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As far as I’ve known, I was born at the age of twelve.

Life didn’t begin for me in my mother’s arms at the hospital; instead it had begun on a bench at Bridleway train station. I was welcomed into the world by a pounding headache and the dim realisation that my head and face were caked with dried blood. Miraculously, I’d managed to find a hospital, but passed out from the exertion.

The next time I woke up, I was greeted by a harsh bright light and an empty sterile room. The pain in my head had dulled to a numbing throb, a beating of distant drums. A woman with vivid red hair, wearing a crisp white coat and a compassionate expression had then walked into the room. She had introduced herself, and then explained that my skull had been split open and they had had to stitch it up.

I will never forget the moment when she had asked me in a gentle tone, what had happened. I had opened my mouth to answer her, but it was then that I realised that I didn’t know.

I didn’t know what had happened.

I didn’t know who I was.

I didn’t know where I lived or what I’d been doing.

I didn’t know anything.

The feeling had tripped through me, and it was as if time had rushed on and suspended itself simultaneously. My throat had constricted and I was suffocating on air that seemed to have no oxygen as I had frantically tried to breathe. The world did laps around me as the beating drums had closed me in.

When she left, there had been a deep void in the room, the air had shifted and followed her out. My panic had been replaced by a buzzing noise, like a thousand bees droning in my ear, and a numbness that had enclosed me in a cocoon of safety. It was dangerous to feel.

Tests had been run, and the police had paid me a visit. It was pointless, and in the end I had been sent to an orphanage. Months had wandered past, and years followed them. The orphanage became my home, and I grew up alongside the other kids, and I never looked back. I know I’d been alive for those previous twelve years, yet to me, they are part of a past life, forgotten behind closed doors in the corridors of my mind.

Realising I’d been staring at the wall for some time, I brought my thoughts back to the present and forced myself to start moving.

“Your parents and a policeman are here to see you”, she had said.

It had taken a while for it to register in my head, because I didn’t have parents. I couldn’t have parents. Somehow those words felt alien to me, and the only thing I could think of as I walked down the stairs, was that whoever these people were, they were going to take me away from my home.

A cold dread had settled at the pit of my stomach by the time I reached the hall. The floorboards creaked loudly beneath my feet, and I cringed as the door to the visitors’ room was flung open, and Mrs Roberts stepped out. An African American woman with a stocky build and a tendency for mothering, she was the owner and patron of the orphanage. She beckoned me over, and in her hushed, dulcet accent said, “They’re waiting for you”.

Swallowing with an audible click, I stepped into the room.

The policeman was sitting in the worn armchair with a cup of tea in his hands, but my attention was drawn to the man and woman sitting next to him on the sofa. The man had deep coffee coloured eyes like mine – except mine has milk in them – and a careworn face. He had the woman’s hands clasped in his own. The woman had a soft face and dimples, which were showing in a frown.

Mrs Roberts cleared her throat, and they both looked up expectantly. A sob escaped from the woman’s lips and she leapt up, crossing the room and enveloping me in a tight embrace. I felt uncomfortable and embarrassed because to me, she was a stranger, like the people I walk past in the street.

“I’m so happy to have you back, Kate. I’ve missed you so much”, she whispered in my ear. When she pulled back, tear tracks ran down her face, and awkwardly, I offered her my packet of tissues. She gave a small, choked laugh, taking the packet and thanking me, before moving back to sit down. I took the seat across from them, next to Mrs Roberts.

“I think we’re ready now”, Mrs Roberts said, looking at me. I nodded mutely, overwhelmed by everything.

Kate.

Was that who I was in my past life?

The policeman cleared his throat before beginning. “My name’s Officer John Connors from the Missing Persons Department at Bridleway Police Station. When you were found three years ago, you had actually been missing for five months already, but because you lost your memory, your case was not filed under Missing Persons, so we haven’t been able to locate your family until now. I have your file here if you want to look at it…”

Numbly, I took the file from his outstretched arm. It was a plain manila folder, slightly worn at the edges, and on the top right hand side it said in cold, sharp letters, Daniels, Kate.

Kate Daniels.

My name was Kate Daniels.

Trembling slightly, I flipped open the folder, and read the first sheet of paper.

Reported missing on the 12th of September 2002 by mother and father, Alice and Greg Daniels. Last seen at 7:30pm Albert St, Clovelly.

And there, clipped to the report was a picture, a school photo. Everything around me seemed to melt away into a distant haze. The girl out of the frame looked so much like me, right down to the last freckle. She even had my goofy smile. I ceased to think, to feel, to do anything but stare at her. My heartbeat shakes the inside of me like the giant clanging of a bell, and the echoes reverberate off the walls of my mind. I felt like I was free falling, almost reaching the bottom when a voice seems to pull me back into the pain of reality.

“Jules?”

It was Mrs Roberts. Everything came back into focus again and I realised that they were all looking at me. Slowly, I closed the folder and stared dumbly at my palms but I still saw the little girl there. Her face remained etched in my minds eye. The man’s deep baritone broke the heavy silence.

“Kate. I know that this is very hard for you to accept. It’s difficult for us too because you were our daughter for almost twelve years, and we haven’t forgotten you for a second of the three years that we were apart –”. His voice cracked there, and for the first time I noticed that he looked just as weary as I felt, as if he’d lived his life three times over.

Kate’s mother spoke up then, “Honey, we’ve come to bring you back home, where you belong, with us.”

The trip to their house was quiet, save for a few sentences spoken here and there. Clovelly was just an hour’s drive from Bridleway and we arrived in the evening. The sun had just set below the horizon and the sky was streaked rose and violet.

Their house looked like a mansion, gleaming white, and complete with balcony. Inside was even grander with Italian style furniture and a grand piano. Hanging on the walls were pictures of Kate – me, I kept reminding myself – with my family. It was strange looking at myself in photos I don’t remember posing for, with people I don’t remember knowing. Looking at the photos, I felt even more apart, and I started to wonder if I was trying to be someone that I’m not.

“Come on darling, I’ll show you your room. I’ve left it exactly the same, because I knew you’d come back someday”.

She led me upstairs to a door, with a sign that said “Kate’s Room” in purple block writing hanging on it. “I’ll leave you to get acquainted with it”, she said with a smile and went downstairs.

Taking a breath, I opened the door and walked inside. The room was cluttered with pictures, toys and other personal items stacked in every available space. Once brimming with remnants of adventures and friendships bygone, it now felt lifeless and damning with memory. Like the name and so many other things, the room didn’t fit. Like an old pair of jeans, I’d outgrown it three and a half years ago.

Sitting down on the floor, I leaned against the bed post, my knees settling at my chest with my arms looped around them, hands clasped together. All of a sudden I felt tired with a weariness that soaked into my bones, and I wanted desperately to curl into myself. I struggled against the welling torment in my chest, against the unbidden sobs that threatened to overwhelm me. Not bothering to take my clothes off, I climbed into the bed and dreamt with my eyes open.

Morning came with the blink of an eye. I opened the window and leaned as far as I could outside. The calm before the storm always took my breath away. The clouds had meshed together, forming vague and wild pictures and the air was filled with electricity, and I could feel it humming around me. A breeze reaches my window and runs its fingers through my hair, and for a fleeting moment, I’m content. But only for a moment.

Turning away from the window, I ease open the door to my room and quietly make my way downstairs. But the kitchen isn’t empty; Kate’s mother – my mother – is there. Looking up from her cup of tea, she gives me a warm smile.

“Morning, Kate dear. Did you sleep well last night?”

I nodded in reply, unsure whether to sit down or not. Seeing my hesitation, she prompted me to sit down and I complied.

“How about I get you your usual cup of hot chocolate, hm?” Without waiting for a reply, she stood up and began making the drink.

“I didn’t have it ready before because you usually wake up at around eight thirty, even on school days. Used to drive me mad”, she chuckled. She placed the cup in front of me and sat back down across the table. I gingerly picked up the cup. It had the name “Kate” written on it.

“I bought that for your ninth birthday”. I just nodded politely and took a sip. There was too much milk. Silence reigned as we both drank from our cups. She broke it first.

“You know, I was thinking that I should enroll you in the local high school, when you’re ready of course. We were going to anyway, before, well, you know…You would make friends quickly I’m sure, so you won’t have to worry about that. They have a really good soccer team too, and I know that you’ll want to join that. It is your favourite sport. Your father and I used to go to all your games”, she smiled at the memory.

“And I can organise for you to start your piano lessons again whenever you’re ready. Maybe settling back into your life will help you get your memory back quicker –”

“Stop! You don’t get it, go you? All of this, everything, is wrong! I’m not Kate. I’m not who you think I am, who you want me to be. My name is Jules.”

I realised I was standing up and shouting now, as hot tears ran down my cheeks. But I didn’t care. I let the words out, each one tugging and pulling at my lips as they fight to stay in, but I couldn’t stop saying what I’d come to realise last night.

“Honey, Kate, it’s alright. You just don’t remember, that’s all.” Her voice skittered sharply over the syllables, rattling against the words as she tried desperately to convince herself as much as me. “When you get you’re memory back – “

“Then what, huh? Even if I did remember those twelve years, I can’t just forget the last three and a half years of my life! And then I still wouldn’t be the same. I could never be the same because the Kate that you know and loved disappeared more than three years ago! And even if I wasn’t taken away and had spent the last years up till now with you, I still wouldn’t be the eleven year old girl that you’ll remember!”

“People change. I’ve changed. And if you can’t realise that, then I don’t think you’ll ever find your daughter. I don’t think she exists anymore.”

She had sunk to the kitchen floor now, and silent sobs racked through her body, helpless as each word undid the stitching of a wound that had cut too deep to ever heal. And I’m kneeling now, with earth-bruised knees and a collapsing heart.

The silence that followed seemed too loud to bear as it reverberated off the kitchen walls, suffocating us, haunting and nightmarish.

I looked up from my hands as I heard a crinkling noise, and saw her take from her pocket the packet of tissues I gave her yesterday, and I couldn’t help but smile through my tears as she pulled one out and offered it to me. I took the proffered tissue, and as I did, she gave my hand a little squeeze.

“I’m sorry…Jules. I’m glad that you’re home.”

“I’m glad too.”