Are You My Mother? Read Free Page B

stayed put and waited patiently.’
    That was one of the things I really liked about Mum. For a scientist, she got really passionate about things. Sometimes we used to actually act out the entire plot of Are You My Mother? , after I’d finished reading it. Stella would be curled up as the egg, and I’d pretend to sit on her. I’d fly away and look for a worm, Stella would hatch out, and Mum would put on silly voices for all the animals she approached in her search. If any of my friends had ever seen me participate in this little charade, I would have had to kill myself. Obviously.
    After six or seven months of daily recitations and numerous dramatic productions, even Stella eventually got sick of Are You My Mother? To my great relief, she gradually stopped declining the offers of other bedtime books, and we got into, respectively, The Diggingest Dog , Hop on Pop , and The Tiger Who Came To Tea . By the time she was four, she could read herself and she didn’t need my services so much anymore. Instead, more often than not, she read to her two imaginary friends, Gunk and Marmalay, the ones who lived inside the lamp-post on the pavement. They were allowed into the house just once a day, so that Stella could read them a bedtime story.
     
    Things had changed so much since then. Now, seeing that desperate, abandoned-looking man howling on a tube train, staring at me as if I might just be his salvation – well, it made me realise that, like the baby bird, it was time I did a little searching of my own.
    The train eventually, finally, vibrated back into life with a whirr and a reluctant whine. After a further few seconds it hauled itself down the remainder of the track to Notting Hill, and the doors slid open. I stood up, still gazing into the green eyes in front of me. Then I bent down and picked up the two halves of the verruca leaflet, just because I couldn’t stand litter in trains.
    Finally, and maybe because on all those cold nights walking around, I’d so passionately wanted someone to do this for me, I took the man by the hand and led him out of the carriage at Notting Hill station. Before I even had time to think about it, I’d escorted him calmly up the escalators to the main ticket hall. Passengers descending on the opposite escalator sailed past us in a blur of incredulous features and unsubtle stares as the man keened and wailed; his dirty hand clasped in mine. I gazed grimly at the caked-in grime between the metal corrugations of the escalator stairs, stabbed with a sudden desire to scrub them out with a toothbrush; to make them shiny and new again.
    Back in the bowels of the tunnel, the doors once more slammed shut and the train continued on, oblivious to the small but life-changing event which had just occurred on board.
    It was the most out of character thing I had ever done, in my whole life.

 
    Chapter 3
     
    ‘ What did Stella think, of you leading this man off the tube? Was that when you told her about wanting to look for your birthmother?’
     
    I couldn’t tell Stella about the man straight away. What with the shock of everything else that happened that evening, it took me a couple of days to summon up the energy to relate the story at all. And it was much, much longer before I told her about the decision regarding my mother.
    When I finally mentioned the encounter on the train, Stella looked at me with an expression of such distilled horror that it was almost comical, and I wished I’d kept quiet.
    ‘ You’re out of your mind ,’ she screeched, rolling the stud which pierced her tongue around and around her mouth, as far as its bolt would allow it to travel, teasing it against her top teeth so it stuck out between her lips like a metal full-stop at the end of her sentences. I thought it was a good thing the stud was screwed down on both sides, otherwise she’d definitely have swallowed it.
    ‘ I mean it, Emma, that is the most insane thing I’ve ever heard. What the hell got into you?