Her face crumples. ‘Yes,’ she whispers. ‘Yes. I gave you away because I loved you. Everything I did was done out of love. I loved you so much I thought my heart would break. And I regretted my decision almost as soon as I did it. I even went to try and swap you back, but Sylvia’s baby had been transferred to another ward and you weren’t next to her anymore so I couldn’t, it was too late. I will never forget that feeling; I have never felt such despair.’

She pauses, but I wait for her to go on. She knows I need to know every little detail of this.

‘And I couldn’t just confess what I’d done. I was scared I’d lose both babies and end up with nothing. I thought I’d go to jail, and my baby would be put in some institution, or with a family that didn’t love her, and then history would repeat itself. I couldn’t, I just couldn’t.’

She breaks off and wipes her eyes. She opens her handbag with shaking fingers and takes out a tissue. I watch her blow her nose, I see how her eyes – her eyes like mine – are red from crying and her face is blotchy.

‘I’m sorry you went through all that,’ I say finally, and she looks up.

‘You don’t hate me?’

Part of me wants to hate her. More for my parents than for me. She stole their child. But I can’t. For whatever reason, I’ve had the life I’ve had. And, I realise, with sudden clarity, that despite everything I’ve been through, I’m glad I’ve lived this life. All the pain and heartbreak and grief and sense of failure of the past few years don’t cancel out the most important thing I’ve always had, the thing Anna lost – a loving family.

‘I can’t hate you,’ I say, ‘because I’ve had a good life. I had a great childhood and I love my parents more than I can say. And these past four years, losing Mum and then finding out she and Dad weren’t my biological parents, they’ve been gut-wrenchingly painful. But they wouldn’t have been so painful if there wasn’t so much love to start with. I can’t fully understand why you did what you did, but I can’t hate you for it, because to hate you would be to hate my whole life, and I can’t do that. I won’t betray what I’ve had by wishing you’d never made that decision.’