David and I reach the office first, and I sit wordlessly down on the threadbare yellow sofa, my hands knotted together and my shuddering jaw set. I can hear Tui reeling off details of her adventure outside, informing Bonnie importantly that she remembered how to do a rising trot, even when Keith started ‘running really fast’. It would be adorable in any other circumstances, but as it is, I can’t even conjure up a smile. My mother is on the other side of that door – the woman who gave me away. I keep waiting for the age-old resentment to engulf me, hold me in a tight-chested grip as it always used to, whenever I thought about her and what she had chosen to do. There is nothing inside me now, though – not so much as a murmur.

David shifts from one foot to the other on the concrete floor, and I stare hard at his pale, hairy shins, unable and unwilling to meet his beseeching gaze. It’s agonisingly reminiscent of our behaviour in the waiting room we were shunted into at the hospital on that cold Christmas Eve. David had got there before me, but he was too poleaxed by shock to offer me any comfort or reassurance when I arrived, and the two of us circled one another instead, each one wary of tipping the other over into the abyss. When the doctor had finally joined us and relayed in a calm, sympathetic manner that the news was not good, she was the one – not my adoptive father – who had caught me in her arms when I collapsed to the ground.

After what feels like hours, but can only be a few minutes, I hear Bonnie telling Tui to go with Kit, reassuring her daughter that she won’t be long. The door creaks open, and I take a deep breath, forcing myself to look up as she comes into the room.

Bonnie is taller and slimmer than me, but our dark hair is the same, as are our determined chins. She is wearing faded jeans tucked into brown boots and a green plaid shirt with a Koru Stables logo on the breast pocket, and while the bags under her eyes hint at tiredness, there is an ease to the way she moves fluidly into the office, her hands going straight to the kettle. This is her space, of course. Her home – the place where she feels the safest and the most self-assured. I recognise it, because I have grown to feel the same way.

‘Shall we start with a brew?’ she checks, and David replies with an eager ‘please’. When I say nothing, Bonnie looks over her shoulder.