David Batty

No, not in those two letters.

But she did say, I want you to know that not a day has gone by when I haven't thought of you.

Then the second letter that she sent me, she gave me this description of him.

He was an Iranian student, I think, but they were both at Luton Polytechnic.

The picture that was painted from the adoption file was that they'd had this brief relationship.

He then moved to the US to continue his studies.

My birth mother hadn't found out she was pregnant until I think almost six months into her pregnancy.

And, you know, in this second letter to me, she sort of described him as being quite serious and religious.

And then she said, I don't know where he is and I don't care.

We met for the first time in the Tate Modern.

This was in, I think it was the summer of 2005, maybe May or June.

But that first meeting, yeah, I mean, obviously I was incredibly nervous and it was in the Turbine Hall.

So it was on that huge space.

So there's loads of other people there and I'm just sort of scanning the crowd.

And eventually, yes, I sort of settled on this figure and

and sort of our eyes met and I realised, oh, it's her.

One of my first reactions was, don't let it be her.

And the reason why I thought that was because I just got this sense from her that there was something amiss, that there was something wrong.

It was like there was this kind of aura of unhappiness around her.

But then we met and it was fine.