David Batty

Yes, it's this idea that you're suddenly haunted by these people and haunted by this other life and this life that you might have lived if you weren't adopted.

And the fact that you have this other name, these other parents, these two other families.

So, you know, lots of really, you know, incredibly confusing.

And yes, as I say, this sense of being haunted by these people and this person who you might have been

I had really thought about searching for my birth parents from the time I was in my mid to late teens.

Sort of realised that I wanted to feel really secure in my life before I did this.

I just had this gut feeling that I'm going to know when it feels like the right time.

So because I was adopted prior to 1975, I had to go through a mediator.

So people who were adopted prior to that, the birth parents were often led to believe that the adoptions were closed so that there wasn't any way for the children to find them.

So we agreed a wording of a letter that was sent to my birth mother.

It was quite vague.

It was brief.

I think it was only like about one and a half sides of A4.

So she said a little bit about her parents and her brother and sister and what she did for a living and where she lived.

So she lived in Guildford.

She was married.

She was a teacher.

She'd studied English literature, undergraduate, postgraduate and then PhD and

which was interesting because I'd done my first degree in English literature.

She didn't really say anything about my birth father in that first letter, but I asked her and she did in the second.