Plot 29: A Memoir: LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD AND WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE. Allan Jenkins

the future and the rest of the planet through pilots and ‘aeroplanes’). Otherwise my world is limited to a twice-yearly trip to Plymouth, once in summer to buy shoes and again before Christmas to buy the Norwegian sweater (mine in blue, Christopher’s in red) that is always our present. We have lunch in the department-store restaurant, maybe a film if there is something suitable.

      Basildon is bewildering. Identical estates laid on an identical grid, but I stay for the summer holidays, hanging around the record store to listen to music in booths or at the swimming pool by Ray and Lesley’s flat, if I don’t get lost (I am always lost). I am fascinated by Lesley, the way she speaks, the way she’s dressed, her taste in skinhead music, her feather-cut friends, the soap operas she watches. My relationship with Ray is more complicated. He won’t talk about my mother, show me photos, even tell me her name. He refuses to speak about his life with her or his wedding. ‘You must never ask me, it is better you never know!’ It feels odd to hit a wall so soon.

      Ray is a cook but also a Pentecostal evangelist to be seen proclaiming the name of the Lord in Basildon town centre every Saturday. It is like living in a soap series I have never watched but Lesley does, Crossroads or Coronation Street. The connection to the past I have pined for still feels far away. I finally have sex, though, with a girl from the swimming pool on a piece of waste ground outside town. She is older, has more body hair, but it is a bit boring. Another disappointment, another longing unresolved.

      1987. I am in need of a birth certificate for a new passport but it seems I don’t exist. Alan Jenkins born on my birthday isn’t to be found. I am confused, so ask at the enquiries desk. Search the adoption register, the man says, if you are not there, your birthdate is wrong. Most of my life I have carried the understanding of caste, that although they had changed my name, had played our parents, the Drabbles didn’t adopt us. I was never sure why we hadn’t made the grade. I was proud to bear the mark of foster child but adoption is another level of belonging, gossamer close to never having to worry about being sent back, no longer on sufferance. A family of your own. A place to stay.

      I search the adoption register. And immediately there it is in black and white. All this time, my history mouldering, smouldering, in this London room. Alan Jenkins’s certificate. Adopted by Leslie Ray Jenkins, it says, at 12 months old. I am lost. I had wanted a passport, a long-haul holiday, not the fabric of who I am to lie threadbare in my lunch break.