Free Are You My Mother? by Louise Voss

to hypnotise me. ‘That won’t be necessary. All we’ll need you to do is to confirm that these items belonged to them.’
    He pulled a clear plastic ziplock bag from his pocket and put it on the table. It contained two sooty-looking objects, which on closer inspection turned out to be Dad’s wristwatch and Mum’s moonstone necklace.
    ‘ Why are they all black?’ As soon as I’d said it, I realised why, and spots danced white before my eyes. It was all I could do not to throw up or pass out. I was aware of my senses distilling down into one pure sensation; not grief or anger or any emotion, just the feeling of my hand still clinging to the towel. My parents were dead but I must not let this policeman see my boobs.
    The PC beckoned to Annette. ‘I think you’d better call a doctor,’ he said. ‘Get her something for the shock. And if you could make that tea, that would probably be a good idea too.’
    Mum’s make-up bag was still sitting on the end of the kitchen counter, from where she had transferred a few key items into her sparkly clutch bag before she left; lipstick, comb, powder. When dizziness made my head droop onto my chest, I got another waft of the post-shower aftershave and soap smell off Dad’s bathrobe, so I jerked upright again. I didn’t realise I was crying until the tears ran warm down the chilled damp skin of my cheeks.
    ‘ Who can I contact for you?’ PC Fletcher had flipped out a small notebook and had his pen poised, desperate for something to do.
    One small part of my brain tried to consider this, but I couldn’t think of anyone at all. Who was it appropriate to call in these situations – my ex-headmistress? The milkman? Ghostbusters? Where were all our fucking relatives ? The cousins we could move in with; the apple-cheeked grandparents; the sympathetic uncles and aunts. But there was nobody. Mum was an only child. Dad had one brother, but he’d last been heard of living in a commune in the Hebrides and hadn’t been in touch for years - I couldn’t remember ever meeting him, and Dad never spoke about him. It seemed that they’d had some sort of terminal falling out. None of Mum or Dad’s parents were still alive. Stella’s godmother Maggie, the one who’d given her Are You My Mother?, had married an Australian and emigrated to New South Wales six years earlier. I didn’t even have a godmother, and had always envied Stella hers, even if she did live on the other side of the world.
    Stella . Someone had to tell Stella. I so didn’t want it to be me.
    Even though I hadn’t given my birthmother a thought for months, I suddenly longed for her to appear, like a substitute or an understudy, to fold me up in her arms and tell me she’d take care of me from now on. But unlike my own parents, I didn’t even know if she were dead or alive. And Stella still had to be told.
    ‘ Stella,’ I whispered. Annette came over then and put her arm around me, but I shook it off.
     
    Telling Stella was twenty times worse than I could have anticipated. I’d gone into the sitting room, alone, and over to where she was curled up on the sofa, half watching Sleeping Beauty - or, as she called it when she was a toddler, ‘Sweep n’Booty’ - on video whilst simultaneously sewing another hexagon on to the patchwork quilt she and Mum had been working on for months. Her cat, Ffyfield, was draped across her lap, almost covered by the quilt, one paw stretched luxuriantly out like the arm of a sleeping child.
    I picked up the remote and clicked off the video, expecting sudden black silence – the soundbed to the words with which I was about to ruin her life – but instead, the TV came back on, a close-up of Robert Smith from The Cure, my favourite band, performing their new single on some chat show. Under normal circumstances this would have had me riveted, and although I did think, oh, look, it’s The Cure, I then immediately thought, so what, I have to tell Stella our parents are dead.
    ‘