He exhales loudly and keeps talking. ‘I’ve spent the past six months designing a new game with a group of people in the States. We want to launch it but that takes money, and my parents refuse to help. They’re happy to pay for me to go to uni and study programming, but they won’t give me the cash for what I really want to do. If I’m honest, I’m close to giving up. The time difference means we need to have meetings in the middle of the night, and I’m tired of always being knackered. Even if I get the financial backing somehow, there’s still a chance it will fail and my parents will be right and I’ll have been wasting my energy.’

I knew he was into gaming, but I didn’t realise he wanted to launch one as a business venture. Maybe he’s not as lazy and lacking in ambition as I thought.

‘And you’re telling me this because?’

‘I haven’t told anyone else. I mean, my mates know about the sofa surfing – I’m six foot four so pretty hard to miss when you’re eating your Crunchy Nut Cornflakes in the morning – but I haven’t told them I sleep in my car some nights. It’s not always easy to share stuff about yourself. I thought it might help if I told you something about me.’

I take a sip of Coke, my stomach fizzing. I know he’s expecting me to say something, but it’s been so long since I’ve told anyone about searching for my mum. Tom gives me a reassuring smile and I remind myself that he isn’t a social worker; he isn’t going to try and stop me meeting her.

‘If you really want to know, I was abandoned as a baby. I’ve grown up in care homes and foster placements, most of them in Gloucestershire, and I’ve spent years searching for my mother on missing-person and long-lost-relative sites. Then last week …’ I rub an invisible smudge on my glass, my knee bouncing under the table.

‘Last week?’

I sigh, realising he’s only going to keep asking questions if I don’t answer. ‘Last week I got a lead. A man replied to my post and told me about a woman he’d met while he was visiting an island off the coast of Wales. She lived in the lighthouse cottage there, and he remembered her because she seemed upset and he was worried about her. She went to the mainland with her baby and came back the next day alone. He said my photo looked just like her.’

Tom doesn’t say anything, so I continue. ‘He stayed on Bardsey Island seventeen years ago, the same week I was abandoned. I looked online but couldn’t find a landline for the lighthouse cottage, so I sent a letter with my number and this morning she called me – my mother. That’s who I’m going to see.’

I lean back feeling shaky and raw, as if telling him has peeled away layers of my skin.