next question, Daniel knew, should have been "What's the matter?" but it was a difficult question. Sometimes you wanted
it asked very badly and sometimes you hated having it asked, and if you had to do the asking there might be all kinds of stuff
that followed that made you feel like you did when you tried to pull just one towel down out of the airing cupboard and the
whole lot fell out instead and came out of its folds and turned having a simple shower into an episode. Daniel shuffled again.
He muttered, almost automatically, "Sorry."
David gave an abrupt little laugh. He turned round and looked at Daniel.
"What have you got to be sorry for?"
Daniel shrugged.
"Nothing."
There was a short pause and then David said, "Would you like me to come and bowl for you?"
Daniel nodded vigorously. His father's office seemed to go suddenly from being monotone to being highly colored. David stood
up and stretched.
"Might as well—"
Daniel drooped a little.
"Do you mind?"
"No," David said. "No, I don't mind. It'll do me good.
It'll stop me thinking."
It had taken Nathalie over a week to gain enough courage to telephone the adoption search service. It was called Family Find,
and the telephone number had been grudgingly given to her by the woman in social services who had wanted Nathalie to use an
official agency, something government-run or at least with national standing. She had looked at Nathalie with something close
to dislike, Nathalie thought, as if she, Nathalie, was behaving in an ungrateful and unappreciative manner when she ought
to have known better. She reminded Nathalie of her first primary-school teacher who had been quite unable to disguise her
distaste when Nathalie threw a tantrum about not being chosen as Mary in the Christmas Nativity play, and Lynne was so sweet
and consoling to her and, in response to all this sweet consolation, Nathalie had bitten her hard, on the hand, hard enough
to draw blood. The implication then had been that Nathalie was biting the hand that fed her, and it was no different now.
She looked at the woman from social services and said that she was a special case and needed special treatment.
"In what way?"
"There are two of us," Nathalie said.
" Two of you?"
"My brother and myself."
"With the same mother?"
"Oh no."
"Well, then—"
"It's a double journey," Nathalie said. "We need particular treatment in case we don't feel the same."
"You certainly won't," the woman said. She pulled open a drawer and took out a sheaf of long blue leaflets held together by
a rubber band. She said, almost disagreeably, "You could try these people."
Nathalie looked at the blue leaflet. It had a drawing on the front of it, a little silhouetted row of figures, two men and
two children and in the middle a woman looking as if she didn't know which way to turn. Above the drawing it said, "Family
Find" and underneath it said, "We offer a complete search service for anyone adopted and their natural relations." She turned
the leaflet over. There was an e-mail address on the back and a London telephone number.
She said hesitantly, "Do I just ring?"
"Of course," the woman said. " If you want to."
Nathalie put the leaflet away in a kitchen drawer when she got home, not hiding it exactly but placing it nonchalantly among
the paper napkins and cardboard plates left over from Polly's last birthday party. She read it, very quickly, before she put
it away and discovered that its presence was more complicated than she had thought, more compelling, as if it held the key
to all kinds of possibilities which were far from being certainly benign. And it wasn't as if she could give a very coherent
reason for this volte-face, this sudden desire to do the very thing she had always resolutely said she wasn't interested in.
She'd told Steve and Lynne that it had been started by Polly's ear trouble, but even she knew that that had been only the
tiniest, flimsiest of beginnings.
it asked very badly and sometimes you hated having it asked, and if you had to do the asking there might be all kinds of stuff
that followed that made you feel like you did when you tried to pull just one towel down out of the airing cupboard and the
whole lot fell out instead and came out of its folds and turned having a simple shower into an episode. Daniel shuffled again.
He muttered, almost automatically, "Sorry."
David gave an abrupt little laugh. He turned round and looked at Daniel.
"What have you got to be sorry for?"
Daniel shrugged.
"Nothing."
There was a short pause and then David said, "Would you like me to come and bowl for you?"
Daniel nodded vigorously. His father's office seemed to go suddenly from being monotone to being highly colored. David stood
up and stretched.
"Might as well—"
Daniel drooped a little.
"Do you mind?"
"No," David said. "No, I don't mind. It'll do me good.
It'll stop me thinking."
It had taken Nathalie over a week to gain enough courage to telephone the adoption search service. It was called Family Find,
and the telephone number had been grudgingly given to her by the woman in social services who had wanted Nathalie to use an
official agency, something government-run or at least with national standing. She had looked at Nathalie with something close
to dislike, Nathalie thought, as if she, Nathalie, was behaving in an ungrateful and unappreciative manner when she ought
to have known better. She reminded Nathalie of her first primary-school teacher who had been quite unable to disguise her
distaste when Nathalie threw a tantrum about not being chosen as Mary in the Christmas Nativity play, and Lynne was so sweet
and consoling to her and, in response to all this sweet consolation, Nathalie had bitten her hard, on the hand, hard enough
to draw blood. The implication then had been that Nathalie was biting the hand that fed her, and it was no different now.
She looked at the woman from social services and said that she was a special case and needed special treatment.
"In what way?"
"There are two of us," Nathalie said.
" Two of you?"
"My brother and myself."
"With the same mother?"
"Oh no."
"Well, then—"
"It's a double journey," Nathalie said. "We need particular treatment in case we don't feel the same."
"You certainly won't," the woman said. She pulled open a drawer and took out a sheaf of long blue leaflets held together by
a rubber band. She said, almost disagreeably, "You could try these people."
Nathalie looked at the blue leaflet. It had a drawing on the front of it, a little silhouetted row of figures, two men and
two children and in the middle a woman looking as if she didn't know which way to turn. Above the drawing it said, "Family
Find" and underneath it said, "We offer a complete search service for anyone adopted and their natural relations." She turned
the leaflet over. There was an e-mail address on the back and a London telephone number.
She said hesitantly, "Do I just ring?"
"Of course," the woman said. " If you want to."
Nathalie put the leaflet away in a kitchen drawer when she got home, not hiding it exactly but placing it nonchalantly among
the paper napkins and cardboard plates left over from Polly's last birthday party. She read it, very quickly, before she put
it away and discovered that its presence was more complicated than she had thought, more compelling, as if it held the key
to all kinds of possibilities which were far from being certainly benign. And it wasn't as if she could give a very coherent
reason for this volte-face, this sudden desire to do the very thing she had always resolutely said she wasn't interested in.
She'd told Steve and Lynne that it had been started by Polly's ear trouble, but even she knew that that had been only the
tiniest, flimsiest of beginnings.
Similar Books
