SKITTER
My heart is a skitter, as I edge the door open. It isn’t every day you get to meet your birth mother for the first time. Will she look like me? Don’t get me wrong – I love my parents. They gave me a happy childhood, but I always thought there was something missing.
I edge the door open and she stands on the doorstep. In her hands is a child’s toy. It is a stuffed rabbit, with a blue shirt and long white skirt. Back in the recesses of my mind, I remember a name.
Tufty, her name was Tufty.
‘I wasn’t sure you would want to see me,’ my mother says.
I want to hate her. For giving me up, for not loving me enough, for letting me go. Yet, there is love in her eyes. The words I was going to say were extinguished like fragile bubbles.
‘I don’t hate you,’ I say, backing my wheelchair inside the corridor.
