‘You’ve gone pale,’ Hayley points out gently. ‘Were you thinking about your mum?’

‘Which one?’ I reply bitterly, and Hayley comes over to sit beside me again.

I already told her the headline facts over the phone: that my birth mother is a woman called Bonnie, and that David and Anna met her before they adopted me. She doesn’t know everything, though – I still have one last thing to reveal.

‘You said that David knows where she is?’ Hayley asks, and I nod.

‘He thinks I should go and see her, that it might help me get back to myself somehow – whatever that means.’

‘Wow.’ Hayley’s pale eyes are wide.

‘I know.’

‘That is huge. Are you going to go?’

My morning cup of tea is still sitting half finished on the floor, and I stare hard at the film that has formed across the top of it. Bringing my knees up to my chest, I wrap my arms around them in an attempt at comfort. When I woke up this morning, both my hands had pins and needles in them because I had been hugging myself so tightly in my sleep.

‘Honestly?’ I say, and Hayley murmurs encouragingly. ‘I don’t know. At first, I thought, “No, no bloody way.” But now I’m not so sure. David is adamant that it’s a good idea, and I do want to make him happy after everything he’s been through. But part of me also wants to meet her just so I can shout at her for giving me away in the first place – I guess part of me needs to have it out with her. And maybe if I do, I will feel better. But then again, I could end up feeling even worse than I do now, if that’s possible. Oh, I don’t know …’

My words falter as I realise how weak they sound, and how feeble I’m being about the whole situation.

‘This isn’t about David,’ Hayley observes. ‘It’s about you and what you need to do.’

‘David thinks my life is stuck on hold,’ I explain. ‘He seems to think that this woman, this stranger, can help me feel normal again. But how can that be? How can meeting the woman who abandoned me make me feel better about losing the one who wanted me?’

Hayley is shaking her head.

‘I don’t know, Genes.’

For a moment, we just look helplessly at one another, neither of us sure what to say.

Hayley takes a deep breath.

‘David is right about one thing, though,’ she says quietly. ‘About your life, I mean. It does feel like someone has pressed pause on it.’

There isn’t anything I can say to that.

‘Maybe meeting your birth mother is not what you need at all. Maybe what would really help you is coming back to work at the yard.’