deal with those who fall through gaps in the system are stretched to breaking point, groaning under the load.
So little children die despite being on an ‘at risk’ register. Elderly people die cold and hungry for all the winter heating payments and the day centres. Mentally ill patients released into ‘care in the community’ get no care at all, stop taking their medication and descend into spirals of violence directed against themselves or others. Runaway kids sleep on street corners and are picked up for prostitution. I’d seen it myself. In my early days on my own, I’d been approached by kindly men or women offering me a ‘job and a roof, good money’. I’d always ducked out and run for it. Such people don’t like being refused.
My mother had been one more woman with a baby. Local council departments are delighted to cross someone off their list if they get a phone call saying that person is moving elsewhere to be someone else’s problem. Delighted to have someone who doesn’t keep asking for things. Too busy struggling to cope with those demanding help to have time to worry about those who don’t.
If you want to lose yourself, London must be one of the easiest cities to do it in.
My mother with her baby had simply faded from view. No one knew. No one had asked. No one.
‘Included in the people who don’t know,’ I said aloud, ‘is Miranda – or Nicola, as she is now. What if she finds out?’
‘How could she? And they can hardly ever tell her. There’s a proper birth certificate for Nicola Wilde. There’s no reason why she should ever find out.’ My mother struck her thin hand on the bed.
Of course; a birth certificate. All you need in life. Heck, this is a country where you can go to earth and turn up as someone else. We have a culture which makes it easy. No one’s required to carry identification, except to enter specific buildings. It’s not illegal to use an invented name unless you use it in a criminal deception. (There’d be an awful lot of authors and actors in gaol if it was.) You want to be someone else? You find out the name of someone deceased, who’d be about your age if alive, in a given locality, and you write off for a birth certificate. With a birth certificate, you can be someone else. My sister had become someone else. The Wildes, obviously in deep shock and, psychologically speaking, in denial at the loss of their baby, had made it so. If later they’d realised the wrongness of what they’d done, it was by then too late.
‘Take it easy,’ I soothed. I poured my mother a glass of water. She sipped at it while I tried to work out what was coming next. I had a fair idea.
‘You’re going to ask me to find her, find Nicola, aren’t you?’ I said.
‘I can give you the Wildes’ last address.’ She looked at me pleadingly. ‘Don’t refuse, Fran. I wrote it out ready, just in case you came and I – I wasn’t able to give it to you.’ She was scrabbling beneath the pillow and pulled out a crumpled envelope which she shoved into my hand.
My fingers closed on it automatically. It was warm with her body warmth. A warmth soon to be extinguished. But this wasn’t the time to let emotion stop me saying the obvious. ‘Look,’ I argued, ‘you said there was no need for Nicola Wilde ever to find out she’s really Miranda Varady. But if – and it’s pretty unlikely – I were to find her, well, that would let the cat out of the bag, wouldn’t it? Me jumping up saying, “Hi! I’m your sister, Fran !”’
‘But I don’t want you to do that!’ She clutched at my hand and the envelope got crumpled up even more. ‘All I want is for you to find out where she is and try to get a look at her. Hang round and wait till she comes home from school, something like that. Then come and tell me what she looks like. You see, I don’t know, or I didn’t until today, know what either of you looked like now. I knew that the
So little children die despite being on an ‘at risk’ register. Elderly people die cold and hungry for all the winter heating payments and the day centres. Mentally ill patients released into ‘care in the community’ get no care at all, stop taking their medication and descend into spirals of violence directed against themselves or others. Runaway kids sleep on street corners and are picked up for prostitution. I’d seen it myself. In my early days on my own, I’d been approached by kindly men or women offering me a ‘job and a roof, good money’. I’d always ducked out and run for it. Such people don’t like being refused.
My mother had been one more woman with a baby. Local council departments are delighted to cross someone off their list if they get a phone call saying that person is moving elsewhere to be someone else’s problem. Delighted to have someone who doesn’t keep asking for things. Too busy struggling to cope with those demanding help to have time to worry about those who don’t.
If you want to lose yourself, London must be one of the easiest cities to do it in.
My mother with her baby had simply faded from view. No one knew. No one had asked. No one.
‘Included in the people who don’t know,’ I said aloud, ‘is Miranda – or Nicola, as she is now. What if she finds out?’
‘How could she? And they can hardly ever tell her. There’s a proper birth certificate for Nicola Wilde. There’s no reason why she should ever find out.’ My mother struck her thin hand on the bed.
Of course; a birth certificate. All you need in life. Heck, this is a country where you can go to earth and turn up as someone else. We have a culture which makes it easy. No one’s required to carry identification, except to enter specific buildings. It’s not illegal to use an invented name unless you use it in a criminal deception. (There’d be an awful lot of authors and actors in gaol if it was.) You want to be someone else? You find out the name of someone deceased, who’d be about your age if alive, in a given locality, and you write off for a birth certificate. With a birth certificate, you can be someone else. My sister had become someone else. The Wildes, obviously in deep shock and, psychologically speaking, in denial at the loss of their baby, had made it so. If later they’d realised the wrongness of what they’d done, it was by then too late.
‘Take it easy,’ I soothed. I poured my mother a glass of water. She sipped at it while I tried to work out what was coming next. I had a fair idea.
‘You’re going to ask me to find her, find Nicola, aren’t you?’ I said.
‘I can give you the Wildes’ last address.’ She looked at me pleadingly. ‘Don’t refuse, Fran. I wrote it out ready, just in case you came and I – I wasn’t able to give it to you.’ She was scrabbling beneath the pillow and pulled out a crumpled envelope which she shoved into my hand.
My fingers closed on it automatically. It was warm with her body warmth. A warmth soon to be extinguished. But this wasn’t the time to let emotion stop me saying the obvious. ‘Look,’ I argued, ‘you said there was no need for Nicola Wilde ever to find out she’s really Miranda Varady. But if – and it’s pretty unlikely – I were to find her, well, that would let the cat out of the bag, wouldn’t it? Me jumping up saying, “Hi! I’m your sister, Fran !”’
‘But I don’t want you to do that!’ She clutched at my hand and the envelope got crumpled up even more. ‘All I want is for you to find out where she is and try to get a look at her. Hang round and wait till she comes home from school, something like that. Then come and tell me what she looks like. You see, I don’t know, or I didn’t until today, know what either of you looked like now. I knew that the
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