I got the envelope out of my bag and handed the photos over to Lisa. She took them, took a deep breath, then studied each one carefully. When she came to one of the four of us taken at school, leaning against the wall, she gasped, her eyes filled with tears and she took a deep breath. Jo reached over and squeezed her hand.
‘I don’t need to ask which one she is,’ said Lisa, as she reached into her bag, got out her phone, opened it and scrolled through her photos. She held up the screen to show us one of a pretty blonde girl pouting at the camera; she had a ring through her nose and was dressed in short denim cut-offs showing off long slim legs. Next to her was a sweet-looking boy with a wide grin. ‘My children, Liam and Scarlet. Liam’s twelve, Scarlet’s sixteen. Seeing that picture of you all, Michelle as she was then—’
‘Scarlet’s the spitting image of her,’ said Jo.
‘Totally,’ I said as I looked at the picture.
Lisa kept looking from her phone to the photo of her daughter. ‘It’s amazing. This is amazing. I’d begun to think I’d never … So what happened?’ She took a gulp of air and looked as though she was about to cry. ‘Do … do you know why she gave me up for adoption? Do you know where she is?’
Jo shook her head. ‘No to both questions. I am so sorry, we don’t. We think she must have got pregnant just after we three went to university and left Manchester. Why she didn’t tell us, we have no idea.’
‘It really is a mystery,’ I said, ‘we were close but … we did lose touch—’
‘With each other as well as Mitch,’ said Ally. ‘It wasn’t a conscious thing, just life in our twenties took over.’
‘Mitch,’ said Lisa. ‘You call her Mitch. So – if you all lost touch, how come you three are here with each other now but you don’t know where my mother is?’
‘Over the years,’ I said, ‘we kept in touch with each other’s news, although we lived in different parts of the country. We met up occasionally but Mitch … she disappeared completely in our mid-twenties. We think she must have gone abroad at some point. We’ve been trying to find her.’
‘But why now? Why try and find her now?’ Lisa asked.
I quickly filled Lisa in on the concept of the programme I was working on. ‘So you see, it’s all about looking for long-lost friends and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to try and find Mitch – actually, not only that, I got to a point in my life where I was reviewing so many things, friendships in particular, and I realized I missed my dearest oldest friends, and that got me thinking. I contacted Jo and Ally but it also gave me the idea for the programme.’
‘But now more than ever,’ said Jo, ‘having found you, we must track Mitch down.’
‘When exactly did you last see her?’ Lisa asked.
‘In the summer after our first year at university,’ said Jo.
‘She went to university?’ asked Lisa.
‘No, sorry, we did, at least us three. Mitch put it off for a year …’ Ally filled her in on what we knew, ending with what we knew of Mitch’s involvement with the Rainbow Children.
‘I’ve never heard of them. Were they a cult?’ Lisa asked.
‘Not exactly,’ said Jo, ‘at least I don’t think so, more like a positive-thinking group.’
‘Cult,’ said Ally. ‘She became evangelical for a while.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Sorry, but true. On the occasions we did contact her, she tried to enlist us too. The way of life she chose was close to monastic.’
‘How long was she involved?’
‘That we don’t know,’ Jo replied. ‘A good few years.’
Lisa stared back down at the photos we had brought. ‘What was she like? As a person?’
‘Mischievous, always one step ahead of the rest of us,’ said Jo.
‘Endlessly curious,’ said Ally.
‘Stunning looking,’ I said. ‘The coolest girl in school.’
‘Scarlet is too,’ said Lisa. ‘She’s going to break a few hearts.’
‘So did Mitch. She had her pick of the boys,’ said Ally.
‘What about you, Lisa?’ Jo asked. ‘Were you happy? Placed with a good family?’
‘I was, yes,’ said Lisa. ‘I couldn’t have asked for better. I have one sibling, a brother, older than me. He wasn’t adopted but, after he was born, my mum – that is, my adopted mum – was told she couldn’t have more children. She wanted more, which is why they took the adoption route.’
‘Are your adoptive parents still alive?’ I asked.
‘They are,’ said Lisa, ‘here in London, and they are completely supportive and understanding of me looking for my birth mother. When I was about fourteen, they told me that I was adopted. I was surprised, but I should have known. I don’t look anything like the rest of my family.’
‘When did you start looking?’ I asked.
‘Not for a long time after Mum and Dad told me about the adoption. It rocked my world at the time, I can tell you, finding out that I wasn’t who I thought I was. At first I felt angry with Michelle, Mitch, angry that she’d given me away. I thought how could she do that? Just discard me? Because of that anger, I didn’t want to know, I didn’t even want to look at my birth certificate, which my parents said I could see any time I wanted. I didn’t want to. I felt if I read it, it would make it real, and only make me feel more at sea. Also, I didn’t want to upset my adoptive parents. I adore them. They couldn’t have been more loving, and I didn’t want them to feel that they had been lacking in any way. But as the years went on, it niggled: who were my physical parents? I knew I could have started to look for them when I turned eighteen but
