, and Mack sprang into action, ignoring my question. ‘Right, here we go. Here’s a directory site. I’ll type in Paramor, Ann – I think if you leave the area box blank it searches the whole of the UK.’

I held my breath as he typed in the information and hit the Return key. The tiny little circle on the screen, which indicated that you had to wait, ticked interminably around and around, until finally the pronouncement was made: ‘SORRY NO MATCHES WERE FOUND.’

I was disappointed, but also faintly relieved that the moment of truth was not instantaneous. I realised that Mack was right, I did want the chance to read up a bit more on what to expect.

‘
Fine. Thanks again, and I’ll leave you to the rest of your evening now. I need to get home and start on my reading.’

Mack looked at my satin skirt and high heeled boots. ‘I thought you were going out?’

It was my turn to blush. ‘Well, I was considering it… but I’m a bit tired, actually. I’ll probably just have an early night. I’ve got a lot to think about.’

Mack separated himself from his twirly chair and showed me to the door, helping me into my coat in a gentlemanly manner. I gave him a goodnight peck on the cheek, and climbed back up the basement steps, gingerly picking my way past a dropped packet of chips outside his building. Several of the chips had already been trodden on and lay crushed and slimy, vegetable roadkill, on the pavement. The smell of vinegar from the wet paper tickled the tops of my nostrils and made me feel hungry.

When I got home, however, I decided I didn’t want to eat after all. Nor did I want to get stuck into the literature immediately. Instead, still wearing my coat, I went straight to my bedroom and lay flat out on the bed. Closing my eyes, I did a mental exercise I had once learned in a healing workshop. I imagined myself inside a circle of light, which was attached to another one, containing the praying image of my mother in the babydoll-nightie. In my head, I drew a figure of eight three times around both circles. Finally I got a large imaginary pair of scissors and snipped the two apart, watching the circle containing my caricature of a mother begin float up and away, like a huge bubble. I hoped that once I’d finished this exercise, I would no longer have any preconceived ideas about who Ann Paramor might be.

Then I began the exercise again. In the bubble this time was a television, whose screen was filled with an image of my own face, to try and get me over the craven panic that the thought of being filmed induced. It seemed only fair that I should do Mack a return favour, for all the help he was going to give me, but I just wasn’t sure if I could face the prospect of being on TV.

I fell asleep before the second bubble had even cleared the rooftop of the house in my imagination. The sound of my own snoring woke me up several hours later, cold and stiff, with Mack’s printed sheets scattered all over the floor, and my overcoat rucked up uncomfortably beneath me.

Chapter 18

‘
This’ll be the first real scene, I think – you looking in the envelope. Then I’ll edit in some of that stuff we talked about before, maybe I’ll just overdub your voice on different footage for bits of it – kids playing on swings for when you talk about your childhood, and so on. So, whenever you’re ready….’

Earlier on the same dark, freezing evening when Mack filmed me opening the envelope, I’d bumped into him in Sainsbury's. But I hadn’t even noticed him until he tapped me on the shoulder, because something very strange was occurring in my line of vision, right there in the Pet Foods aisle.

It was that baby bird, the one from Stella’s book. There he was, in front of me, hopping along the faux-marble tiled floor. I couldn’t believe it. It meandered nonchalantly up Pet Foods, swelled a few deep breaths into its peanut-sized lungs, and leaped up to perch on the baskets of various single women shoppers as they stopped to browse. Its legs were the thinnest black twigs imaginable, as if they should have gobs of cherry blossom on the ends of them, like fluffy slippers, instead of sketched and fragile branches of feet.

‘
Are you my mother?’ I thought I heard it say to an elderly lady with grey bags under her eyes, beige mac, and indeterminate hair-do, who was bulk-buying Pedigree Chum for Small Dogs and stacking it into her shallow old ladies’ trolley. Even though the bird had jumped right onto the front of the trolley, presenting a tiny riot of colour against her drabness, she still didn’t appear to have seen it, although it was perfectly visible to me, perched like the figurehead at a ship’s prow on the top of the little clipboard-thing you were supposed to stick your shopping list on.

I watched it jump down – for of course, it hadn’t yet mastered the art of flight - and approach a dreamy pregnant lady, who was pushing her trolley with straight arms because her stomach stuck out so far. She didn’t see it either, even though it cocked its head winsomely to one side and chirped its question again, clambering up the mesh of her trolley and over her cereal boxes.