The leather notebook had become the most important object on her desk inside forty-eight hours. She had transferred all her research into it, the nurse's testimony and the hospital attempts and the notes about the man who paid and left first and the letter M that she kept returning to, everything properly organised and cross-referenced, the handwriting neater than it had been in the manila folder because the notebook deserved it.
She had also written, on the last page which she was using as a personal section, the name Madeline.
Her biological mother's name was Madeline. She had confirmed this through a separate search, a brief mention in a social services record from the right period that had surfaced through a digitisation archive. Madeline. She stared at that name sometimes when the office was quiet and she was not sure how she felt about it yet, so she was giving it time.
