‘I had certainly worked it out for myself by the time I was an undergraduate,’ said Olivia. ‘I was totally invested in refuting the idea that the most important contribution to my formation was a genetic inheritance handed down to me by a couple of strangers.’

She had chosen not to track down her biological mother, feeling that it would be a betrayal of her real parents in favour of the outsider who had chosen to give her away. It was only when she was twenty-six and a friend of hers had her first baby, that Olivia’s resolve was broken. She was allowed to hold her friend’s newborn child in her arms and felt the encircling tenderness that sprung up spontaneously between them in the few minutes before the baby’s mother reached out to take him back, craving, despite her exhaustion, the need to comfort and protect her child. The experience inflamed Olivia’s imagination, making her wonder about her mother’s motives for giving her away, and so she finally set about arranging to meet Karen Hughes, as the culprit turned out to be called.