On a scale of one to ten, how do you rate that decision, Jack? It’s got to be up there with the worst decisions I’ve ever made. However much of a pain it would have been, I should have gone to England! But honestly, what kind of idiot comes out here and then gets lost?

Snow

Chapter Sixteen

I have often wondered how Agnes reacted when she first heard that she had a sister. It must have been a shock, but as far as Ruby is concerned that soon gave way to joy. ‘She was absolutely over the moon,’ she told me back at our first meeting at the Sir Stanford. ‘And, where my first reaction would have been that it was a prank, Mum never thought so. She said the lawyer – Doug Grenfell – knew the names Mum was given at birth and he knew the names of Mum’s parents, and there weren’t that many people who had access to that kind of information about Mum. For the first sixty years of her life, Mum didn’t even have a birth certificate.’

The waiters were milling around, clearing breakfast plates and the like.

I said, ‘How was that possible? How did she do things, like get a driver’s licence and travel around, or a passport, without a birth certificate?’

Ruby said, ‘She had what was called a Certificate of Identity. Here, I’ll show you.’

She fished around in her ‘Mum’ folder for it, and passed it across the table. It wasn’t a birth certificate like you and I might have; it was a handwritten document with the words ‘Certificate of Identity’ across the top.

‘None of the kids at the Fairbridge Farm School were ever given a birth certificate – they all got one of these when they left,’ Ruby said.

Agnes must have kept it folded up, maybe in the back part of her purse behind her credit cards, because the creases were imprinted on it. It had basic information, such as her full name at birth – Agnes Joan Bell – and her date of birth in 1940, but it didn’t give away the names of her parents.

‘Mum gave a copy of that to Stella when she was doing the Family Tree assignment,’ Ruby explained. ‘I remember her saying, “This is all I’ve got, Stella. I’ll never know more about where I came from than this.” But when Stella’s class did the search of the Births, Deaths and Marriages website – they do all that in their classroom these days, teaching them how to use the internet – she found a link especially for people who only had these Certificates of Identity, and when Stella followed that link, the website made it plain that after years of secrecy, all the old records had been opened to the public and Mum would be allowed to get a birth certificate.’

I asked Ruby how her mum reacted to that news. She said, ‘She basically didn’t believe it but Stella was excited, and I suppose I was too, so we all trooped off to Births, Deaths and Marriages together and the lady behind the counter was quite cheery. She looked at Mum’s Certificate of Identity and said, “Do you want me to fish out your birth certificate?”