Trio - [80]

The cafe was so gloomy, a real dive. She wondered whether they made it look like that on purpose so people wouldn’t use it much. There weren’t that many seats and the staff acted like they’d rather slit your throats than serve you drinks.

She smoked hungrily and washed away the parched feeling with swigs of coffee. She was just finishing when Tracy Metcalfe, who’d been in her class at school, swam into view.

‘Hiya, Nina. Fancy seeing you here. What you doing?’

Nina held herself still. Tracy had a gob like the Mersey Tunnel and was reputed to have done it when she was just thirteen. Tracy was a greaser with an eye for weaklings. Nina was no pushover but you didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Tracy Metcalfe. And what the hell was she doing at Central Library?

‘Having a ciggie. What about you?’ Nina tried to erase any sign of panic from her eyes.

‘That’d be telling!’ Tracy winked, swung her leather shopper off her arm.

Nina grinned.

Tracy sat down.

‘I’ve got to get my bus,’ Nina said.

Tracy nodded. She rooted in her bag for Number Six and Zippo lighter. ‘Tara!’ She clicked the lighter and sucked hard, flung her throat back in a gesture of pleasure.

Nina fled.

Back home she went slowly upstairs and put her notes in among her art folder. She was confident no one would rummage through that. Her mother was hoovering the dining room. Nina put the kettle on. Stephen came in the back door, saw the gas was on.

‘Make me one.’

‘Make your own,’ she said.

‘Nina.’

‘Well, when did you last make some?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘Not for me you didn’t.’

‘You are so childish.’

‘Fuck off!’ she said. And saw his shock. He never swore. He looked at her but he didn’t even look mad just sorry for her or something. He shook his head and walked out. Making allowances.

She hated that. Hated him. She didn’t need his fucking pity. She stood there, her arms locked across her body, her back rigid with tension. She’d show him, she’d show them all. Her real family, they’d be different. They wouldn’t pity her or feel disappointed in her. They’d understand. Well, it would probably just be her real mother but they’d be able to talk to each other. She’d be accepted for what she was, not what she was expected to be in someone’s boring little mind.

The kettle began to whistle and she turned off the gas. Her mother came in rolling the hoover. ‘I’d love a cuppa, Nina.’ She pushed the pantry door open and put the hoover away.

Nina poured water into the pot and swilled it round, went to open the caddy.

‘How was town? Did you get anything?’

‘No.’ her skin prickled and her breath caught in her throat. ‘No, I didn’t see anything.’

The following day she tried to make sense of the notes but she wasn’t sure which place to start with.

‘Ring Social Services,’ Chloe said when she told her. ‘They’ll know.’

She found the number in the phone book but it was another two days before she got the house to herself and a chance to use the phone. It was engaged at first, then she got passed on to a different department.

At last she spoke to someone who could deal with her. The woman asked her if she had her original birth certificate.

‘No.’ Mum and Dad might have it but she couldn’t ask them.

‘Do you know what your name at birth was?’

‘Yes.’ Claire Driscoll.

‘Good. If you know your name you can buy a copy of your original birth certificate. I’ll tell you where to write. When you’ve done that it will give you information about your birth mother and where she was living when you were born. Then, if you wish to, you can apply to see your adoption records – they are usually kept by the agency who arranged the adoption. But those aren’t automatically handed over, you have to see a social worker before you get them. We make sure everyone has that basic counselling before they have access to their records. A lot of people find it very helpful.

Nina was scribbling down as much as she could.

‘So, first I need my birth certificate?’

‘Yes, you write to the General Records Office and they will send you a form. I’ll give you their address in a minute. They make a small charge, a few pounds or so, for a copy.’

‘Right.’

Nina wrote the address down.

‘When you’ve got your birth certificate you can ring here again and we can make an appointment with a social worker.’

‘Thanks.’

She dropped the receiver as she replaced it, her hands were trembling. God. Maybe she should just leave it? She looked at what she had scrawled on the paper. If she just got the birth certificate, it didn’t mean she had to do anything else. Before she could get any more confused about it all she went up to her room, got out notepaper and an envelope, wrote asking for her birth certificate, sealed the letter and addressed the envelope. She sent it that afternoon, a sense of occasion. She would have to watch the post. A thrill made her want to run, or jump up and down. It was exciting, there was an undercurrent too, a pull of guilt as though she had done something naughty and might get caught. But it was done now. No turning back.

They told her to apply again when she was eighteen. Nina was furious. ‘I can get married,’ she ranted to Chloe, ‘leave home, work in a poxy little job for forty hours a week, but I can’t find out who I am!’