I don’t know how long we sit there. But eventually my tears turn into ugly heaving shudders and then subside, and all I’m left with is embarrassment. I’ve been a madwoman. But she doesn’t tell me so. Instead she smiles and says, ‘Come on, let’s go and get a coffee.’

We get out of the car and walk past the giant beaming dog into the service station. It has red chairs and white plastic tables and Swiss flags strung across the ceiling. I sit down at a table and Julia goes to the self-service area and brings back two coffees.

‘I want to help you,’ she says. ‘Perhaps I can do something. Help you look.’

I pause. She’s being so nice to me, after I was so awful. Where once I wanted to throw my discovery at her, to shatter her life as mine was, now my instinct is to keep it from her, to protect her. But I know I can’t. There have been enough lies in the past six weeks.

‘I have to tell you something else,’ I say. ‘When I was in your room, snooping…’ I don’t know how to say it. ‘I found a letter.’

Her face hardens but I keep going. I have to get this out now.

‘I’m sorry I looked, I really am. But this letter, it was from someone called Anna Meier.’ I pause. She looks confused. ‘And that’s the name of my probable mother. Well, the hospital told me her name was Brigitte Mela, but then someone else told me she’d changed it to Anna Meier, I don’t know why. And so I’ve been thinking… I’ve been wondering… I’ve been obsessed with the idea quite frankly, that she is your… and you might be…’

Julia sits back in her chair. She shakes her head, stares at me. ‘I don’t know anyone called Anna Meier.’

‘You don’t? But your maiden name was Meier.’

She shakes her head again, says in a voice you might use to a small child, ‘Jess, Meier is one of the most common surnames in Switzerland.’

‘Oh.’

‘Angela,’ Julia says suddenly. ‘Could you have misread it? I don’t remember any particular letter, but it could be that I kept one from Angela Meier, my aunt.’

I think back. I picture myself in the bedroom sitting on the duvet, pulling the folder out of the drawer. Did it actually say Anna Meier? No, of course it didn’t. Nowhere on that letter did it say Anna. Only A. I knew that, I always knew that, but somewhere in the mess of my injured, hurting head, I’d forgotten I did.

SEPTEMBER 1976 Lausanne, Switzerland

SYLVIA