**16th March, 2023**
“What is a child without roots? Nothing. Just a ghost who happened to find a body.”
“Did you always feel like a ghost?” asked Michael, stirring his tea in my kitchen.
I looked at him—the only one who knew the whole truth. The one who helped me find *her*—the woman who carried me under her heart, then tossed me away like a discarded draft.
My first cry didn’t soften hers. All she left was a note on a cheap blanket: *”Forgive me.”* One word. The only love I was ever meant to know.
Margaret and Harold Whitaker, an elderly childless couple, found me one chilly October morning. They opened their door to a wailing bundle. They had enough decency not to send me to an orphanage—but not enough to love me.
“You live under our roof, Eleanor, but remember: you’re not ours, and we’re not yours,” Margaret repeated every year on the day they’d found me.
Their flat became my cage. I slept on a fold-out in the hallway, ate their cold leftovers, wore secondhand clothes bought two sizes too large. “You’ll grow into them,” she’d say. But by the time I did, the fabric was already threadbare.
At school, I was the outcast. “Foundling,” “charity case”—whispers followed me.
I didn’t cry. Instead, I hoarded every slight, every cold glance like fuel.
By thirteen, I was working—leafleting, walking dogs. I hid the cash under a loose floorboard. Once, Margaret found it.
“Stolen?” she asked, crumpling the notes in her fist. “Blood will tell…”
“I earned it,” I said.
She threw the money down. “Then pay your way. For food. For shelter. It’s time.”
By fifteen, I worked every spare hour. At seventeen, I left for university in another city—just a backpack and a shoebox holding my only treasure: a photo of me as a newborn, taken by a nurse before my “mother” vanished.
“She never loved you, Eleanor,” Margaret told me coldly at the door. “Neither did we. But at least we were honest.”
In halls, I shared a room with three girls. Lived on instant noodles. Studied until my eyes burned—only top marks, only scholarships. Nights, I stocked shelves at a 24-hour shop. Classmates sneered at my worn-out clothes. I didn’t hear them. I only heard one voice: *I’ll find her. I’ll show her what she threw away.*
Nothing cuts deeper than knowing you’re unwanted. It lodges in your skin like shrapnel.
Michael knew my story. Knew how I clawed my way up.
“You won’t find peace this way,” he said once.
“I don’t want peace,” I replied. “I want to close the book.”
Life has a cruel sense of irony. In my third year, a professor assigned us a marketing strategy for an organic skincare brand. Three sleepless nights poured every ounce of my hunger into that project. When I presented, the room fell silent.
A week later, the professor burst in: “Eleanor! Investors from Cambridge saw your work. They want a meeting.”
They offered equity, not a salary. I signed, hands shaking—what did I have to lose?
A year later, the start-up boomed. My share bought a flat in Kensington. By twenty-three, I had everything—except happiness. Just an emptiness.
“There’s a ghost on your shoulder,” Michael said.
He was right. He helped me find her.
Elizabeth “Lizzy” Hartwell. Forty-seven. Divorced. Living in a peeling council flat in Croydon. No children. *No children.* That line burned worst of all.
Michael showed me her photo—a face worn raw by life.
“She cleans houses now,” he said. “Still sure?”
“Absolutely.”
We posted an ad. Michael interviewed her at my desk while I watched through a hidden camera.
“Experience, Ms. Hartwell?”
“Yes,” she fidgeted, knuckles chapped. “A bit o’ this, that… I’ll work hard.”
Her voice was broken. All pride gone.
“You’re hired on trial,” Michael said.
Later, he asked, “Still want to do this?”
“More than ever.”
A week later, she stood in my home. A hunched shadow with a bucket and bleach.
The first meeting was brief. I nodded coldly, pretending to work.
She didn’t recognise me. Only desperation to keep the job showed in her eyes.
For months, I watched her scrub *my* floors, iron *my* shirts. Left tips—not kindness, just bait.
Then, one day, she lingered by my bookshelf. Picked up my graduation photo.
I stepped closer. “Recognise her?”
The frame trembled in her hands.
“Sorry—dust in me eyes…”
“Sit.”
She perched on the chair’s edge.
“You look… like a girl I once knew,” she whispered.
I placed the newborn photo between us. “Twenty-five years ago, you left a baby on a doorstep. *Me.* Why?”
Her face crumpled. “I were nineteen! His dad left. Me parents threw me out—”
“You threw *me* out.”
“I thought you’d be loved!”
I laughed bitterly. “They *tolerated* me.”
She sobbed. “I looked for you—”
“Not hard enough.”
She claimed she’d returned after a year, was told no child had been found. Gave up.
I studied her. Suddenly, the rage settled.
“No,” I said softly. “I don’t want revenge. But I won’t forgive either. We’re free now.”
Michael walked her out. I blocked her number.
Later, I held the baby photo to my cheek. “You made it,” I whispered.
Three days after, I unblocked her. Called.
We’re trying. Starting over. Maybe one day… forgiving.
*Lesson learned: Some roots grow in poisoned soil. But you can still rise.*
