As I pull in and set the handbrake, I see a family with wet hair and inflatable toys exiting the lift. They must smell of chlorine, but from inside the car I imagine the salt-tinge from the Isle of Wight. I have to force myself to emerge. I’d long ago let my father go, like releasing a helium balloon. Now my mother. In an hour it will be over. In an hour, I’ll be a fully-free adult, with no parents at all.A car horn blasts. I’ve crossed in front of a vehicle whooshing round a corner. I raise a hand in apology, duck my head, and step back. The car speeds past. I feel like a child again, ‘head in the clouds’, my mother used to say. If I were reading, or even just thinking, she would have to call me multiple times to get me to respond.It occurs to me now that this might have had more to do with the name she called me than with me being inattentive to my surroundings. They were supposed to keep calling me Sebastian. I’ve looked up adoption practices from the time, and that was how it was done.
