have a general idea of where yours lead to.’
‘Okay, so you’re not worried about me looking at it because it’s bad or anything?’
‘Oh Electra, it’s not as simple as “bad” or “good” . . . I can tell you that my coordinates led me to a museum in Oslo. It now stands where an old theatre once was that my ancestor performed in. It turns out that my brother Thom and I were born in a hospital in a place called Trondheim in Norway. Sometime after that, I was privately adopted by Pa.’
‘Right. And none of us know why he actually chose us? He always said he had – chosen us especially, I mean.’
‘No, it could simply have been that we were in need of adoption and he wanted to provide a home for us. Are you worried about looking up where you were found, Electra?’
‘Yup,’ I nodded as I opened up my laptop, went to Google Earth on my browser and began to follow the instructions Ally had given me.
‘I suppose it’s a fair assumption that none of us were born into a happy family scenario,’ Ally said. ‘If we had been, we wouldn’t have ended up being adopted.’
‘True, true,’ I agreed as I tapped in the coordinates. ‘Okay, here goes . . .’
‘Want me to stay on the line or leave you to do this alone?’
‘Stay, if you don’t mind,’ I said, knowing this was not the moment to be brave. I watched the spinning wheel of death on my screen and sighed. ‘Sorry, for some reason the internet here is always slower at night . . . Right! Here we go . . . Okay, so we’ve got the globe and it’s closing in and it seems to be moving towards North America . . .’ I trailed off, feeling bizarrely like a NASA space reporter as the picture zoomed in on New York City, then onto Harlem. I watched with my heart in my throat as the pixels on the screen crystallised into a block of buildings on a leafy street, and a red pin landed on one.
‘Oh my God!’
‘What?! Don’t keep me in suspense here.’
‘Jeez!’
‘Electra! Please, has it shown you yet?’
‘Yup, it has,’ I nodded to myself. ‘It turns out I was born right here in New York City. To be precise, in a place called Hale House, which, according to Google Earth, is in Harlem and approximately –’ I counted quickly – ‘fifteen blocks or so from my own front door.’
‘You’re joking!’
‘I’m really not, no. Hold on, let me just google Hale House.’
I read the few words that were on the screen and sighed heavily.
‘Quelle surprise! I was born – or at least found – in a mother and baby home for addicts and AIDS victims. Get me, hey?’ I said as I rolled my eyes.
‘Oh Electra, I’m sorry. Please don’t let this upset you. Maia came from an orphanage too, plus me from a hospital and . . . that’s how Pa found us, remember?’
‘I know, but . . . Anyway, it’s late, Ally, and you need to get some rest. I’m going to go now. Thanks so much for being there for me, and I promise I’ll be absolutely fine. Night.’
I ended the call before she could stop me and stared at the Wikipedia page, then closed the laptop. It wasn’t so much the mother and baby part that I minded – Ally was right to expect most of us to have come from somewhere like that. It was the fact that I was pretty sure that my grandmother had mentioned to me that I came from a line of princesses. And somewhere in my head, this thought had stuck with me.
‘You seem to have got that wrong, Granny,’ I shrugged. ‘The only genes I inherited are addiction ones. Oh, and maybe a side of AIDS for good measure,’ I added morosely, knowing that I was being overdramatic, but feeling that I deserved a little self-pity right now. At least I’d been tested for HIV and knew I was clear, but that wasn’t the point, was it?
Feeling distinctly unsettled, I decided to call the only sister who I knew was in a similar time zone to me and would also offer words of wisdom and comfort. Dialling Maia’s number, I waited for her to answer, but her voicletter picked up instead.
‘Oh, hi, Maia, it’s Electra. Don’t worry, I’m doing well and this isn’t a panic call or anything like that. I just