That night, she sat on her bed and took the documents out. She kept them in a brown envelope that she had sealed and resealed so many times the flap no longer stuck properly. Inside were 4 things: her national identity card, her school leaving certificate, her bank card, and at the very bottom, folded once along the middle, her birth certificate.
She unfolded it on her lap.
It was the original, slightly worn at the fold, the print faded in 1 corner where water had touched it once many years ago. She had been careful with it ever since.
She read it the way she had read it 100 times before: her full name, her date of birth, the hospital where she had been born, her mother’s name printed in clean official letters.
Mother: Victoria Lawson.
And beside the line that read father, that small blank, unhelpful word:
Unknown.
She sat with it in her lap for a long time, listening to the sounds of the building around her: a television 2 floors up, someone’s baby crying briefly and then stopping, the lift grinding into action somewhere and then going quiet.
She thought about what her mother had said. He knew. He chose not to stay.