Seven hours in the sky.

I turned around from the plane door to wave at my Mother again. She was wearing her favourite blue polka dot dress with an orange turban tied around her hairless head. She was crying as she waved from behind the sunlit pane of glass. I blew one final kiss before I boarded the plane and sat down, placing the box she had given me on the empty chair next to me.

I could still see her from the plane window and, although she couldn’t see me anymore, she stayed there, gazing out at the plane. She was so thin. I didn’t want to leave her, but she insisted I finish my last term at University in New York. I would be back before I knew it.

The air hostess pulled my attention away from her silhouette as she instructed me to fasten my seatbelt and place the box under my seat or in the overhead locker. I went to put it in my bag, but then thought I should open it while I could still see Mum. It was probably something stupid and soppy - we liked doing that sort of thing.

I slid off the brown paper from around the box.

Such a strange packaging for Mum to use. She always wrapped things with embarrassing extravagance, ribbons curled like fusilli pasta after being run over a scissor blade and paper so patterned it would have rivalled a William Morris wallpaper. Maybe, like the flow of life inside her, the vigour for wrapping was slowly disappearing.

A note was enclosed with my name calligraphed on the front.

‘My Jeremiah’

I glanced at her, still standing by the window and smiled. I opened the folded note.

My beautiful Jeremiah,

I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I am sorry for what I have to write next. I have ripped up countless versions of this letter. I have screamed and thrown them in the bin. I have sobbed over soaked pieces of paper. There are no words that can lessen the consequences of the sentence they form.

Jeremiah, I am not your real mother.

I stole you.

Enclosed is everything I know about your actual Mother.

I won’t be here when you get back, J. Please don’t hate me for choosing to do this last part of my life alone. I don’t want everyone to remember me as the dying woman with cancer. Least of all you. I may as well leave this life in the same way I have lived it - selfishly.

I don’t and never did deserve you. Please don’t hate me forever.

You are the greatest love of my life Jeremiah. Always were, always will be and I’ll love you till I take my last breath x

Hour 1

I can’t believe they wouldn’t let me off this fucking plane. I cannot sit here for seven hours knowing my Mum is going to die while I am sitting on a plane. I can’t believe she would do this to me, she knew I would open that stupid package. I can’t even look at the rest of the contents, I don’t want to see it. She is lying. She must be lying because she doesn’t want me to go through life without a Mother. This is her way of protecting me, not hurting me. She is so stupid. She is so stupid. I am not going to fall for all this. She didn’t steal me, how could she possibly have stolen me. It is a lie, it is ludicrousy, it is her final way of trying to Mother me. I can see right through it.

‘Breathe, Sir? I am going to need you try and breathe’

This air hostess is starting to get on my nerves. I am breathing, I can’t stop panting! How much more do you want me to breathe? I am panting so hard my chest is pumped with so much oxygen it is about to explode. Is that what they want? They want me to just explode on the plane so I am scattered all over the place in tiny pieces? I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.

Hour 2

I am being eyeballed by the air hostess in front of me and I can feel the glare of the hundred other passengers behind me. I try to sip the water that has been placed on the tray in front of me but my hands are shaking too much. I am being tortured by time. Seven hours. Never before have I noticed how painstakingly long seven hours is. By the time I get off this plane my Mother might be dead. I might never get to speak to her again. Yet, up in the sky, time is standing still. I am moving back in time. Five hours to be exact. When I land in New York, time will have collapsed back on itself, giving me back five whole hours. I have never felt so betrayed by the world's order.

The air hostess is looking at me again. She says something through the side of her mouth to her colleague. A coffee is placed in front of me moments later. I can’t drink while I am sobbing so much though. Plus, I don’t want a coffee, I don’t want anything other than to get off this plane.

Hour 3

I read the letter again.

‘I stole you’

It is just so stupid. I am not falling for it. What an elaborate lie to make up. She has been watching too much Line of Duty in that hospital room. I rip open the remainder of the package half-jokingly. Come on Mum, lets see what you have got then, I say in my head feeling the thrill of a trick well played. Another letter is inside, a few photos and a bunch of newspaper articles. My head starts to fuzz. I am shaking so much the paper is rustling over the hum of the plane. One of the newspaper headlines is screaming at me.

BABY MISSING FROM THE WHITTINGTON HOSPITAL

13th December 2002

The baby, belonging to leading paediatric doctor, Dr. Melanie Stone, went missing in the early hours of the morning. It is thought that he was sleeping next to Dr. Stone when the abduction took place.

I couldn’t read anymore. I threw the package onto the chair and ran for the toilet to be sick.

Hour 4

A doctor. This woman who lost her baby was a doctor. I try to ignore the fact I am on my way back to University to complete a Medicine degree. On a full scholarship. It is a coincidence. I look at the photo. She looks like me. Immediately, without hesitation or question I know, that is my Mother.

Hour 5

I have read every article in that package. They all say the same thing, I was taken from her while she slept. I would have defended my Mother till my last breath - she would never be capable of doing such a thing. Then I read the second letter. She had given birth to a still born baby, she was delirious with shock and pain and yearning. She wasn’t sound of mind when she did what she did. But once she did it, there was no way she could take it back. She just walked out with me and kept walking until she reached home. They came to the house, she said. They had her on camera leaving the hospital with a baby. But she was long gone by then and I was too.

Hour 6

I want to search for this woman on my phone, I want to see what she looks like now. I tried turning aeroplane mode off but I could get nothing.

Did she stop looking for me? Is she still looking for me? Then a stupid thought crosses my mind - would she be proud of me?

I remind myself that my Mother might be leaving the earth right at this moment and my brain is already forgetting about her. I am furious with myself for entertaining all this when the unthinkable could be happening. I hope she waits for me to get off this plane and come back to her. I want to talk to her but at the same time I am so fucking angry. There are things that are starting to suddenly make sense in my head. The quiet lifestyle, the frantic glances when there was any sort of commotion near us, the constant disapproval of me doing anything to stand out. The screaming matches when she would ground me for no particular reason. The words ‘I do it all to protect you, J,’ are booming inside my brain. I don’t want it to make sense but there is suddenly a release of some sort inside me. I wasn’t imagining it. I wasn’t wrong for wondering if there was something bigger wrong with my Mother. I hadn’t missed the early signs of her brain tumour. I hadn’t been negligent. The relief soaks my skin in tears. It wasn’t my fault her tumour progressed so fast. She had been the same from when I was little right up to the day of her diagnosis. Skittish, alert, paranoid, frantic.

It wasn’t the tumour.

It wasn’t the tumour.

The air hostess hands me a packet of tissues. I take them without even looking at her.

Hour 7

We are landing in half an hour. I have no idea what to do. I want to get off this plane and call her, I don’t even know how or where I would start but I just need to hear her voice. I need to know she is still here. I need her to know that I don’t hate her. She is sick. She was sick then too. But I am angry too. I hate myself for it, but I am. What sort of person is angry at a dying woman?

In the space of six and a half hours I have lost any sense of identity and yet something feels found. A deep ache that had been residing in the pit of my stomach for as long as I can remember doesn’t seem so overbearing. I have spent years wondering why we look so different to one another. Why I have no family. Why the only person who ever wanted to love me was my Mother.

I step off the plane. The tears are gone. The plane journey is over and yet my journey has only just begun.

I immediately call my Mother. It rings through. I press the number again and wait, my palms and fingers are damp with sweat. My heart is racing.

‘Jeremiah?’