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6
     
     
    M arisa was compelled to book a taxi cab for Lyme Regis and then stand on the driveway with her arms folded across her chest until Roger and Trudy finally got in it and the vehicle drove away.
                  She knew they meant well, but her parents wanted their daughter to return with them immediately to Bristol. They wouldn’t stop going on about it. Roger had already been on the phone to Marisa’s godfather, who was a retired psychotherapist. A number of sessions had been pencilled in for her, on a purely informal basis.
                  Marisa knew she could never have borne it. Anyway, she needed to be in White Bay to get her blood test results from Dr Ford, not to mention wanting to remain in her own home with Eliot.
                  She waved enthusiastically until the shiny people carrier had wound down the twisty track and disappeared along the main road out of town. A weight seemed to lift from her chest the further her parents travelled away from her. Marisa would be free of their interference and constant nagging. She was an only child. Trudy and Roger had adopted her when she was three years old. Although Trudy had no biological connection to Marisa, ironically, she’d struggled to have a baby of her own too.
                  The house was absolutely still and quiet. After the excitement of the previous few days, Marisa liked it this way. She moved into the spacious kitchen and prepared a pot of fresh coffee – de-caffeinated – just in case. This was the first opportunity she’d experienced to consider what had happened on the day of the party. Her health had much improved since. Mainly because there was a possibility that a baby might be growing inside her, Marisa was eating well and resting lots. Strangely, this seemed to have shifted her entire outlook on the world. She now felt more positive and less inclined to anxiety and tearfulness. Eliot had complimented the change in her, which was exactly what Marisa craved; his approval and encouragement.
                  Carrying a cup of coffee into the downstairs study, she slid a large photo album out of the bookcase. Its plastic covering had become dog-eared and torn. She sat cross-legged on the wooden floor and flicked through the pages.
                  The adoption agency had provided some photographs of Marisa with her foster parents. The Dorans had taken in dozens of children over the years. Their large, Victorian house was situated in the centre of Southampton.
                  It was a story that Trudy often told. She would describe in great detail the day when they drove to Southampton in their Ford Sierra to pick up the little girl who was to become their daughter. Marisa had been playing in the narrow back garden with the other children, her blond curls were unruly and in need of a cut. But she immediately smiled at her new parents, settling into life with them relatively easily.
                  The pictures in the first half of the album were of that blond little girl from about the age of two, when she’d been taken into the care of the local authority from an alcoholic father and a young, ineffectual mother. Marisa didn’t know much about the pair beyond their names. She’d asked for this information to be disclosed by the authorities several years earlier, with no intention of attempting to make contact.
    However much she griped about Trudy and Roger, they were her mum and dad. Marisa knew she was as close to them as her friends had ever been to their birth parents – more so, in some cases.
                  For some reason, Marisa had wanted to look at the other children she shared those three years of her early life with in Southampton. Because of her long battle to become a mother, Marisa had read pretty much every lay person’s guide to child psychology that had been published and a few professional ones to